Joe Frazier

Boxing great dies after fight with cancer

DAN GELSTON, The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Joe Frazier had to throw his greatest punch to knock down "The Greatest."

A vicious left hook from Frazier put Muhammad Ali on the canvas in the 15th round in March 1971 when he became the first man to beat him in the Fight of the Century at Madison Square Garden.

"That was the greatest thing that ever happened in my life," Frazier said.

It was his biggest night, one that would never come again.

Frazier, who died Monday night after a brief battle with liver cancer at 67, will forever be associated with Ali. No one in boxing would ever dream of anointing Ali as The Greatest unless he, too, was linked to Smokin' Joe.

"I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration," Ali said in a statement. "My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones."

They fought three times, twice in the heart of New York City and once in the morning in a steamy arena in the Thrilla in Manila in the Philippines. They went 41 rounds together. Neither gave an inch and both gave it their all.

In their last fight in Manila in 1975, they traded punches with a fervor that seemed unimaginable among heavyweights. Frazier gave almost as good as he got for 14 rounds, then had to be held back by trainer Eddie Futch as he tried to go out for the final round, unable to see.

"Closest thing to dying that I know of," Ali said afterward.

Ali was as merciless with Frazier out of the ring as he was inside it. He called him a gorilla, and mocked him as an Uncle Tom. But he respected him as a fighter, especially after Frazier won a decision to defend his heavyweight title against the then-unbeaten Ali in a fight that was so big Frank Sinatra was shooting pictures at ringside and both fighters earned an astonishing $2.5 million.

The night at the Garden 40 years ago remained fresh in Frazier's mind as he talked about his life, career and relationship with Ali a few months before he died.

"I can't go nowhere where it's not mentioned," he told The Associated Press.

Bob Arum, who once promoted Ali, said he was saddened by Frazier's passing.

"He was such an inspirational guy. A decent guy. A man of his word," Arum said. "I'm torn up by Joe dying at this relatively young age. I can't say enough about Joe."

Frazier's death was announced in a statement by his family, who asked to be able to grieve privately and said they would announce "our father's homecoming celebration" as soon as possible.

On Tuesday, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson posted his condolences on Twitter. Tyson wrote, "As a young fighter it has always been an honor to be compared" to Frazier.

Also, the International Boxing Hall of Fame announced its flags in Canastota, N.Y., will fly at half-staff in memory of Frazier. Frazier was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990.

Manny Pacquiao learned of the death shortly after he arrived in Las Vegas for his fight Saturday night with Juan Manuel Marquez. Like Frazier in his prime, Pacquiao has a powerful left hook that he has used in his remarkable run to stardom.

"Boxing lost a great champion, and the sport lost a great ambassador," Pacquiao said.

Don King, who promoted the Thrilla in Manila, said Frazier always fought with courage and for respect.

"One cannot underestimate the contribution Smokin' Joe and Ali made to progress and change by creating the space, through their talent, for black men to be seen, visible and relevant," King said. "The Thrilla in Manila helped make America better."

Though slowed in his later years and his speech slurred by the toll of punches taken in the ring, Frazier was still active on the autograph circuit in the months before he died. In September he went to Las Vegas, where he signed autographs in the lobby of the MGM Grand shortly before Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s fight against Victor Ortiz.

An old friend, Gene Kilroy, visited with him and watched Frazier work the crowd.

"He was so nice to everybody," Kilroy said. "He would say to each of them, 'Joe Frazier, sharp as a razor, what's your name?'"

Frazier was small for a heavyweight, weighing just 205 pounds when he won the title by stopping Jimmy Ellis in the fifth round of their 1970 fight at Madison Square Garden. But he fought every minute of every round going forward behind a vicious left hook, and there were few fighters who could withstand his constant pressure.

His reign as heavyweight champion lasted only four fights — including the win over Ali — before he ran into an even more fearsome slugger than himself. George Foreman responded to Frazier's constant attack by dropping him three times in the first round and three more in the second before their 1973 fight in Jamaica was waved to a close and the world had a new heavyweight champion.

"He would not back up from King Kong," Foreman said. "I know, I knocked Joe down six times. When our fight was over, Joe was on his feet looking for me."

Two fights later, he met Ali in a rematch of their first fight, only this time the outcome was different. Ali won a 12-round decision, and later that year stopped Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire.

There had to be a third fight, though, and what a fight it was. With Ali's heavyweight title at stake, the two met in Manila in a fight that will long be seared in boxing history.

Frazier went after Ali round after round, landing his left hook with regularity as he made Ali backpedal around the ring. But Ali responded with left jabs and right hands that found their mark again and again. Even the intense heat inside the arena couldn't stop the two as they fought every minute of every round with neither willing to concede the other one second of the round.

"They told me Joe Frazier was through," Ali told Frazier at one point

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during the fight.

"They lied," Frazier said, before hitting Ali with a left hook.

Finally, though, Frazier simply couldn't see and Futch would not let him go out for the 15th round. Ali won the fight while on his stool, exhausted and contemplating himself whether to go on.

"It was unworldly what we had just seen," Arum said. "Two men fighting one of the great wars of all time. It's something I will never forget for all the years I have left."

It was one of the greatest fights ever, but it took a toll. Frazier would fight only two more times, getting knocked out in a rematch with Foreman eight months later before coming back in 1981 for an ill advised fight with Jumbo Cummings.

"They should have both retired after the Manila fight," former AP boxing writer Ed Schuyler Jr. said. "They left every bit of talent they had in the ring that day."

Born in Beaufort, S.C., on Jan. 12, 1944, Frazier took up boxing early after watching weekly fights on the black and white television on his family's small farm. He was a top amateur for several years, and became the only American fighter to win a gold medal in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo despite fighting in the final bout with an injured left thumb.

"Joe Frazier should be remembered as one of the greatest fighters of all time and a real man," Arum told the AP in a telephone interview Monday night. "He's a guy that stood up for himself. He didn't compromise and always gave 100 percent in the ring. There was never a fight in the ring where Joe didn't give 100 percent."

After turning pro in 1965, Frazier quickly became known for his punching power, stopping his first 11 opponents. Within three years he was fighting world-class opposition and, in 1970, beat Ellis to win the heavyweight title that he would hold for more than two years.

Foreman finally took the title from him in a 1973 fight that was as shocking as it was vicious. Foreman knocked Frazier down six times to win in two rounds, and the first knockdown inspired a call at ringside that is among the most famous in sports history.

"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" Howard Cosell yelled into his ABC microphone.

In Philadelphia, a fellow Philadelphia fighter, longtime middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins, said Frazier was so big in the city that he should have his own statue, like the fictional Rocky character.

"I saw him at one of my car washes a few weeks ago. He was in a car, just hollering at us, 'They're trying to get me!' That was his hi," Hopkins said. "I'm glad I got to see him in the last couple of months. At the end of the day, I respect the man. I believe at the end of his life, he was fighting to get that respect."

He was a fixture in Philadelphia where he trained fighters in a gym he owned and made a cameo in "Rocky."

Mayor Michael Nutter said Frazier "represented the heart and soul of boxing in our great city. In the ring and in the neighborhoods, he carried himself with dignity and courage. He was a true ambassador for our city."

It was his fights with Ali that would define Frazier. Though Ali was gracious in defeat in the first fight, he was as vicious with his words as he was with his punches in promoting all three fights — and he never missed a chance to get a jab in at Frazier.

Frazier, who in his later years would have financial trouble and end up running a gym in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia, took the jabs personally. He felt Ali made fun of him by calling him names and said things that were not true just to get under his skin. Those feelings were only magnified as Ali went from being an icon in the ring to one of the most beloved people in the world.

After a trembling Ali lit the Olympic torch in 1996 in Atlanta, Frazier was asked what he thought about it.

"They should have thrown him in," Frazier responded.

He mellowed, though, in recent years, preferring to remember the good from his fights with Ali rather than the bad. Just before the 40th anniversary of his win over Ali earlier this year — a day Frazier celebrated with parties in New York — he said he no longer felt any bitterness toward Ali, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and is mostly mute.

"I forgive him," Frazier said. "He's in a bad way."

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Tim Dahlberg reported from Las Vegas.

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RUSS BYNUM, The Associated Press

BEAUFORT, S.C. (AP) — Long before he became Smokin' Joe, the future heavyweight champion was known in his South Carolina hometown as "Billy Boy" — a stocky farmer's son who honed his devastating left hook on a punching bag made from a flour sack stuffed with corn cobs, rags and Spanish moss.

Joe Frazier would make Philadelphia his adopted home, but his roots ran deep in the sandy soil of the South Carolina coast where he was born in 1944. More than 250 family members and friends gathered Wednesday for a church memorial service near his hometown of Beaufort.

"He was Joe Frazier to the world, but he was our Uncle Billy," said Dannette Frazier, one of about a dozen of Frazier's nieces and nephews who still live near the 10-acre farm where the boxer was raised.

Frazier died Nov. 7 from cancer at age 67.

The South Carolina service had none of the celebrity trappings of Frazier's funeral Monday in Philadelphia, where Jesse Jackson delivered the eulogy to a congregation including Muhammad Ali, former heavyweight champ Larry Holmes and promoter Don King.

Also absent from the service at Bethesda Christian Fellowship on St. Helena Island was Frazier's body. In place of his casket, two large portraits of Frazier stood at the church altar — one of him wearing the Olympic gold medal he won in 1964; the other taken with his massive heavyweight champion belt slung over

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his shoulder.

"I was really hoping to bring my father with me today," Frazier's oldest daughter, Jacqui Frazier Lyde of Philadelphia, told the congregation. "I was really trying to make sure you had an opportunity to see his face."

Lyde said her father was being buried in a blue suit and patent leather shoes. "He looked like one of God's men."

Billy Joe Frazier spent his first 15 years in Beaufort on a farm where his parents grew corn, watermelon and okra. Frazier's father was proud that he was not a sharecropper. He owned his land.

By age 6, Frazier was in the fields helping his brothers and sisters pick tomatoes and other crops. He began driving his father's pickup truck when he was 7. His mother would later recall Frazier started to fight around the age of 9.

Frazier's father encouraged the brawling, saying he could grow up to be the next Joe Louis, and Frazier started training with whatever materials he had at hand. The fighter later said he gave daily beatings to his homemade punching bag for several years.

Frazier was expelled from school in the ninth-grade when he fought a white student for calling his mother names. He got a job working construction that helped him build his body and earn enough money to leave the South. In 1959, at age 15, Frazier bought a ticket and boarded a bus to New York to begin training as a boxer in earnest.

"I left the South as soon as I found out about the North," Frazier later told a biographer.

But he made frequent trips back to South Carolina, where there's a road named after him in his hometown.

"When he came home we knew he never forgot Beaufort," said his niece, Dannette Frazier. "He'd spend three or four days here because he had to visit everybody."

At the church service, Dannette Frazier recalled how her Uncle Billy rushed home to Beaufort a couple of years ago when her mother, one of the boxer's older sisters, died.

She laughed at the memory of how Frazier drove the 700 miles from Philly to Beaufort, even though "he was legally blind."

Frazier arrived safely nonetheless.

"He said, 'It was easy. I just looked at the tail lights in front of me,'" Dannette Frazier said. "That's the loving uncle we knew."

Joe Frazier

January 12, 1944 - November 7, 2011

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