PHILADELPHIA -- Richard Nixon was rooting for Joe Frazier.
That fact can be interpreted a number of ways, even by those who weren't born when Frazier took on Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in the "Fight of the Century'' on March 8, 1971. So much more was on the line that night than the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world -- politically, socially and emotionally -- that you could easily form an opinion on the fight based on who else was rooting for or against one of the fighters.
At the time, Nixon's support was important to Frazier for one reason: Frazier had gone to the president to convince him to get Ali's boxing license reinstated. The governing bodies had revoked it following Ali's refusal to enter the military based on his opposition to the war in Vietnam due to religious beliefs.
"That's the only way he was able to fight,'' Frazier recalled Thursday as he sat behind his desk in his business office, a suite on an upper floor of a hotel three blocks from Independence Hall. "And I went up to President Nixon to let his license go free, so we can get it on. And (Nixon) said, 'Joe, do you think you can take him?'
"I said, 'I got him in my back pocket.' I told the president that.'' Frazier chuckled, something he did a lot during an hour-and-a-half conversation that traveled all around the world, from his poor upbringing in the Jim Crow South to his adopted Philadelphia hometown to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (where he won a gold medal at age 20) and, eventually, to the Garden.
Source: http://boxing.fanhouse.com/2011/02/25/fight-of-the-century-smokin-joe-fraziers-smashing-success/
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