"Once all the papers were signed and the fight was officially on, Muhammad Ali knew exactly what to do. The master quipster, fight-promoting wizard and most famous and outrageous boxer in the world - the longtime heavyweight champion who had trumpeted his boxing style as one to "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" - told the media what would happen on Oct. 1, 1975."
"Bob Arum will turn 94 in December, and he is still going strong. In the '60s, he was a Harvard-educated lawyer who ended up working for Bobby Kennedy's justice department. Kennedy assigned him to confiscate closed-circuit TV revenue from the 1962 Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston fight because information had been leaked to the U.S. government that the promoter, Roy Cohn, was planning to skirt some tax responsibilities by illegally paying Patterson in Sweden."
"That's the same Roy Cohn who eventually became the lawyer and confidant of a young Donald Trump. Arum confiscated millions, but didn't care for boxing and thought little of it until a friend who was also a boxing promoter asked him for advice on a fight because the closed-circuit TV was selling poorly. Arum's idea was to have pro football star Jim Brown do the broadcast analysis, because no black person had ever handled such a high-profile role before."
Muhammad Ali promoted the Oct. 1, 1975 fight with memorable taunts, calling Joe Frazier a gorilla and proclaiming, "A killa and a thrilla and a chilla when I get to the gorilla in Manila." The nickname "Thrilla in Manila" became the enduring label for what became one of boxing's greatest and controversial matches. Bob Arum, a Harvard-educated lawyer who worked for Bobby Kennedy, confiscated closed-circuit TV revenue from the 1962 Patterson-Liston fight and later entered boxing promotion after collaborating with Jim Brown to boost broadcast sales. Roy Cohn was identified as a promoter involved in earlier tax-skirt plans and later became Donald Trump's lawyer.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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