(Editor’s Note: Joe Frazier’s chronic unresolved relationship with Muhammad Ali seems resolved and happily so. There’s more sweetness than bitterness now in their final years, these formerly “baddest men on the planet.”
Me, I was always a Clay man, an Ali adherent, starting with my grandly named Cassius Clay International Fan Club, which I founded with my mimeograph machine at age 11 in Boston.
Which reminds me of Ken Norton telling me a few years ago at a WBC convention in Mexico that he had “forgiven” me for being “an Ali man.”
“I didn’t know you went to school with him in Lousiville,” Norton said. “So it’s OK.”
I had to laugh as I certainly was not the lone white kid in the then racially segregated city’s school system.
About 20 years ago, I was trying to finish up at Fordham Law School and I was going to write a book with Smokin’ Joe. At first, I felt like a guy cheating on his devoted wife. But Frazier’s immense decency and strong character wore me down. Final exams interfered and someone else penned the book.
But I’ll go my grave remembering Joe telling me how he was a broke ass fighter, sleeping in a car in Brooklyn trying to get a pro boxing career launched and the times when, as Ali was refused a boxing license due to his “draft dodging,” Joe quietly loaned or gave him cash infusions, back when they both lived in Philadelphia.
Good people, all time great fighter. That should be Frazier’s epitaph. When you saw Smoke, you saw fire.)
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“The people, they still want to see me.”
Words of an Smokin’ Joe Frazier, born 67 years ago today (Jan. 12) in Beaufort, S.C., and now, amidst physical and financial decay, appreciative of still being hailed as one of the living legends of the prize ring, the man who made so much magic head to head with a fellow he used to refer to only as “Clay.”
I tried the Cassius Clay gambit three or four times on “Fray-ziuh” (Ali’s exaggerated pronounciation of his historical archrival’s last name) but Joe never bit.
“No, he’s Muhammad, he’s Ali, he’s Muhammad Ali, I call him that now,” Frazier said while visiting New York to hype FX cable network’s acclaimed new fictional but reely real boxing program “Lights Out.”
Their birthdays are a mere five days apart as the man born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville, Ky., turns 69–can you believe it–on Jan. 17.
“I don’t hit a man when he’s down,” Frazier said softly, a reference to Ali’s Parkinson’s Syndrome which robbed “The Greatest” of public and private voice.
Chatting with Frazier, I got the idea that the rivalry is not a rivalry anymore, the combatants both softened by the ravages of time. It’s about nostalgia, about brilliant action in the ring and the back and forth outside of it.
But much is gone from Frazier’s life. He is completely sour on the business of boxing, especially so after he lost his shopworn North Philly gym due to unpaid taxes.
“I don’t miss it, the boxing,” Frazier said. “The gym is shut down in more ways than one. I would develop a fighter, have some good years with them and then they run off and leave you.
“I don’t care to do that now. You go to the Mom, to the Dad and they say, “Are you paying our light bill? Are you paying our rent? Are you giving us money like they (other handlers) are?”
To Frazier, whose loyalty to manager-trainer Yancey “Yank” Durham was beyond question, such shifting alliances, the what have you done for me lately mentality, never did and never will compute.
When he speaks on Durham, a glow comes across Frazier’s frazzled face.
“We don’t have those kind of teachers around the gym today. Anybody can walk in the gym, put a white towel on his shoulder, and say he’s a trainer.”
I mentioned that boxing-rich Philly was going to honor Bad Bennie Briscoe, the excellent middleweight who somehow never won a world title at a funeral (it happened Monday) and Frazier did some mental time traveling.
“I’m going to see Bennie,” Frazier said. “Bennie, he was one of them, one of the true guys. So was Gpysy Joe Harris, so was (light heavyweight champ) Harold Johnson…we had so many. Georgie Benton, he was such a slick guy in the ring,” Frazier said.
“But we had the teachers…these guys today, it’s like you’re gonna teach me how to drive but you, you never drove a car, so how can you show me how to drive one?”
Frazier’s financial woes could fill a file cabinet but one primary one was a 140 acre land purchase he made in suburban Bucks County. Frazier bought the land, which was rural but later became residential, for $843,000 and then drew monthly payments out of a trust for $1.8 million.
Unfortunately, the trust failed and heavy litigation ensued. Frazier’s lawsuit was KO’d in 2003 and the land is now estimated to be worth $100 million (2006 estimate, cited by a New York Times article).
While I was talking to Smokey Joe, his sidekick Larry Holmes of the Easton, Pa., Holmses chimed in amidst a discussion about a Holmes statue planned in his hometown and the Rocky Marciano statue going up in Brockton, Mass.
“All these statues going up, Joe Frazier should have his own. Who did more for Philadelphia, who did more to put it on the map than Smokin’ Joe? The city took millions in taxes from Joe when he was the champ and now they take his gym away? That is so wrong,” Holmes said.
Frazier smiled. He and Holmes have grown close in their retirement years and Holmes has quietly gone into his pocket for his friend.
A few years back, when Joe had huge medical bills after an auto accident, Holmes came to the rescue.
?Joe Frazier is my friend, and what I choose to do for my friends is my own business,? Holmes said. ?If I do anything for a friend, it is not done for the purpose of making myself look good and getting my name in the paper. But know this about my friendship with Joe: If I had $4 left in my wallet, two of those would go to Joe.?
Looking back, Frazier takes Ali’s incesssant, sometimes cruel verbal jabs for what they were, mainly meant for promotional purposes.
All that “thrilla, chilla when I get the Gorilla in Manila” junk used to make Frazier seethe but now he sees Ali just as battered by life as he is or more so.
Even Ali’s rants about Joe being so “ugly” drew a humorous response.
“I had 11 babies so someone thought I was cute,” Frazier told one interviewer.
Youngest of 12, a high school dropout at age 13, father of 11, including ex-fighter Marvis.
When it comes to the guy whose name is always linked to his by the historic hypen, Ali-Frazier I, Frazier-Ali II or “Thrilla In Manila,” the classic of classics, Ali-Frazier III, the party of the second part is prideful.
“Ali always said I would be nothing without him,” Frazier has said.
“But who would he be without me?”
One final note.
I felt obligated to ask Joe, since it always comes up, if he thought Ali was getting ready to quit in Manila at the same time his trainer, Futch, was pulling the plug for fear of Joe going blind in at least one eye.
“Nah,” Frazier said. “He wasn’t gonna quit. That’s not Muhammad. No quit in him.
“Like I said before, I don’t kick a man when he’s down, I try to help him up.
“Muhammad…me and him…we had a lot of fun.”
