Chris Maume: Ali and Frazier diminished by memories of Manila bitterness

Muhammad Ali is an international treasure, the closest thing the world has to a secular living god, a fistic mixture of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. Joe Frazier is a sad old bloke living in a shabby, pokey flat above his beat-up gym in the badlands of Philadelphia. What was unexpected about Thriller in Manila, the story of their titanic third fight, was that I ended up liking them both a lot less than before.

Ali's taunting of Frazier before the fight was ugly and relentless, with liberal applications of the word "gorilla". And the Uncle Tom insults he bandied about were scandalous, bringing to mind Goebbels' dictum that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it. As his friend Dave Wolf put it, Frazier had worked in the cotton fields; "Ali had never worked a day in his life other than being himself."

He gatecrashed Frazier's first training session, telling reporters, "Boxers like Joe Frazier don't have an imagination. He's just a flat-nosed ugly pug – can't talk about nothing."

He turned up at Frazier's hotel with a replica gun, shouting up at his window, "Come out you gorilla, I'm gonna kill you." What made all this so unconscionable was the way Frazier had stood by Ali during his wilderness years when he was exiled from boxing and despised by most of America. Frazier gave him money, if the account of one of his entourage, Butch Lewis, is to be believed. He also went to Washington to plead for the return of Ali's licence, but once he was reinstated the Louisville Lip turned from beneficiary into tormentor.

If we're talking about Uncle Toms, incidentally, what about Ali addressing a Ku Klux Klan rally, railing against the evils of miscegenation? (A couple of them approached him with some rope afterwards: "We've got the nigger, let's string him up," they said. "Only joking, champ.")

As for the fight itself, the film brilliantly conveys the brutal battering each took – "This is what dying is like," Ali told his corner at the end of the 10th. Afterwards, he was generous in victory, saying that if he ever fought a holy war he'd want Frazier by his side. But the damage was done, and there was no forgiveness from Smokin' Joe – not even now, 33 years later.

In fact Frazier goes so far as to take credit for the Parkinsonism that blights Ali's retirement. As he watches footage of the fight, Frazier is clearly consumed with bitterness. "I'm very proud to let them see the damage I've done to this man in both mind and body," he mutters. "Let them see." And Marvis recounts his father with reporters watching Ali on TV lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta. One asked Joe how he felt. "He should be pushed in the flames," he said.

"I don't think Joe is mellowing towards Ali," confirms Ali's biographer Thomas Hauser. "He'll look at Ali with great satisfaction and say with not a particularly nice smile, 'I did that to him'. From time to time he'll say something along the lines of forgiveness, usually before some economic opportunity, but then very quickly afterwards he reverts to form." Horrible, whatever Ali said.

Joe's brother Tommy calls Joe's cellphone so we can hear how he announces himself. It's chilling.

"My name is Smokin' Joe Frazier
Sharp as a razor [he laughs]
Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee
I'm the man who done the job
He knows, look and see.
Take it easy, bye bye."

Candid Moore puts leading lights in shade

With his forthright views, Brian Moore makes a good rugby union pundit. He's just as good value away from his specialist subject, as he demonstrated on Question Time (BBC1, Thursday). Though I disagreed with most of his opinions, he was full of ideas and well-made arguments. In fact, he made Margaret Beckett and the rest of his fellow panellists look a little bit dim. Now all he needs is some front teeth.