Pulling no punches: Carlos Padilla on refereeing the Thrilla in Manila

Carlos Padilla is a man of confidence.

He accepted the job to referee the third fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier – the gig that altered and defined his life – having never officiated a bout higher than the 135 pound weight class. Eleven years working the hard knock boxing circuit in the Philippines, he said, gave him sufficient experience. The bright lights didn’t faze him either. He thought his acting background inured him from stage fright.

Padilla was by his estimates prepared for the Thrilla in Manila. Until one incident when he was lost in translation. 

“The trainer, Eddie Futch – and I wasn’t familiar with some of the slang at the time – he tells me ‘that’s it,’ ” Padilla remembers of the moment at the end of the 14th round when Joe Frazier’s corner called off the fight. “I was thinking, what does that mean ‘That’s it?’ He should’ve said, ‘We cannot fight anymore.’ So that’s what ‘that’s it’ meant.” 

Padilla, 82, is a natural storyteller with an air of granddaddy humor about him, self-deprecating or otherwise. Throughout the phone interview, he speaks in a carefree tone that befits a man who is content with his place in the history of Philippine sports and world boxing. His memory is strikingly keen, but it is his candor during the entire conversation that stands out. 

“Inside the ring, the referee is the king,” says Padilla, who switches from funny to firm and back with relative ease.  

Being straightforward is probably what one would expect from somebody whose career it was to stand as a figure of authority between two men set on bludgeoning each other. Hesitation is unacceptable. There is no room to regret judgment calls. Rules are enforced unapologetically as the referee sees it. All this is to say that bullshit isn’t in the vocabulary of someone such as Padilla, except when it is said out loud in a fit of annoyance. 

Before Oct. 1, 1975, a Filipino getting called up to work a heavyweight title fight was a pipe dream. The stretch of time leading up to the Thrilla was a roller-coaster of expectations and emotions for Padilla, who remembers having zero chance at the job, then getting it, losing it then getting it back. 

Don King, the fight promoter, brought in a trio of officials from the States. “They even brought their wives with them,” Padilla recalls. “They took advantage of the fact that [Ferdinand] Marcos shouldered all the fees. Ginawa ngang kapit-bahay ang Maynila saka ’tong Amerika ”

Eddie Futch, Frazier’s manager and trainer who had raised a howl over the way Ali and Frazier’s last fight was called in 1973, protested King’s choices. Futch claimed that what cost Frazier that fight was Ali grabbing Frazier at the back of his head and referee Tony Perez letting Ali’s antics slide. In Manila, Futch demanded alternatives. 

That opened the doors for Filipinos. Luis Tabuena, chairman of the Games and Amusement Board, a government agency tasked to oversee professional fights, suggested to King fielding local referees, a proposal that also received the approval of Marcos. The opportunity wasn’t lost on the president and by extension Tabuena. If the Thrilla were a chance to showcase Filipinos being world class at something, getting a homegrown official to share the ring with Ali and Frazier was the way to do it. 

The options were Padilla, Larry Nadayag, a police officer who moonlights as a referee and Padilla’s kumpare (buddy), and another guy. “I said to myself, there was no way I wasn’t getting this,” Padilla said.

(READ: One hot morning in Manila: Looking back 40 years after Ali-Frazier III)

Any sense of relief proved premature though for the Filipinos. On the eve of the fight, Padilla and his crew received word that it was going to be an American officiating after all. 

Then a change in the 11th hour occurred. A pool of the best local referees were on standby at the Philippine Coliseum (now known as Araneta Coliseum) the day of the bout, waiting for their names to be drawn and assigned in the undercard bouts. Padilla was at the arena as early as 6 a.m.

By then the parking lot was teeming with people waiting to be let inside. At about past 10 a.m., less than an hour before Ali and Frazier were scheduled to do battle, Padilla got word that he won the Thrilla jackpot and the officiating gig was his. 

“Tabuena came up to me and said, ‘Have you been interviewed by the foreign correspondents?’ I asked why and he said, ‘They’re waiting for you at the press room. You’ll be the referee for the main bout. You better hurry up and go.’ ” 

This was a level Padilla, 41 at the time, hadn’t reached at that point. He built his resume officiating bouts that took place in municipal gyms and on occasion cockfighting arenas in Metro Manila, or taking assignments in far-flung places all over the Philippines. His experience as a third man in the ring was limited to the lightweight division, so good luck taming two men north of 220 pounds.  

To put the drastic career move in perspective, consider the paycheck. He used to live off P15 per round for local championship fights and P7 for 10-rounders, he told the Bulletin Today. For Thrilla, he took home P7,500 (P206,000 in current values adjusted for inflation). The cash, Padilla said, helped him to buy a new refrigerator. 

Padilla is a true son of the fight game. His father, Carlos Sr., a welterweight, and uncle Jose, a lightweight, competed in the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. In 1936, Jose earned a second Olympic slot in Berlin. For Carlos Jr., the profession he wanted to take up was a no-brainer. 

At his family’s residence in San Juan, Padilla had a boxing ring installed. He walked in gyms throughout the city and sparred with local fighters to see how he measured up with the competition. Everything he set out to do was geared toward becoming an Olympian and adding to his family’s legacy, even though it was the same determination that would cost him a shot at glory.

His training sessions with some professionals, against whom he gauged his progress, disqualified him from applying for amateur status, which meant he was ineligible to play in the Olympics. Unfamiliarity with the rules and overzealous preparation kayoed his dream. 

He turned his sights to officiating when Jose, who transitioned to refereeing, took him under his wing. In his own car, Padilla drove his tiyo to the fights, where he learned to adopt a different perspective on boxing. He started his apprenticeship by scoring bouts and, in 1964, was granted a referee’s license.

Padilla followed not only his father’s and uncle’s footsteps in the fight game, but he also got into show business like them. “They were handsome men,” Padilla reminisced. In an interview featured in the Thrilla in Manila documentary, Padilla showed a picture of himself in the 1960s. The person interviewing him told Padilla his young face resembled Yul Brynner’s. It was in the genes, no doubt. Padilla was taking on supporting roles and bit parts whenever they were available, not really caring much about the billing. “Between acting and boxing, boxing was my love,” he said. 

When the possibility of working the Ali-Frazier fight came up, he sensed it would take more than just a high boxing IQ to land the role. With satellite technology beaming the fight live throughout the globe and into living rooms of some 60 or so countries, a system unheard of at the time, Padilla figured he’d have the edge because, as a part-time actor, he had an instinctive flair for showmanship. 

“Having that background as an entertainer helped my chances absolutely,” said Padilla, who played supporting roles beside A-listers such as Joseph Estrada and Fernando Poe Jr. “You’re more comfortable performing in front of people. People were skeptical and they thought I didn’t have it in me to be up on that stage. They didn’t know anything about me.” 

The refereeing crew from the U.S. seemed to count on Padilla choking under pressure. The Americans, now reduced to tourists with VIP seats at the coliseum, joined the foreign press in objecting to having a Filipino enforce the rules of boxing, a sentiment mentioned in passing in a Bulletin Today report. Their judgment of character couldn’t have been more misplaced. The man about to climb the ring wasn’t just a referee that morning. He was equal parts performer who embraced standing on the big stage with giants. 

“I caught a glance of the 3 referees, talking to one another and giving me that knowing look and chuckling. Don’t ever underestimate me. That only motivates me to be the best.”

No Thrilla in Manila story by Carlos Padilla Jr. would be complete without his recollection of Ali reciting a nursery rhyme. Padilla doesn’t remember which round it happened. At one point in the early goings, Frazier was pummeling Ali against the ropes when Ali, who lived to get under Frazier’s skin, uttered: “A-one, a-two, a-three, jack be nimble, jack be quick. C’mon, you!’ ” 

To be nimble and active with his hands and feet were what Padilla needed inside the ring. Ali and Frazier covered a lot of ground easily with their size. Past their primes, their energy levels drained faster and as they grew more weary, they clinched more often as a way to rest and recover some. When they did that, the 5-foot-8 referee, who was some 80 pounds lighter than the two heavyweights, used all his might to break the fighters apart. 

“I had to split them up with both hands sometimes,” Padilla said. “With Ali, a little slap on the chest, he’ll back off ’coz he dances. Frazier’s a different story. He comes forward with so much force, so you have to stop him with both hands.” 

In total, Padilla broke a clinch at least 80 times. There were at least 40 instances in which he had to slap Ali on the gloves every time he grabbed Frazier by the nape. Mark Kram, in his book Ghosts of Manila, described Padilla as “a brisk workman who whipped the pace to the acceleration of fatality, quickly moving Ali off every time he tried to hold and gulp for air.” Padilla was a fitness nut. Ahead of every bout, he would box and go for a run. On this morning, having a fighter’s mentality and being a stickler for conditioning served him well. 

“As a referee, you have to be able to anticipate where the boxers are going. You circle around the fighters, go this way or that way, back away, stop, go and stop. That’s how a true referee should work.”  

Padilla knew why this role was handed to him in the first place, to make sure Ali quit with the holding and Frazier’s side got a fair shake. He went out and did his job, even though he believed it was Frazier’s game plan that did the challenger in. 

“Everyone in Futch’s corner including Frazier thought he was better off without Ali holding him in the head. He was wrong. If Ali doesn’t hold you, it means he’s throwing punches at you. So Frazier got hit in the face. Of all their 3 fights, look, it was in the third that Frazier really looked bad. 

“After the 14th round, Frazier just looked awful. I thought if this was going to continue and Ali was just going to beat up Frazier, I was going to have to stop it in the 15th.” 

It wasn’t just Frazier who took a battering. Ali had never been on the receiving end of such punishing blows for that long a stretch of time. Barred by Padilla from holding, Ali was rendered defenseless. Unshackled, Frazier unleashed punches that packed more power and gradually slowed down Ali.  

By the end of Round 14, a spent Ali was ready to quit and Frazier, also running on fumes, was virtually blind from the massive swelling on his left eye and partial vision on the right. Frazier wasn’t going to let something like eyesight stop him from going at it with Ali for one more round. Futch would have none of it.  

He told Padilla, “That’s it.” 

“When I went to Ali’s corner to raise his hand, they weren’t really happy with me and the way I officiated. They surrounded Ali and basically didn’t allow me to go to him and declare him the winner. They figured I made Ali’s life difficult that day. They were none too pleased, but I said, ‘No, no, no, give way.’ They just circled around him. I told Ali, ‘I have to raise your hand.’ “ 

Padilla doesn’t know how many times he’s seen the Thrilla. He says it shows up on TV a lot, “a hundred times maybe.” He migrated to the States in 1977 and has called Las Vegas his home since. (Once in a while, even the movies he acted in would pop up.) Watching Ali-Frazier III now, he says, evokes little nostalgia; in its place is gratification. “There’ll never be another Thrilla in Manila,” Padilla said. “That’s once in a lifetime.”  

The fight was meant to raise the Philippine brand. Whether it delivered on that promise, little tangible evidence exists. Padilla went on to officiate hundreds of bouts, including those featuring Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Michael Spinks.

He refereed Manny Pacquiao vs. Nedal Hussein in October 2000, when Padilla was the household name, the revered figure in boxing, not Pacquiao. Not yet. According to boxrec.com, Padilla officiated two more times that year before he called it a career, one that spanned 36 years.  

“When it comes to your legacy,” Padilla was asked, “how do you want people to remember you?”

“You mean refereeing? That one. Nobody can take that away from me.”

And nobody will argue. For one night on Oct. 1, 1975, a boxing match put the Philippines on the map. For the rest of his life, that fight put Padilla on top of the world. – Rappler.com