Unlike most great fighters, the record book just doesn't come close to capturing what made Joe Frazier "Smokin' Joe."

Sure Joe defeated over a dozen ranked heavyweights. Sure he was the undisputed heavyweight champion. Sure he won what may be boxing's single most prestigious fight. Sure it took a top five all-time heavyweight to beat him.

But those aren't the things that made Joe Frazier "Smokin Joe."

Instead it was the distance he traveled to do those things. He was under six feet tall, had a reach of an alligator, didn't have much of a right hand, was a very slow starter and had damaged an eye in 1966. What in God's name made anyone think he belonged in the ring with a supremely gifted athlete like Muhammad Ali? Well to quote a fighting truism "It isn't the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog."

No fighter I can name ever surpassed Joe Frazier's determination. It dripped from the man, it flowed through his veins and it never ever ran out. Want to measure a man's heart? See how he acts when things are bleak. George Foreman knocked him down six times in Jamaica. Joe Frazier got up six times. Ringo Bonavena dropped Joe twice early in his career. Joe won the fight. Muhammad Ali closed his good eye in Manila, and what did Joe do? He reached out with both hands to find his foe and then began winging away. When Eddie Futch stopped the fight after 14 rounds, Joe was willing to go on, against perhaps the greatest heavy of them all, blind. George Foreman would knock him down twice more in their rematch. Twice, Joe would arise.

No fighter in history ever got more out of what nature gave him that Joe Frazier did. He was gifted with a fast and powerful left hand. He turned it into a boxing thunderbolt. He was short, so he fought shorter. He didn't see well, so he manufactured a way to get close. He trained in such a way that could could bob and weave and land leaping left hooks for fifteen rounds. The pain that such training must have caused him is beyond what I can fathom.

And through success and failure he retained an elemental dignity and let everyone know through his actions "I am a man." Even his bitterness towards his greatest foe seemed reasonable given the savagery of Ali's words. In the end, maybe more than anyone else Ali understood the magnificence of Frazier's unconquerable will when he said if he had to fight a Holy War, he wanted Frazier with him.

It's strange sometimes where the truth reveals itself. In Rocky III as the Mayor of Philadelphia dedicates a statue to Rocky Balboa, he says "It will stand forever as a tribute to the indomitable spirit of man." Few men, not just fighters, but few men, have an indomitable spirit. Joe Frazier had one. Some men beat Joe Frazier.

No one ever defeated him. That made him "Smokin' Joe."