RIP Champ: Smokin’ Joe Frazier

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

One of the most memorable and enduring sports phrases ever uttered was Howard Cosell's call of the Joe Frazier v. George Foreman heavyweight championship fight in Kingston, Jamaica in 1973. When Foreman knocked Frazier to the mat the first of six times, two minutes into the first round, Cosell yelled out:

“ Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier! ”

But before Smokin' Joe Frazier was at the end of his remarkable boxing career, there was the Fight of the Century between the heavyweight champion Joe Frazier (26-0, 23 KOs) and challenger Muhammad Ali (31-0, 25 KOs), on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Frazier retained his title with a unanimous decision after an epic 15 round slugfest that lived up to all the pre-fight hype.

I always admired Joe. He passed away Monday night, after losing his fight to his last opponent, liver cancer, at the age of 67. Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67 – NYTimes.com.

Dave Anderson of the New York Times writes a nice tribute to this boxing legend. Joe Frazier – A Champion Who Won Inside the Ring and Out – NYTimes.com (excerpt):

[T]he Joe Frazier I’ll always remember wasn’t in a boxing ring or at a book party. Soon after the Garden triumph, he was back home in Beaufort, S.C., where, one of 12 children, he had grown up picking vegetables for 15 cents a crate when not helping his father, a handyman who lost his left arm in an auto accident.

“I was his left arm,” he said.

Ten years earlier, Joe had left Beaufort with about $200 in his pocket on a Greyhound bus bound for New York and a better life. He soon settled in Philadelphia, where he sometimes worked in a meat locker, battering a side of beef as if it were a punching bag — the inspiration for a scene in the “Rocky” movie.

Now, as the undisputed heavyweight champion who had earned $2.5 million at the Garden, he had returned to Beaufort in a maroon Cadillac limousine. He was there to buy a new-home site for his 62-year-old mother. “Dolly Frazier, the mother of the champ,” she introduced herself. “How sweet it is.”

Anderson has high praise for Frazier, "for all the deserved accolades for Muhammad Ali, I’ve always believed that each at his best, Joe Frazier, who died Monday night at age 67, was the better fighter. And the better man."