I also love the idea that the "established order" was trying to sweep Frazier under the rug? Excuse me, Frazier was the establishment fighter, Ali was the one who was sent out of the sport for 43 months, who couldn't get venues in the U.S. even when he was champion, who was hounded by the press for every move and every statement he made. Then when he came back he had to rush himself to fight Frazier because he was likely going to go to prison that summer if the Supreme Court upheld his conviction. Frazier was not somehow the victim in this fight, and his win was by no means swept under the carpet... its called the "Fight of the Century" after all; it sure sounds kinda important. If it wasn't for Ali people would remember Joe as the guy who won the belt because the champ was sent away, who beat a few good fighters but who then lost the belt the first time he met a true great in Foreman. If it wasn't for Louis, Schmeling would be remembered as a total nobody, being the only guy to win the belt on a DQ, who lost it immediately after winning it, and who was then savagely KO'd by Max Baer. These guys would be close to being nobodies in the pantheon of Heavyweight champions if it isn't for Louis and Ali, and on top of it they even lost the rematches, Schmeling particularly in an embarrassing fashion, and they are still elevated regardless of anything else that happened to them precisely because no one will forget the first fights.
When he was alive, if someone had went up to Schmeling and said "Boy, you really were swept under the carpet because of that first fight with Louis" he would have looked at them like this
I'm just getting a little tired with the revisionist history on this forum. As with elmer's thread, you can't take your pre-determined ideas about the lack of fairness in boxing and impose that on the past without really looking into it. When you try to impose ideas on the past you often lose a sense of history and what was really happening at the time. That's how we get claims that Gomez was somehow wrong to fight Sanchez in a mega-little man fight over Pedroza, that's how we get the claim that Leonard ducked Pryor to fight Duran Hearns and Hagler, and that's how we get the claim that one of the two most hated champions in the history of the sport, Ali, was somehow the "establishment fighter" in 1971. He may have been in 1976, but you can't confuse one with the other.
As for the other tired and over used theme that keeps coming up in this forum; tigermoth, by your logic Evander Holyfield could have never beaten James Toney and Larry Donald. And, being that you're apparently a Holmes fan, the last thing you want to do is start making a tally of controversial decisions; Larry got his share.