Writers on Fighters: Gwendolyn Brooks’s “Black Steel”
M. Abduh
27 November 2025

On March 8, 1971 in Madison Square Garden, Muhammad Ali & Joe Frazier met in what was dubbed “The Fight of the Century.” While Ali had been exiled from boxing for refusing the draft during the Vietnam War, Frazier won his vacated title. Ali insisted that he had not lost the crown in the ring, so  he remained the champion. Frazier welcomed the challenge & even lobbied for Ali to get a license. 

Upon Ali’s return to the boxing, this fight was the most highly anticipated event in sports. The first time in history two undefeated heavyweight champions would meet in the ring. It was the beginning of a bitter rivalry. The start of  an epic trilogy. 

Before the opening bell, the drama & the poetry of the blood feud appeared in the poem “Black Steel” by Gwendolyn Brooks, commissioned for the fight and printed in the fifty-two page official on-site program. 

In it, Brooks employs metaphor, alliteration, whatnot to detail this “roaring thing,” this “Calculated Blaze.” But ultimately she reminds the combatants, reminds us all, that black love remains unbeaten:

But
when the last bell’s business dulls away,
know that the echo’s message is black love.
Pick up the pieces of the Brotherhood.
Let
black love survive the Calculated Blaze.
Let
black love survive the Challenge and the Blood.

Black love somehow survived Madison Square Garden, Fort Pillow, Birmingham, Watts, Kinshasa, Manila. The last bell still dulling away. Still picking up the pieces.