Show Business: The Super Fight

The Super Fight The Vegas odds for next week's "Super Fight" are 6-5, bettors' choice. Muhammad AH (né Cassius Clay) says that he is going to put Rocky Marciano away in the fifth round. Ring Magazine Editor Nat Fleischer likes the Rock. Ali v. Marciano? Didn't Rocky die last year in a plane crash? Well, yes —but not before he had finished filming a simulated fight with Ali. The fight between boxing's only two undefeated heavyweight champs will be shown for the first and supposedly the only time on Jan. 20 in 850 moviehouses and arenas around the country.

The producer-promoter of this unusual event is Murry Woroner, the Miamian behind radio's popular computerized boxing series (TIME, Nov. 8, 1968). For the fight, a panel of several hundred sportswriters and ex-boxers rated each of the champs on 129 characteristics (speed, tendency to cut, ring generalship). The results were then put through an NCR 315 computer, which spun out a punch-by-punch script.

This time, to improve on the old radio show, Woroner paid the flesh-and-blood boxers to act the bout out before cameras. Marciano, who had been retired for 14 years, trained off 53 Ibs. and was fitted with a toupee. He and Muhammad Ali pounded away for three days, faking every contingency that could occur in a fight. Then the film editor cut and spliced the footage to match the computer script. Some sequences were still missing, and the boxers were brought back for two more days of shooting.

They had fought, by that time, the equivalent of 70 rounds, and on several occasions got carried away and forgot to pull their punches. "You couldn't put those two together without them testing each other," says Woroner. Ali bloodied Marciano's nose (just as the computer said he would). At another point, when his arms were covered with welts and felt heavy as scrap iron, Muhammad retreated to his corner and refused to come out again until Woroner paid him an extra $2,000 in cash. (Ali's original deal was $10,000, plus a piece of the action; Rocky got slightly more but no percentage.) The footage previewed by TIME looked realistic, and certainly more convincing than fights phonied by Hollywood stuntmen.

Bonded Couriers. Later, frenzied crowd sounds and prefight color by Sportscaster Guy LeBow were dubbed in. The whole show is guaranteed to run at least 70 minutes, and the tab is $5 or so. To build suspense and box office, Woroner is trying to keep the result "more closely guarded," as one ad says, "than the gold at Fort Knox." All of the seven possible conclusions (knockout, TKO and decision going either way, plus a draw) were filmed.

Woroner claims that only he, his editor and his sound man know which one the computer decided was right. Bonded couriers from the Joyce Expediting Co. will deliver the film, and projectionists will not get it until 30 minutes before time to roll (10 p.m. E.S.T.). At the end, Woroner's messengers will pick up the reels and bring them back to his South Miami studio. There, he claims, he will keep the master print and destroy all the copies—except for one. It, naturally, will be submitted to the Library of Congress.