To the uninitiated, boxing looks easy—just a couple of palookas hitting each other for a paycheck. Hey, most of them can barely speak English, right? Check out the diction and syntax on Larry Holmes or James Toney. It is easy to dismiss what is traditionally known as “the sweet science” as, at best, a barbaric experiment.
That’s what I thought until 2004, when I started taking boxing lessons from a 60-year-old man at a local gym. A couple months in, he suggested that we spar for the first time. Why not? This is the first test of a young fighter’s prowess and, by extension, a young man’s pride. During practice, my combinations were sharp; my defense was quick (“impregnable,” as Mike Tyson would say). More important, I was 19; he was 60 and had an artificial hip. I didn’t think it would be easy, but I thought I could at least walk away with some sense of masculinity left intact.
I barely lasted two rounds. I’ll resort to cliche and say it was like fighting a ghost. My punches missed by a foot. I had no timing. I got hit with even the slowest jab. Before I knew it was a jab, I was hit with another one. I moved my head too late. My feet and legs felt heavy, as if wrapped in wet towels. I was out of breath after one minute. I couldn’t land anything. The old man was too quick for a teenager. Eventually, after another year of training, I was able to go eight or nine rounds with a younger sparring partner, but those first few experiences were like nothing I had ever felt before. No workout can compare to boxing—real boxing, not that aerobic postiche that middle-aged women do. You can’t breathe; you can’t see; your shoulders hurt so much you can barely hold your arms up; you’re getting popped in the nose, the solar plexus, the liver; and, worst of all, you have to fight back.
Try doing that for fifteen rounds, which was how long championship bouts used to be (it was changed to twelve during the 1980s). There’s a certain nostalgia among boxing historians for the fifteen-rounder. It is supposed to represent a titanic age, when no fighter lifted weights and when the rings were free of advertisements. Smokin’ Joe Frazier was a member of that generation, and part of the sadness over his death is not only that we lost one of America’s best gentlemen, but that we lost one of the last living symbols of boxing’s glorious past.
I once fought a grandfather and lost. I can only dream, or have nightmares, about what it felt like to fight Joe Frazier in his prime. He could, with his left hook, put most men in either the hospital or the morgue. Again, to the uninitiated, Frazier’s style looks sloppy and reckless: he seems to charge into his opponents with no concern for strategy. When he bobs and weaves, he leans forward a bit too much and looks down at the canvas. That’s what most people see. What they miss are the subtle shifts in weight and the slick and relentless head movements that prevented his opponents from hitting him as he moved inside. Every good infighter, from Tyson to Toney, has learned from watching Joe Frazier close the gap on an opponent.
Unfortunately, there’s a substantial but often overlooked political angle to the whole story. Regarding Frazier’s feud with Muhammad Ali, Daniel Foster of National Review Online has aptly observed:
The Frazier–Ali split is supposed to be a conservative–liberal thing, and according to some, preferring the former to the latter is supposed to be vaguely racist, to boot.
This is because Frazier was calm, modest, respectful, and disdainful of empty rhetoric. Ali, to the guardians of respectable opinion, was the “real” black man, the radical who ditched his “slave name” Cassius Clay and who refused to fight in Vietnam. But with time, it became clear that Ali’s persona was designed to evade as well as to provoke. Though a brilliant fighter, he always relied more on speed than on perfect boxing technique. As he got older and slower, his showmanship became more crass, as if he was desperate to cover up his eroding skill with profanity. Ali’s lowest point was when he, borrowing racialist tactics from the Nation of Islam, referred to Frazier as a “gorilla.” The subtext to Ali’s taunting was that Frazier was nothing more than an Uncle Tom, the white man’s black hope.
As usual, the subject of race keeps us from seeing what is most salient. Smokin’ Joe was never anybody’s tool. He devoted the rest of his life to teaching kids his own version of the sweet science in order to keep them off the streets. Most older boxing fans lament the degeneration of the sport into the Don King world of glitzy corruption, with loud-mouthed punks in shiny trunks. They are Ali’s legacy, to be sure. And though Frazier was forever haunted by Ali’s larger shadow, its Frazier’s persona—that of the quiet warrior, a la Joe Louis—that true fans are nostalgic for. His legacy is therefore much greater.
Good article, thanks for the memories. The first Ali-Frazier match occurred when I around 15. I followed it as closely as one was able to; nothing live and the radio only gave the scoring after each round with a few comments. But even then, before I was even old enough to know anything about politics and which fighter I was “supposed” to favor, I liked Frazier way more than Clay (heh).
As the years went by, Ali became more and more crass and Frazier just “took it”. I came to really loathe Ali, so much so that to this day I feel sadness about his sickness, but no more than I would feel about anyone else. In some ways, I wonder if it’s karma – but then I remember that Smoking Joe died of liver cancer, surely one of the most awful ways to go, and what did he do to deserve that? Ack.
What an elegant man!
Nothing speaks to the degradation of this culture like the loss of sportsmanlike behavior on the part of our sportsmen. Joe Frazier was a credit to his upbringing, old-style southern manners and comportment.
And he won me some money in that fight of his against Ali!
I took karate after boxing, as part of recovering from a divorce. One of the high rank students was holding the big pad, and I forgot and punched it, bouncing him off the wall. My feet were all wrong for karate, but I had pushed off my right foot to hit with a straight right.
Sensei stopped the class. Corrected my feet. Then stood where he could watch me.
Afterwards he asked me where I had boxed. We worked out afterward, with him working on the bob and weave, that his style didn’t emphasize. A good day.
Thanks Joe. We hardly knew you.
Ali belonged to the Black Muslims and was an anti-Semite and racist. He had to beg Larry Holmes for a fight to make a payday. The Black Muslims took his money.
Larry Holmes didn’t want to fight Ali because he knew that he was faster and stronger with the fastest hands in the heavyweight division, even though Ali
refused to fight him when they were younger. He carried Ali in the fight and tried to minimize the damage to Ali. From the beginning, Joe Frazier was smarter. He received an allowance and the money he earned was invested. The same was true of Holmes. Ali was a showman The greatest boxer of all time was
Sugar Ray Robinson. A combination of power, speed and grace. We’ll never see
their likes again. The best athletes turn to other sports.
Ali beat Frazier (and Foreman for that matter) not with superior skills, but with a much longer reach. I still think Frazier the better man, and the more skillful fighter.
I didn’t know Bill Cosby was that tall.
I was a kid, back then. Other kids liked to parrot Ali and his trash talk. My response was always, “You fight with your fists, not your mouth.” Guess I was born Conservative.
“Most older boxing fans lament the degeneration of the sport into the Don King world of glitzy corruption, with loud-mouthed punks in shiny trunks. They are Ali’s legacy, to be sure.”
More significantly, due to Ali’s legacy, “older boxing fan” is almost an redundancy.
Not to take anything away from Ali as a boxer, but his place is the same as Michael Jordan – the greatest athlete in the history of his sport by a wide margin whose career has damaged that sport immeasurably. Everyone wants to imitate The Greatest, but no one can actually perform at a level justifying that level of self-regard, and all that’s left is obstreperous hype and image manicuring while an increasingly contemptuous audience tries to remain interested. Worse, image management has extended to ducking competition, and the tragedy of Muhammad Ali degenerates into farce.
“Round 14″ is one of the most amazing spectacles in the history of sport.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRth-5w0Lt8
Might boxing’s history have unfolded differently if Frazier’s beaten body had lasted a few more seconds than Ali, who supposedly was himself a few seconds from throwing in the towel? Probably not – Ali’s core appeal to younger boxers wouldn’t have diminished much if he had gone 1-2 instead of 2-1 against Frazier – but it’s interesting to think about.
I was 14 the night of the first Ali-Frazier fight and jumped for joy when my guy won. Think it was Mark Kram who penned a great overwrought piece in Sports Illustrated on the fight that year.
Last year I was talking to a black guy at my gym and he was big for Ali, but got my goat when he carried on about how stupid and clownish Frazier was.
Life didn’t get easier or bigger for Joe. He drank and had a small gym. Think Kram wrote a book about it a few years back, about Ali and Frazier and how ugly Ali really was.
Anyway, I was almost exactly Frazier’s size and I wanted to be the kind of shy gentleman he was back then.
Joe Frazier, despite the violence of his chosen profession, was a gentleman. Muhammed Ali, while arguably the greatest heavyweight ever (he wouldn’t be my choice), was not. As Frazier and Ali aged, their respective natures came more clearly into focus. Despite the horrible things Ali had said to Frazier, “Smokin’ Joe” forgave Ali, and became his friend and supporter as Ali battled Parkinson’s Disease. Ali finally learned that silence is sometimes better than shooting off your mouth – and maybe some humility.
The world is a poorer place for Frazier having left it. He was a tough man with the proverbial heart of gold.
Nice piece. Good of you to honor Joe Frazier. The Ali-Frazier series was magnificent!
Ever hear of “The Dozens”? It’s an insult game common in the black community. Frazier might have been a “credit to his upbringing” to whites, to blacks he was simply to slow to keep up with Ali. Not taking anything away from Frazier as a fighter, but when Ali shot insults at him, he was supposed to shoot them right back. Quietly accepting insults with “dignity” was guaranteed not to endear him to blacks, or – I believe – to most of the public for that matter. Quietly accepting insults, isn’t really the American way (“When you say that, smile”).
In most of his interviews about Ali, Frazier refers to Ali as “Clay.” This was a major insult in Ali’s eyes. That’s all Joe needed to do.
I grew up loving Ali. I was just another individual amongst his legion of adoring fans. Later I learned more about Ali out of the ring. His insulting taunts to Frazier, and this after Frazier had helped Ali financially, who was then banned from boxing. Also Ali`s support for a racist (white hating) islamic leader in the US (elijah muhammad).
There is even old black and white video of Ali condoning the murder of Malcolm X, who was assasinated becasue he spoken ill of elijah muhammad.
I still watch those old fights – I still know who is going to win – but now I root for Smokin Joe… a classy guy with big heart. God bless you Joe.
Anyone remember the smooth soul stylin’s of Smokin’ Joe and the knockouts?