Fight of the Century? Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier put on the event of all-time on March 8, 1971

At four o'clock the phone rang, ending the suspense I pretended not to feel. It was Commissioner Edwin Dooley of the New York State Athletic Commission. He was short and to the point: "Mr. Mercante, it's yours. Report for assignment at the Garden at 6 p.m.

"Yes, sir," I replied with what I thought, under the circumstances, was commendable brevity. "It's yours," meant I was the one. I had landed right in the middle of the fight of the century. I could hardly believe it. When I hurried out of the office that late afternoon I felt I was floating on air.

For more than a decade now, whether calling himself Cassius Clay or Muhammad Ali, the man has sought the whole world as an audience. The heavyweight champion has always exerted a fascination that transcends sport, but no previous holder of the title has been able to invade so many lives at so many levels. Compared with him, the most vivid of his predecessors are blurred figures dancing behind frosted glass. When he speaks, he assumes no less than that he is addressing mankind.

The thrust of this fight on the public consciousness is incalculable. It has been a ceaseless whir that seems to have grown in decibel with each new soliloquy by Ali, with each dead calm promise by Frazier. It has magnetized the imagination of ring theorists, and flushed out polemicists of every persuasion. It has cut deep into the thicket of our national attitudes, and it is a conversational imperative everywhere—from the gabble of big-city salons and factory lunch breaks rife with unreasoning labels, to ghetto saloons with their own false labels.

Eight weeks before the night of the Frazier fight, the telephone rang in my bedroom late one night. I picked it up. "Hello," I said.

"The champion of the world," said the caller. "I'm back from the dead."

I hope so. The man-child should be the heavyweight champion of the world. It is the only role he was born to play.

My scorecard read eight rounds for Frazier, six rounds to Ali and one even. The fight was close, sure, but there is no doubt that Frazier won even if Ali managed to convince legions of his supporters that he was the true victor that night, a claim he would later recant.

New York City has been called the city that never sleeps. It was never more so that night. Celebrations and talk of the fight echoed throughout Manhattan. Two spectators in the Garden had actually suffered fatal heart attacks from the excitement. On his way back from the fight, Jack Dempsey, seventy-six years old, knocked out two muggers outside his restaurant on Broadway. Clenching his big-knuckled right fist he told me later: "I can't go long, Arthur, but I can still punch a little."

But the closeness of the fight had more to do with the tremendous toll the match took on both fighters. Frazier had to be hospitalized, and although only 27 years old, his best days as a fighter were behind him. Though some of Ali's greatest victories still lay ahead, he would never again approach what he once had in his prime, as he did that night.