Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought for the first time on 8 March 1971, shortly after Ali's return from a three-year ban for his refusal to fight in the Vietnam war. During that ban, Frazier had supported Ali both financially and in public statements.
Ali: "Joe Frazier is an Uncle Tom. He works for the enemy."
Frazier: "He never done nothing for me. I was poor once and he never sent me anything. Now I am helping him. Talk about a true brother. I am for real. Tell him I picked him up when he was down. Preaching don't mean you are a true man. You got to go out and do."
Ali: "You don't understand, Frazier will be easier than Quarry or Bonavena. I'll just hold his head and I'll tell him, 'Come on, Champ.' I'll just play with him. He'll be trying all those short hooks and not reaching me and I'll be moving and saying, 'Come on, champ. You can do better than that.'"
Frazier: "Clay's a big guy but I've fought big guys before. Movers, too. He says I won't reach him but that's a broad statement. He will find the ring will get smaller and I will get bigger. I don't see the job taking more than 10 rounds. I'll be talking to Clay in there. I always talk in my fights and I've got something special to say to him after all this crap about me being an Uncle Tom."
Frazier won the fight on a unanimous decision, inflicting upon Ali his first defeat as a professional, in what was called the Fight of the Century.
Frazier: "A white lawyer kept him out of jail. And he's going to Uncle Tom me. THEE Greatest, he called himself. Well, he wasn't The Greatest, and he certainly wasn't THEE Greatest ... It became my mission to show him the error of his foolish pride. Beat it into him."
Ali: "I'm not going to cry. I made a lot of people unhappy when I beat them, so it's my time now. I'm not going to cry. A lot of great fighters get whipped. No one can hit as hard as Frazier. I'm satisfied with the fight even though I lost. I know I lost to a great champion, but maybe another time when both of us had been fighting regularly, the result would have been different. I don't know, but maybe."
Frazier: "I remember when I heard the bell, I looked at Ali and said, 'Yeah, I kicked your ass.'"
Defeats to both Frazier, against George Foreman, and Ali delayed a rematch, but the pair resumed their rivalry, returning to Madison Square Garden on 28 January 1974
Frazier: "Maybe I don't rap as good as he do. Rapping ain't my bag. I believe in doing a job of work, not talking about it. I don't think a man has to go around shouting and play-acting to prove he is something. And a real man don't go around putting other guys down, trampling their feelings in the dirt, making out they're nothing. People say Clay's words don't mean a thing and that I should ignore them. I know all them insults are nonsense but he's saying them and that means something. Why should any man talk to me the way he talks?"
Ali: "He's like a machine. Like some little thing wound up. Machines get tired though, they wear out because they get old."
Ali won the fight on a judges' decision, though Frazier's camp complained that the referee had allowed him to hold illegally. It is considered the poorest of their three meetings
Frazier: "I still feel I won that fight, if you look closely at the punches thrown and the ones that were landed. The referee was supposed to break us but he just let Ali keep holding on. It was a mug job."
Ali: "Joe Frazier's a nice fella, he's just doing a job. The bad talk wasn't serious, just part of the buildup to the fight. The fight was serious, though. Joe spoke to me once or twice in the middle, told me I was burned out, that I'd have to quit dancing now. I told him I was gonna dance all night."
Frazier: "I'm happy the guy's in my time and I'm sure he's happy I'm in his time. He wouldn't be making the money fighting those other guys that he made fighting me."
The pair fought for a third and final time on 1 October 1975, the Thrilla in Manila
Ali: "Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund. He's so ugly, blind men go the other way. Ugly! Ugly! Ugly! He not only looks bad, you can smell him in another country! What will the people of Manila think? That black brothers are animals. Ignorant. Stupid. Ugly and smelly."
Ali: "He's the other type Negro, he's not like me," Ali shouts to the now stunned white interviewer. "There are two types of slaves, Joe Frazier's worse than you to me … That's what I mean when I say Uncle Tom, I mean he's a brother, one day he might be like me, but for now he works for the enemy"
Frazier: "I don't want to knock him out. I want to hurt him. If I knock him down, I'll stand back, give him a chance to breathe. It's his heart I want."
Ali won the fight after Frazier was retired by his corner with one round remaining.
Ali: "It was like death. Closest thing to dyin' that I know of."
Frazier: "He shook me in Manila. We were gladiators. I didn't ask no favours of him and he didn't ask none of me. I don't like him but I gotta say, in the ring, he was a man. In Manila, I hit him punches, those punches, they'd have knocked a building down. And he took 'em. He took 'em and he came back, and I got to respect that part of the man. But I sent him home worse than he came. He was the one who spoke about being nearly dead in Manila, not me."
Ali: "We went to Manila as champions, Joe and me, and we came back as old men."
Ali: "I heard somethin' once. When somebody asked a marathon runner what goes through his mind in the last mile or two, he said that you ask yourself, 'Why am I doin' this?' You get so tired. It takes so much out of you mentally. It changes you. It makes you go a little insane. I was thinkin' that at the end. Why am I doin' this? What am I doin' in here against this beast of a man? It's so painful. I must be crazy. I always bring out the best in the men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I'll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I'm gonna tell ya, that's one helluva man, and God bless him."
Frazier: "If we were twins in the belly of our mama, I'd reach over and strangle him."
Frazier: "Ali would not be Ali unless I had come along. Him and me had three fights," Joe says. "He won two of them, I won one. But if you look at him now, you can see who won them all. Me!"
Frazier: "Why did he say the things he said? Only he has the answer to that, and I would prefer not to comment on it. He just seemed to have a bad word for everybody. It was just foolishness."
Ali: "I'm sorry Joe Frazier is mad at me. I'm sorry I hurt him. Joe Frazier is a good man, and I couldn't have done what I did without him, and he couldn't have done what he did without me. And if God ever calls me to a holy war, I want Joe Frazier fighting beside me. "
Frazier: "I hated Ali. God might not like me talking that way, but it's in my heart. I know things would have been different for me if he hadn't been around. I'd have gotten a lot more respect. I'd have had more appreciation from my own kind. Twenty years I've been fighting Ali, and I still want to take him apart piece by piece and send him back to Jesus."
Frazier: "The Butterfly and me have been through some ups and downs and there have been lots of emotions, many of them bad. But I have forgiven him. I had to. You cannot hold out for ever. There were bruises in my heart because of the words he used. I spent years dreaming about him and wanting to hurt him. But you have got to throw that stick out of the window. Do not forget that we needed each other, to produce some of the greatest fights of all time."
Ali: "I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn't have said. Called him names I shouldn't have called him. I apologise for that. I'm sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight."
Frazier: "Look at him now. He's damaged goods. I know it; you know it. Everyone knows it; they just don't want to say. God has shut him down. He can't talk no more because he was saying the wrong things. He was always making fun of me. I'm the dummy, I'm the one getting hit in the head. Tell me now. Him or me, which one talks worse now? He can't talk no more and he still tries to make noise. I don't care how the world looks at him. I see him different, and I know him better than anyone. Manila don't matter no more. He's finished, and I'm still here."
After Frazier's death on Monday was announced, Ali was among the first to respond. He released the following statement: "The world has lost a great champion. I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration. My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones."