However, in the build-up to their first fight, the Fight of the Century, Ali turned it into a "cultural and political referendum" by painting himself as a revolutionary and civil rights champion and Frazier as the white man's hope. Ali called him a "Uncle Tom" and a pawn of the white establishment as Frazier called him Clay. Ali successfully turned many black Americans against Frazier because Frazier never spoke out about race issues, and Ali could easily paint himself as hero to oppressed black people. Bryant Gumbel joined the pro-Ali anti-Frazier bandwagon by writing a major magazine article that asked, "Is Joe Frazier a white champion with black skin?" Frazier thought that was "a cynical attempt by Clay to make me feel isolated from my own people. He thought that would weaken me when it came time to face him in that ring. Well, he was wrong. It didn't weaken me, it awakened me to what a cheap-shot son of a bitch he was." Ali's camp also hurled many insults at Frazier, calling him an "ugly gorilla" but this insult didn't seem to be racially motivated as Ali named many of his previous opponents after animals. He noted the hypocrisy of Ali calling him an Uncle Tom when his [Ali's] trainer (Angelo Dundee) was of Italian descent. When told by Michael Parkinson that Frazier was not an Uncle Tom, he responded by saying, "Then why does he insist on calling me Cassius Clay when even the worst of the white enemies recognize me as Muhammad Ali?"