Thrilla in Manila
boxing match
Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier III, billed as the Thrilla in Manila, was the third and final boxing match between undisputed champion Muhammad Ali, and former champion Joe Frazier, for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world. The bout was conceded after fourteen rounds on October 1, 1975, at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines, located in Rizal at the time of the event (later Metro Manila shortly after the event).
The venue was temporarily renamed the "Philippine Coliseum" for this match. Ali won by corner retirement (RTD) after Frazier's chief second, Eddie Futch, asked the referee to stop the fight after the 14th round. The fight was the culmination of a three-bout rivalry between the two fighters that Ali won, 2–1. The contest's name is derived from Ali's rhyming boast that the fight would be "a killa and a thrilla and a chilla, when I get that gorilla in Manila."
The bout is almost universally regarded as one of the best and most brutal fights in boxing history.
Background
The first fight between Frazier and Ali–– promoted as the "Fight of the Century"–– took place on March 8, 1971, in New York's Madison Square Garden. Frazier was the undefeated champion and won by unanimous decision over the previously undefeated former champion Ali, who had been stripped of his titles for refusing to enter the draft for the Vietnam War.
Their showdown was a fast-paced, 15-round bout, with Frazier scoring the fight's only knockdown, at the beginning of the final round.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Thrilla in Manila” as boxing match. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as boxing match. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1271324. Authority coordinates are 14.620, 121.053. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975 and 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thrilla in Manila” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.