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Yep - born in grinding and abject poverty as the son of a sharecropper in Beaufort, North Carolina, Frazier's rise to fame and respect came at a price he was willing to pay. As a boy, Frazier knew hunger ........ he never really went to school and spent his boyhood working on his family's rural farm. It was there that an accident with a hog gave birth to perhaps the most feared weapon in boxing history. Frazier's left arm was never able to straighten afterwards, forcing him to limit most of his left sided work to THAT hook. Typically of the man, he turned that disability into a genuine Exocet of a punch. Short, fast, vicious; everything about Joe Frazier's style was planned to deliver that wrecking ball. Take four punches, shake his head, walk on through the storm and leve his opponent twitching on the canvas. It was never a long way back to Beaufort, and Joe was determined he wouldnt be going back there anytime soon.
At 15 Frazier travelled north to seek his future, married young, and with a son to care for, he worked in a succession of lowly paid jobs. It was Frazier who inspired Sylvester Stallone to include the meat-punching scenes in Rocky (Frazier worked in a slaughterhouse for a while, prompting a journalise to say that "he worked like he fought, up to his elbows in blood and tripe".) Joe started to attend a local boxing gym where he was noticed by the legendary Yancy Durham and Eddie Futch (it was Futch who christened one of the most famous nicknames in boxing "boy, when Joe hit that bag, he really smokin'")
Fraziers life as the Underdog started from birth, and followed him through his boxing career and his life. He was small for a heavyweight, he was not graceful, he didnt have great skills, he couldn't unbend his left arm and (he kept this secret) he was already nearly blind in one eye. He got outpointed by Buster Mathis for the heavyweight berth for the '64 Olympics but got into the team after Mathis got injured. Joe came home with the gold medal and a broken hand, that meant he had to go back to the slaughterhouse.
Slowly, he perfected his relentless style. A slow starter, Joe would hit turbo in the middle rounds and literally crush his opponents with his aggression and THAT left hook. Nobody ever got a rest against Joe, he was in your face for three minutes a round and probably viewed the minute break between rounds as a concession to weakness. A genuinely tough, hard man in the ring - something of a pussycat outside.
He shrewdly avoided the heavyweight unification tournament after Cassius Clay (as he was) was stripped of his title, and secured a bout with the eventual winner, Jimmy Ellis (a long term sparring partner and neighbour of Ali in Louisville). In the fifth round, Frazier grunted audibly and nearly broke Ellis in half with a left hook.
Smokin Joe Frazier, Heavyweight Champion of the World.
Even then, the infuriating sound 'Ali Ali Ali' would drift down from the stands and Frazier knew he had to take on and beat his nemesis.
A decent man, Frazier was a good champion. he was never in trouble, he didnt fool around with other women, spending his time training or singing (badly) with his band The Knockouts. It was about now that he got to know Ali, the two were civil and Joe even helped Ali out financially.
We all know about the malevolence Ali showed Frazier in public, it was unusual as he usually had a tongue firmly in his cheek when berating opponents to sell tickets. The truth is that Frazier scared Ali, perhaps more than anyone since Sonny Liston and more than anyone since then. Under the influence of the potty Nation of Islam, this was not one of Muhammad's finest moments. Frazier struggled to cope with the torment and he took it deeply deeply personally. I don't think Frazier would have been competitive with Ali in their third fight unless he was fuelled by a deep wellspring of anger and hatred. I hope he got over it eventually, but I'm not sure.
What he did do was administer a comprehensive beating to Ali in the Fight of the Century. He battered Ali from post to post, won a unanimous and wide points victory and punctuated it by splattering Ali to the floor with, surprise surprise, a vicious left hook. It had been a long hard road, but Smokin Joe was the best fighter on the planet.
Fighting the way he did, Joe's career was never going to be a long one and he was effectively finished well before he eventually retired. The crushing defeat to Foreman stands out but history now tells us there was no shame in losing to an internationally qualified bone fide monster like George. The truth is that Foreman's style was all wrong for Joe ...... he would push him out of range and wing away with those wide punches that Joe coundn't even see coming. George simply has Frazier's number. The measure of the man was that kept getting up and he wouldn't be kept on the canvas as long as he had marrow in his bones. When Joe got knocked down, you could hear ever fibre of his being screaming at him "GET UP GET UP GET UP"
In his old age he fell upon hard times, and was reduced to living above the gym he ran in Philadelphia until 2007 (I think). He never lost his bitterness towards Ali, his nemesis, the man who seeped through his life.
I would think that Ali too is missing a part of his life today - because Ali without Frazier is like Borg without McEnroe, the one defined the other and brought out the very best of them under adversity, Joe Frazier defined Muhammad Ali as a fighter, and Ali defined Frazier. It is that symbiosis that created and nurtered the greatest rivalry in the history of sport, Ever. Period.
Smokin Joe Frazier, who defined what a Philly fighter should be, the roughest, toughest, hardest most relentlessly aggressive heavyweight in living memory ....... and a loving father and faithful husband. The world has lost a true legend, a reminder of a time long gone.
Get up there Joe, lace em up and see how you do against the Brown Bomber, The Rock and Manassa Jack. I don't know what would happen in the best sparring sessions of all time ........ but I do know you won't take a backwards step.
Rest in peace, Champ.
