Shamelessly dishonest revisionist propaganda
This film was really quite disgraceful in its pro-Frazier bias, dishonesty, and manipulation of the facts. It's documentary filmmaking at its worst, venturing into blatant revisionist propaganda. It's a shame that some people may be fooled into thinking it's factual.
For starters, it's entirely one-sided in terms of who was interviewed. While Frazier, Frazier's son, brother, one of his cornermen, two of his managers, several of his entourage, and one of his mistresses are all interviewed, Ferdie Pacheco is the only member of the Ali camp to whom the filmmakers spoke. Only one side is telling the story here. With such a stacked deck of sources, objectivity and accuracy become casualties.
The film is most dishonest and manipulative, though, in its portrayal of the actual fight. The film tries to peddle the myth that it was anybody's fight going into the 15th and that Eddie Futch's decision to throw in the towel deprived Frazier of a possible victory. This is pure nonsense (or *beep* to be blunt). Tellingly, the scorecards are never referenced as Dower tries to sell the bogus "Frazier-could-have-won" angle. Why? Because Ali had HUGE leads on all three cards. One card had Ali ahead by 6 points. Another had Ali ahead by 5 points. The third had Ali winning by 4 points. Ali was winning handily and his lead was insurmountable.
Ignoring the fact that Ali was ahead by a wide margin on the official scorecards at the time of the stoppage, the film instead offers only two observers who personally thought the fight was close heading into the 15th - Jerry Izenberg, who said he thought Ali was ahead by a point, and another writer, whose name I don't remember. Izenberg is a well-respected writer, but in this case his unofficial card, even though it had Ali ahead, was well out-of-the-mainstream in its closeness. The other writer, who was a nobody, had it scored a draw, admitted to giving Frazier every round from the 6th through the 11th (which is completely insane, as Ali pummeled Frazier in the 11th and shut his eye, and the 10th was when Ali got his second wind and started to take back control of the bout), and gushed openly in the film about how he wished it would have ended in a draw and how perfect and poetic that would have been and how he didn't think Frazier "deserved" to end the fight on his back if he went back out for the 15th and got KO'd.
Basically, Dower completely and dishonestly ignored the unanimous official scorecards and the overwhelming consensus and relied on the only two sympathetic observers he could dig up - one of whom was openly-biased - in order to give the false impression that the fight was up for grabs and thereby dramatize Futch's decision to throw in the towel and minimize the decisiveness of Ali's victory.
Aside from that, there are a number of other issues with the documentary...
*The bit about Ali telling the corner to "Cut 'em off" (referring to his gloves) was overdone. Ali was venting and had no intention of quitting. Ali also told his corner between the 10th and 11th that he was "near death," yet he answered the bell and went back out. Ali's corner ignored his "Cut 'em off" comment, and at the time the fight was stopped, he was sitting on his stool with his gloves still on and arms resting on the ropes, getting watered down and calmly receiving instruction from his trainer, prepared to go back out for the final round. There is absolutely no evidence that he wasn't going to answer the bell.
*The film dishonestly explains Frazier's resurgence in rounds 6-9 as being the result of the referee telling Ali to stop holding Frazier behind the neck (the obvious implication of course being that Ali was dependent on dirty tactics). In actuality, Ali faded in those rounds because he tired himself out due to a combination of his frantic early pace in going for a knockout of Frazier and the extreme heat and humidity of the outdoor, tropical environment.
*It blames Frazier's defeat on his eyes swelling shut, as if he was simply the victim of bad luck, ignoring that it was the continuous barrage of Ali's punches that caused the grotesque swelling of Frazier's eyes and face. Frazier's closed eyes were a consequence of Ali's supremacy in the fight rather than the cause.
*The film argues that Ali was spent and couldn't have gone another round because he fell to the mat after he won the fight. Of course, this is a normal reaction often seen from victorious athletes. Marathon runners routinely fall to the ground after they cross the finish line. Mariano Rivera collapsed to the ground in exhaustion after the Yankees beat the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. Kellen Winslow had to be helped off the field by two teammates after the "Epic in Miami" (interestingly, Winslow had this to say: "I've never felt so close to death before. That's what Muhammad Ali said in Manila and that's how I felt out there at the end.") The point is that the reaction is common, that the athlete finishes the competition and the reaction comes only after it's over, and that it is a form of release and exhultation, not involuntary fainting.
*A big deal is made of Ali cheating on his wife in Manila with Veronica Porsche (who would eventually become his third wife), but no mention is made of Frazier cheating on his wife also. The one-sided sugarcoating is so bad that Frazier's mistress, Denise Menz, is innocently identified as his "traveling companion" when she is interviewed on camera.
*It is also suggested that Frazier was somehow the true winner of the third fight because Ali was supposedly in worse condition afterwards. Aside from being an extremely dubious proposition (Frazier's eyes were completely swollen shut, his face was freakishly misshapen, and he was completely unable to defend himself), it's also entirely irrelevant and hypocritical. By that same logic, Ali was the true winner of the first fight because he put Frazier in the hospital for two weeks afterwards, with Frazier at one point reported to be on his death bed. Of course, the film never makes that same argument in regard to Ali-Frazier I.
*Ali-Frazier I was not "dominated" by Frazier. While Frazier was the clear victor against an Ali plagued by severe ring rust, the fight was still up for grabs heading into the later rounds. Frazier won by a large 11-4 margin on one card, but the other two cards were 9-6 and 8-6-1. The UPI even scored it a 7-7-1 draw on its unofficial card (it wasn't - Frazier won, but it attests to the competitiveness of the bout). Ali controlled the first three or four rounds, then it was mostly back-and-forth until the 11th, then Ali faded and Frazier pulled away over the final four or five rounds. It wasn't until about the end of the 14th that it became clear Frazier would win the fight barring a KO by Ali.
*Ali-Frazier II, which Ali won decisively by 4, 4, and 1 round(s) on the cards, is of course dismissed as "anti-climactic" and "controversial." While the former may be true (of the three fights, it was the least action-packed, though still a good fight), the outcome was not viewed as "controversial" by anyone outside of Frazier's own corner and the usual Ali haters (i.e., Dave Anderson, Red Smith). This fight was no more "controversial" than the first one, when Ali and his corner afterwards unpersuasively disputed the decision and maintained that Ali had in fact won.
There are a number of other similarly egregious issues, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to document all of them.
It suffices to say that this film is an abominably dishonest, factually-inaccurate, revisionist hatchet job deserving of only scorn.