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Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67
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Rob Cibik
Nov 7, 2011, 11:34:39 PM11/7/11
to
Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/sports/joe-frazier-ex-heavyweight-
champ-dies-at-67.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
The New York Times.
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
November 7, 2011
Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champion whose furious and intensely
personal fights with a taunting Muhammad Ali endure as an epic rivalry in
boxing history, died Monday night. He was 67.
His business representative, Leslie Wolff, told The Associated Press in
early November that Frazier had liver cancer and that he had entered
hospice care.
Known as Smokin’ Joe, Frazier stalked his opponents around the ring with
a crouching, relentless attack — his head low and bobbing, his broad,
powerful shoulders hunched — as he bore down on them with an onslaught of
withering jabs and crushing body blows, setting them up for his
devastating left hook.
It was an overpowering modus operandi that led to versions of the
heavyweight crown from 1968 to 1973. Frazier won 32 fights in all, 27 by
knockouts, losing four times — twice to Ali in furious bouts and twice to
George Foreman. He also recorded one draw.
A slugger who weathered repeated blows to the head while he delivered
punishment, Frazier proved a formidable figure. But his career was
defined by his rivalry with Ali, who ridiculed him as a black man in the
guise of a Great White Hope. Frazier detested him.
Ali vs. Frazier was a study in contrasts. Ali: tall and handsome, a wit
given to spouting poetry, a magnetic figure who drew adulation and
approbation alike, the one for his prowess and outsize personality, the
other for his anti-war views and Black Power embrace of Islam. Frazier: a
bull-like man of few words with a blue-collar image and a glowering
visage who in so many ways could be on an equal footing with his rival
only in the ring.
Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision
over Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known
as the Fight of the Century. Ali scored a 12-round decision at the Garden
in a non-title bout in January 1974. Then came the Thrilla in Manila
championship bout, in October 1975, regarded as one of the greatest
fights in boxing history. It ended when a battered Frazier, one eye
swollen shut, did not come out for the 15th round.
The Ali-Frazier battles played out at a time when the heavyweight boxing
champion was far more celebrated than he is today, a figure who could
stand alone in the spotlight a decade before an alphabet soup of boxing
sanctioning bodies arose, making it difficult for the average fan to
figure out just who held what title.
The rivalry was also given a political and social cast. Many viewed the
Ali-Frazier matches as a snapshot of the struggles of the 1960s. Ali, an
adherent of the Nation of Islam, came to represent rising black anger in
America and opposition to the Vietnam War. Frazier voiced no political
views, but he was nonetheless depicted, to his consternation, as the
favorite of the establishment. Ali called him “ignorant,” likened him to
a gorilla and said his black supporters were Uncle Toms.
“Frazier had become the white man’s fighter, Mr. Charley was rooting for
Frazier, and that meant blacks were boycotting him in their heart,”
Norman Mailer wrote in Life magazine following the first Ali-Frazier
bout.
Frazier, wrote Mailer, was “twice as black as Clay and half as handsome,”
with “the rugged decent life-worked face of a man who had labored in the
pits all his life.”
Frazier could never match Ali’s charisma or his gift for the provocative
quote. He was essentially a man devoted to a brutal craft, willing to
give countless hours to his spartan training-camp routine and unsparing
of his body inside the ring.
“The way I fight, it’s not me beatin’ the man: I make the man whip
himself,” Frazier told Playboy in 1973. “Because I stay close to him. He
can’t get out the way.” He added: “Before he knows it — whew! — he’s
tired. And he can’t pick up his second wind because I’m right back on him
again.”
In his autobiography, “Smokin’ Joe,” written with Phil Berger, Frazier
said his first trainer, Yank Durham, had given him his nickname. It was,
he said, “a name that had come from what Yank used to say in the dressing
room before sending me out to fight: ‘Go out there, goddammit, and make
smoke come from those gloves.’ “
Foreman knocked out Frazier twice but said he had never lost his respect
for him. “Joe Frazier would come out smoking,” Foreman told ESPN. “If you
hit him, he liked it. If you knocked him down, you only made him mad.”
Durham said he saw a fire always smoldering in Frazier. “I’ve had plenty
of other boxers with more raw talent,” he told The New York Times
Magazine in 1970, “but none with more dedication and strength.”
Billy Joe Frazier was born on Jan. 12, 1944, in Laurel Bay, S.C., the
youngest of 12 children. His father, Rubin, and his mother, Dolly, worked
in the fields, and the youngster known as Billy Boy dropped out of school
at age 13. He dreamt of becoming a boxing champion, throwing his first
punches at burlap sacks he stuffed with moss and leaves, pretending to be
Joe Louis or Ezzard Charles or Archie Moore.
At 15, Frazier went to New York to live with a brother. A year later he
moved to Philadelphia, taking a job in a slaughterhouse. Durham
discovered Frazier boxing to lose weight at a Police Athletic League gym
in Philadelphia. Under Durham’s guidance, Frazier captured a Golden
Gloves championship and won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo
Olympics.
He turned pro in August 1965, with financial backing from businessmen
calling themselves the Cloverlay Group (from cloverleaf, for good luck,
and overlay, a betting term signifying good odds). He won his first 11
bouts by knockouts. By winter 1968 his record was 21-0.
A year before Frazier’s pro debut, Cassius Clay won the heavyweight
championship in a huge upset of Sonny Liston. Soon afterward, affirming
his rumored membership in the Nation of Islam, he became Muhammad Ali. In
April 1967, having proclaimed, “I ain’t got nothing against them
Vietcong,” Ali refused to be drafted, claiming conscientious objector
status. Boxing commissions stripped him of his title, and he was
convicted of evading the draft.
An eight-man elimination tournament was held to determine a World Boxing
Association champion to replace Ali. Frazier refused to participate when
his financial backers objected to the contract terms for the tournament,
and Jimmy Ellis took the crown.
But in March 1968, Frazier won the version of the heavyweight title
recognized by New York and a few other states, defeating Buster Mathis
with an 11th-round technical knockout. He took the W.B.A. title in
February 1970, stopping Ellis, who did not come out for the fifth round.
In the summer of 1970, Ali won a court battle to regain his boxing
license, then knocked out the contenders Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena.
The stage was set for an Ali-Frazier showdown, a matchup of unbeaten
fighters, on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden.
Each man was guaranteed $2.5 million, the biggest boxing payday ever.
Frank Sinatra was at ringside taking photos for Life magazine. The former
heavyweight champion Joe Louis received a huge ovation. Hubert H.
Humphrey, back in the Senate after serving as vice president, sat two
rows in front of the Irish political activist Bernadette Devlin, who
shouted, “Ali, Ali,” her left fist held high. An estimated 300 million
watched on television worldwide, and the gate of $1.35 million set a
record for an indoor bout.
Frazier, at 5 feet 11 1/2 inches and 205 pounds, gave up three inches in
height and nearly seven inches in reach to Ali, but Frazier was a 6-to-5
betting favorite. Just before the fighters received their instructions
from the referee, Ali, displaying his arrogance of old, twice touched
Frazier’s shoulders as he whirled around the ring. Frazier just glared at
him.
Frazier wore Ali down with blows to the body while moving underneath
Ali’s jabs. In the 15th round, Frazier unleashed his famed left hook,
catching Ali on the jaw and flooring him for a count of 4, only the third
time Ali had been knocked down. Ali held on, but Frazier won a unanimous
decision.
Frazier declared, “I always knew who the champ was.”
Frazier continued to bristle over Ali’s taunting. “I’ve seen pictures of
him in cars with white guys, huggin’ ‘em and havin’ fun,” Frazier told
Sport magazine two months after the fight. “Then he go call me an Uncle
Tom. Don’t say, ‘I hate the white man,’ then go to the white man for
help.”
For Frazier, 1971 was truly triumphant. He bought a 368-acre estate
called Brewton Plantation near his boyhood home and became the first
black man since Reconstruction to address the South Carolina legislature.
Ali gained vindication in June 1971 when the United States Supreme Court
overturned his conviction for draft evasion.
Frazier defended his title against two journeymen, Terry Daniels and Ron
Stander, but Foreman took his championship away on Jan. 22, 1973,
knocking him down six times in their bout in Kingston, Jamaica, before
the referee stopped the fight in the second round.
Frazier met Ali again in a non-title bout at the Garden on Jan. 28, 1974.
Frazier kept boring in and complained that Ali was holding in the
clinches, but Ali scored with flurries of punches and won a unanimous 12-
round decision.
Ali won back the heavyweight title in October 1974, knocking out Foreman
in Kinshasa, Zaire — the celebrated Rumble in the Jungle. Frazier went on
to knock out Quarry and Ellis, setting up his third match, and second
title fight, with Ali: the Thrilla in Manilla, on Oct. 1, 1975.
In what became the most brutal Ali-Frazier battle, the fight was held at
the Philippine Coliseum at Quezon City, outside the country’s capital,
Manila; the conditions were sweltering, with hot lights overpowering the
air-conditioning.
Ali, almost a 2-to-1 betting favorite in the United States, won the early
rounds, largely remaining flat-footed in place of his familiar dancing
style. Before Round 3 he blew kisses to President Ferdinand Marcos and
his wife, Imelda, in the crowd of about 25,000.
But in the fourth round, Ali’s pace slowed while Frazier began to gain
momentum. Chants of “Frazier, Frazier” filled the arena by the fifth
round, and the crowd seemed to favor him as the fight moved along, a
contrast to Ali’s usually enjoying the fans’ plaudits.
Frazier took command in the middle rounds. Then Ali came back on weary
legs, unleashing a flurry of punches to Frazier’s face in the 12th round.
He knocked out Frazier’s mouthpiece in the 13th round, then sent him
stumbling backward with a straight right hand.
Ali jolted Frazier with left-right combinations late in the 14th round.
Frazier had already lost most of the vision in his left eye from a
cataract, and his right eye was puffed and shut from Ali’s blows.
Eddie Futch, a renowned trainer working Frazier’s corner, asked the
referee to end the bout. When it was stopped, Ali was ahead on the
scorecards of the referee and two judges. “It’s the closest I’ve come to
death,” Ali said.
Frazier returned to the ring nine months later, in June 1976, to face
Foreman at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Foreman stopped him on a
technical knockout in the fifth round. Frazier then announced his
retirement. He was 32.
He later managed his eldest son, Marvis, a heavyweight. In December 1981
he returned to the ring to fight a journeyman named Jumbo Cummings,
fought to a draw, then retired for good, tending to investments from his
home in Philadelphia.
Both Frazier and Ali had daughters who took up boxing, and in June 2001
it was Ali-Frazier IV when Frazier’s daughter Jacqui Frazier-Lyde fought
Ali’s daughter Laila Ali at a casino in Vernon, N.Y. Like their fathers
in their first fight, both were unbeaten. Laila Ali won on a decision.
Joe Frazier was in the crowd of 6,500, but Muhammad Ali, impaired by
Parkinson’s syndrome, was not.
Long after his fighting days were over, Frazier retained his enmity for
Ali. But in March 2001, the 30th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier
bout, Ali told The New York Times: “I said a lot of things in the heat of
the moment that I shouldn’t have said. Called him names I shouldn’t have
called him. I apologize for that. I’m sorry. It was all meant to promote
the fight.”
Asked for a response, Frazier said: “We have to embrace each other. It’s
time to talk and get together. Life’s too short.”
When Frazier’s battle with liver cancer became publicly known, Ali was
conciliatory. “My family and I are keeping Joe and his family in our
daily prayers,” Ali said in his statement. “Joe has a lot of friends
pulling for him, and I’m one of them.”
Fascination with the Ali-Frazier saga has endured.
After a 2008 presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain,
the Republican media consultant Stuart Stevens said that McCain should
concentrate on selling himself to America rather than criticizing Obama.
Stevens’s prescription: “More Ali and less Joe Frazier.”
Frazier’s true feelings toward Ali in his final years seemed murky.
The 2009 British documentary “Thrilla in Manila,” shown in the United
States on HBO, depicted Frazier watching a film of the fight from his
apartment above the gym he ran in Philadelphia.
“He’s a good-time guy,” John Dower, the director of “Thrilla in Manila,”
told The Times. “But he’s angry about Ali.”
In March 2011, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first Ali-
Frazier fight, Frazier attended a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden
and told reporters that he had not seen Ali in person for more than 10
years.
“I forgave him for all the accusations he made over the years,“ The Daily
News quoted Frazier as saying. “I hope he’s doing fine. I’d love to see
him.”
But as Frazier once told The Times: “Ali always said I would be nothing
without him. But who would he have been without me?”
--
Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I
may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just leave me alone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/sports/joe-frazier-ex-heavyweight-
champ-dies-at-67.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
The New York Times.
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
November 7, 2011
Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champion whose furious and intensely
personal fights with a taunting Muhammad Ali endure as an epic rivalry in
boxing history, died Monday night. He was 67.
His business representative, Leslie Wolff, told The Associated Press in
early November that Frazier had liver cancer and that he had entered
hospice care.
Known as Smokin’ Joe, Frazier stalked his opponents around the ring with
a crouching, relentless attack — his head low and bobbing, his broad,
powerful shoulders hunched — as he bore down on them with an onslaught of
withering jabs and crushing body blows, setting them up for his
devastating left hook.
It was an overpowering modus operandi that led to versions of the
heavyweight crown from 1968 to 1973. Frazier won 32 fights in all, 27 by
knockouts, losing four times — twice to Ali in furious bouts and twice to
George Foreman. He also recorded one draw.
A slugger who weathered repeated blows to the head while he delivered
punishment, Frazier proved a formidable figure. But his career was
defined by his rivalry with Ali, who ridiculed him as a black man in the
guise of a Great White Hope. Frazier detested him.
Ali vs. Frazier was a study in contrasts. Ali: tall and handsome, a wit
given to spouting poetry, a magnetic figure who drew adulation and
approbation alike, the one for his prowess and outsize personality, the
other for his anti-war views and Black Power embrace of Islam. Frazier: a
bull-like man of few words with a blue-collar image and a glowering
visage who in so many ways could be on an equal footing with his rival
only in the ring.
Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision
over Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known
as the Fight of the Century. Ali scored a 12-round decision at the Garden
in a non-title bout in January 1974. Then came the Thrilla in Manila
championship bout, in October 1975, regarded as one of the greatest
fights in boxing history. It ended when a battered Frazier, one eye
swollen shut, did not come out for the 15th round.
The Ali-Frazier battles played out at a time when the heavyweight boxing
champion was far more celebrated than he is today, a figure who could
stand alone in the spotlight a decade before an alphabet soup of boxing
sanctioning bodies arose, making it difficult for the average fan to
figure out just who held what title.
The rivalry was also given a political and social cast. Many viewed the
Ali-Frazier matches as a snapshot of the struggles of the 1960s. Ali, an
adherent of the Nation of Islam, came to represent rising black anger in
America and opposition to the Vietnam War. Frazier voiced no political
views, but he was nonetheless depicted, to his consternation, as the
favorite of the establishment. Ali called him “ignorant,” likened him to
a gorilla and said his black supporters were Uncle Toms.
“Frazier had become the white man’s fighter, Mr. Charley was rooting for
Frazier, and that meant blacks were boycotting him in their heart,”
Norman Mailer wrote in Life magazine following the first Ali-Frazier
bout.
Frazier, wrote Mailer, was “twice as black as Clay and half as handsome,”
with “the rugged decent life-worked face of a man who had labored in the
pits all his life.”
Frazier could never match Ali’s charisma or his gift for the provocative
quote. He was essentially a man devoted to a brutal craft, willing to
give countless hours to his spartan training-camp routine and unsparing
of his body inside the ring.
“The way I fight, it’s not me beatin’ the man: I make the man whip
himself,” Frazier told Playboy in 1973. “Because I stay close to him. He
can’t get out the way.” He added: “Before he knows it — whew! — he’s
tired. And he can’t pick up his second wind because I’m right back on him
again.”
In his autobiography, “Smokin’ Joe,” written with Phil Berger, Frazier
said his first trainer, Yank Durham, had given him his nickname. It was,
he said, “a name that had come from what Yank used to say in the dressing
room before sending me out to fight: ‘Go out there, goddammit, and make
smoke come from those gloves.’ “
Foreman knocked out Frazier twice but said he had never lost his respect
for him. “Joe Frazier would come out smoking,” Foreman told ESPN. “If you
hit him, he liked it. If you knocked him down, you only made him mad.”
Durham said he saw a fire always smoldering in Frazier. “I’ve had plenty
of other boxers with more raw talent,” he told The New York Times
Magazine in 1970, “but none with more dedication and strength.”
Billy Joe Frazier was born on Jan. 12, 1944, in Laurel Bay, S.C., the
youngest of 12 children. His father, Rubin, and his mother, Dolly, worked
in the fields, and the youngster known as Billy Boy dropped out of school
at age 13. He dreamt of becoming a boxing champion, throwing his first
punches at burlap sacks he stuffed with moss and leaves, pretending to be
Joe Louis or Ezzard Charles or Archie Moore.
At 15, Frazier went to New York to live with a brother. A year later he
moved to Philadelphia, taking a job in a slaughterhouse. Durham
discovered Frazier boxing to lose weight at a Police Athletic League gym
in Philadelphia. Under Durham’s guidance, Frazier captured a Golden
Gloves championship and won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo
Olympics.
He turned pro in August 1965, with financial backing from businessmen
calling themselves the Cloverlay Group (from cloverleaf, for good luck,
and overlay, a betting term signifying good odds). He won his first 11
bouts by knockouts. By winter 1968 his record was 21-0.
A year before Frazier’s pro debut, Cassius Clay won the heavyweight
championship in a huge upset of Sonny Liston. Soon afterward, affirming
his rumored membership in the Nation of Islam, he became Muhammad Ali. In
April 1967, having proclaimed, “I ain’t got nothing against them
Vietcong,” Ali refused to be drafted, claiming conscientious objector
status. Boxing commissions stripped him of his title, and he was
convicted of evading the draft.
An eight-man elimination tournament was held to determine a World Boxing
Association champion to replace Ali. Frazier refused to participate when
his financial backers objected to the contract terms for the tournament,
and Jimmy Ellis took the crown.
But in March 1968, Frazier won the version of the heavyweight title
recognized by New York and a few other states, defeating Buster Mathis
with an 11th-round technical knockout. He took the W.B.A. title in
February 1970, stopping Ellis, who did not come out for the fifth round.
In the summer of 1970, Ali won a court battle to regain his boxing
license, then knocked out the contenders Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena.
The stage was set for an Ali-Frazier showdown, a matchup of unbeaten
fighters, on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden.
Each man was guaranteed $2.5 million, the biggest boxing payday ever.
Frank Sinatra was at ringside taking photos for Life magazine. The former
heavyweight champion Joe Louis received a huge ovation. Hubert H.
Humphrey, back in the Senate after serving as vice president, sat two
rows in front of the Irish political activist Bernadette Devlin, who
shouted, “Ali, Ali,” her left fist held high. An estimated 300 million
watched on television worldwide, and the gate of $1.35 million set a
record for an indoor bout.
Frazier, at 5 feet 11 1/2 inches and 205 pounds, gave up three inches in
height and nearly seven inches in reach to Ali, but Frazier was a 6-to-5
betting favorite. Just before the fighters received their instructions
from the referee, Ali, displaying his arrogance of old, twice touched
Frazier’s shoulders as he whirled around the ring. Frazier just glared at
him.
Frazier wore Ali down with blows to the body while moving underneath
Ali’s jabs. In the 15th round, Frazier unleashed his famed left hook,
catching Ali on the jaw and flooring him for a count of 4, only the third
time Ali had been knocked down. Ali held on, but Frazier won a unanimous
decision.
Frazier declared, “I always knew who the champ was.”
Frazier continued to bristle over Ali’s taunting. “I’ve seen pictures of
him in cars with white guys, huggin’ ‘em and havin’ fun,” Frazier told
Sport magazine two months after the fight. “Then he go call me an Uncle
Tom. Don’t say, ‘I hate the white man,’ then go to the white man for
help.”
For Frazier, 1971 was truly triumphant. He bought a 368-acre estate
called Brewton Plantation near his boyhood home and became the first
black man since Reconstruction to address the South Carolina legislature.
Ali gained vindication in June 1971 when the United States Supreme Court
overturned his conviction for draft evasion.
Frazier defended his title against two journeymen, Terry Daniels and Ron
Stander, but Foreman took his championship away on Jan. 22, 1973,
knocking him down six times in their bout in Kingston, Jamaica, before
the referee stopped the fight in the second round.
Frazier met Ali again in a non-title bout at the Garden on Jan. 28, 1974.
Frazier kept boring in and complained that Ali was holding in the
clinches, but Ali scored with flurries of punches and won a unanimous 12-
round decision.
Ali won back the heavyweight title in October 1974, knocking out Foreman
in Kinshasa, Zaire — the celebrated Rumble in the Jungle. Frazier went on
to knock out Quarry and Ellis, setting up his third match, and second
title fight, with Ali: the Thrilla in Manilla, on Oct. 1, 1975.
In what became the most brutal Ali-Frazier battle, the fight was held at
the Philippine Coliseum at Quezon City, outside the country’s capital,
Manila; the conditions were sweltering, with hot lights overpowering the
air-conditioning.
Ali, almost a 2-to-1 betting favorite in the United States, won the early
rounds, largely remaining flat-footed in place of his familiar dancing
style. Before Round 3 he blew kisses to President Ferdinand Marcos and
his wife, Imelda, in the crowd of about 25,000.
But in the fourth round, Ali’s pace slowed while Frazier began to gain
momentum. Chants of “Frazier, Frazier” filled the arena by the fifth
round, and the crowd seemed to favor him as the fight moved along, a
contrast to Ali’s usually enjoying the fans’ plaudits.
Frazier took command in the middle rounds. Then Ali came back on weary
legs, unleashing a flurry of punches to Frazier’s face in the 12th round.
He knocked out Frazier’s mouthpiece in the 13th round, then sent him
stumbling backward with a straight right hand.
Ali jolted Frazier with left-right combinations late in the 14th round.
Frazier had already lost most of the vision in his left eye from a
cataract, and his right eye was puffed and shut from Ali’s blows.
Eddie Futch, a renowned trainer working Frazier’s corner, asked the
referee to end the bout. When it was stopped, Ali was ahead on the
scorecards of the referee and two judges. “It’s the closest I’ve come to
death,” Ali said.
Frazier returned to the ring nine months later, in June 1976, to face
Foreman at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Foreman stopped him on a
technical knockout in the fifth round. Frazier then announced his
retirement. He was 32.
He later managed his eldest son, Marvis, a heavyweight. In December 1981
he returned to the ring to fight a journeyman named Jumbo Cummings,
fought to a draw, then retired for good, tending to investments from his
home in Philadelphia.
Both Frazier and Ali had daughters who took up boxing, and in June 2001
it was Ali-Frazier IV when Frazier’s daughter Jacqui Frazier-Lyde fought
Ali’s daughter Laila Ali at a casino in Vernon, N.Y. Like their fathers
in their first fight, both were unbeaten. Laila Ali won on a decision.
Joe Frazier was in the crowd of 6,500, but Muhammad Ali, impaired by
Parkinson’s syndrome, was not.
Long after his fighting days were over, Frazier retained his enmity for
Ali. But in March 2001, the 30th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier
bout, Ali told The New York Times: “I said a lot of things in the heat of
the moment that I shouldn’t have said. Called him names I shouldn’t have
called him. I apologize for that. I’m sorry. It was all meant to promote
the fight.”
Asked for a response, Frazier said: “We have to embrace each other. It’s
time to talk and get together. Life’s too short.”
When Frazier’s battle with liver cancer became publicly known, Ali was
conciliatory. “My family and I are keeping Joe and his family in our
daily prayers,” Ali said in his statement. “Joe has a lot of friends
pulling for him, and I’m one of them.”
Fascination with the Ali-Frazier saga has endured.
After a 2008 presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain,
the Republican media consultant Stuart Stevens said that McCain should
concentrate on selling himself to America rather than criticizing Obama.
Stevens’s prescription: “More Ali and less Joe Frazier.”
Frazier’s true feelings toward Ali in his final years seemed murky.
The 2009 British documentary “Thrilla in Manila,” shown in the United
States on HBO, depicted Frazier watching a film of the fight from his
apartment above the gym he ran in Philadelphia.
“He’s a good-time guy,” John Dower, the director of “Thrilla in Manila,”
told The Times. “But he’s angry about Ali.”
In March 2011, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first Ali-
Frazier fight, Frazier attended a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden
and told reporters that he had not seen Ali in person for more than 10
years.
“I forgave him for all the accusations he made over the years,“ The Daily
News quoted Frazier as saying. “I hope he’s doing fine. I’d love to see
him.”
But as Frazier once told The Times: “Ali always said I would be nothing
without him. But who would he have been without me?”
--
Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I
may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just leave me alone.
Gern Blanston
Nov 7, 2011, 11:59:11 PM11/7/11
to
I think Joe is hurt.
Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!
http://www.hark.com/clips/wspcywglfn-down-goes-frazier
Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!
http://www.hark.com/clips/wspcywglfn-down-goes-frazier
Roy Blows
Nov 8, 2011, 12:06:13 AM11/8/11
to
Gern Blanston
Nov 8, 2011, 12:09:36 AM11/8/11
to
> Some people are very funny and then there are asshole like Blanston
The Grim Reaper doesn't play favorites.
Sanford Manley
Nov 8, 2011, 12:10:57 AM11/8/11
to
Gern Blanston wrote:
>> Some people are very funny and then there are asshole like Blanston
>
>
> The Grim Reaper doesn't play favorites.
It was the Salmon Mousse!
>> Some people are very funny and then there are asshole like Blanston
>
>
> The Grim Reaper doesn't play favorites.
--
Sanford
When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes.
Gern Blanston
Nov 8, 2011, 12:21:49 AM11/8/11
to
> > The Grim Reaper doesn't play favorites.
>
> It was the Salmon Mousse!
Wait a minute. Joe Frazier didn't eat the salmon mousse.
>
> It was the Salmon Mousse!
Roy Blows
Nov 8, 2011, 12:21:39 AM11/8/11
to
On Nov 8, 12:09 am, Gern Blanston <g...@blanston.com> wrote:
> > Some people are very funny and then there are asshole like Blanston
>
> The Grim Reaper doesn't play favorites.
Too bad, I was going to give him your address,
> > Some people are very funny and then there are asshole like Blanston
>
> The Grim Reaper doesn't play favorites.
BobF
Nov 8, 2011, 12:29:47 AM11/8/11
to
On Tue, 8 Nov 2011 04:34:39 +0000 (UTC), Rob Cibik <rci...@gmail.com>
shouted from the highest rooftop:
>Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67
(on the radio) that Ali visited Joe last week. Anyone else hear/read
this?
--
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Corby Gilmore
Nov 8, 2011, 12:41:02 AM11/8/11
to
Roy Blows (E19...@aol.com) writes:
...and then there are morons like you who take things out of context.
Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" is one of the most famous lines
in sports history, uttered by Howard Cosell.
Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" is one of the most famous lines
in sports history, uttered by Howard Cosell.
Roy Blows
Nov 8, 2011, 1:32:25 AM11/8/11
to
On Nov 8, 12:41 am, ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Corby Gilmore) wrote:
> ...and then there are morons like you who take things out of context.
>
> Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" is one of the most famous lines
> in sports history, uttered by Howard Cosell.
No shit canadian
> ...and then there are morons like you who take things out of context.
>
> Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" is one of the most famous lines
> in sports history, uttered by Howard Cosell.
Brian
Nov 8, 2011, 8:42:38 PM11/8/11
to
On Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:29:47 +1300, BobF <b...@surfwriter.net.not>
wrote:
>None of the obits I've read mentions this, but I'm pretty sure I heard
>(on the radio) that Ali visited Joe last week. Anyone else hear/read
>this?
I think I heard it. The TV was on and I was in an adjacent room so I'm
not sure.
This story unfolded pretty fast. It was only announced a couple of
days ago and a spokesman said he was trying to fight it. (No pun
intended.)
wrote:
>None of the obits I've read mentions this, but I'm pretty sure I heard
>(on the radio) that Ali visited Joe last week. Anyone else hear/read
>this?
not sure.
This story unfolded pretty fast. It was only announced a couple of
days ago and a spokesman said he was trying to fight it. (No pun
intended.)
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