Joe Frazier: The Death of a Legend

At 67 years old, Joe Frazier died of liver cancer. Former world champion “Smokin’” Joe marked the history of boxing by his rivalry with Muhammad Ali.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: At the foot of the stairs of the Museum of Art stands a statue of Rocky Balboa. The city honored its fictional hero, but mourns its real hero: Joe Frazier, dead of liver cancer. Such an unequal battle was needed to not see Frazier get up — if not win, then at least survive.

In his life, he would stride into play without any doubt, to compete for the ultimate prize. In the hell of Manilla, one evening in 1975, his coach forced him to surrender to the call of the last round. His eyes were swollen, almost completely shut by repeated blows. Joe Frazier could not see the other end of the ring; Muhammad Ali fainted from exhaustion. To his family, Ali confided he had never seen death so close.

The “Thrilla in Manilla,” the third and final fight between Ali and Frazier, was held in the Philippines, under the financial benevolence of dictator Ferdinand Marcos — a duel in which the limits of violence have rarely been pushed so far and the epilogue of a sharp rivalry between the two men.

“Today, I speak, I walk, I am alive. I am the one who won the fight.”

In the America of the early ‘70s, it was Joe Frazier who dominated the heavyweights. Ali was serving time in jail for his opposition to the Vietnam War as a pariah. To legitimize his reign, Joe Frazier helped Ali get his professional license. He even gave him money to support himself. But once he had recovered well, Ali triggered a war of words. His usual provocation gave way to hatred, insults to the verb: “Uncle Tom” (a black man submitting to white people), the worst insult for an African-American, “Gorilla,” among other ape gestures to mock his opponent…

Joe Frazier never forgave him, despite his efforts and the public apology from Ali in a New York Times interview in 2001. Speaking of his rival, Joe took pleasure in repeating: “Look what I made him! Today, I speak, I walk and I’m alive. I am the one who won the fight.” The first, at least, and not the least important. On March 8, 1971, Joe Frazier put Ali to the canvas and handed him his first defeat by unanimous decision, in front of 300 million viewers.

Before each fight, his old coach repeated to him: “Let it smoke, Let it smoke!” A creed that Joe applied fervently, hence his nickname: “Smokin’ Joe,” striking back quickly like a buffalo to lessen the pain of a long fight. Rather small for a heavyweight (1m82), Joe Frazier made up for his lack of reach with his physique and an oversized punch. Stocky as a Basque pillar, Frazier advanced guard on the cross, attacked and suffocated his opponents.

Ali-Frazier in the feminine

“I was never afraid, never in the sport I love. George Foreman beat me twice, so what? We can go back now if we need to.” To see him, wrapped up in his great evening bathrobe, deliver his final jabs at speed, shows that the passion never really left Joe Frazier. After his retirement in 1981, he took the duties of coach and educator in the northern districts of “Philly.”

For a long time, he trained his daughter Jacquie, who inherited her father’s feud. In 2001, she confronted Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad, in one of the most-watched battles in the history of women’s boxing. Needless to say, the two men were not far from the ring at that time — in their separate ways.

The story would have wanted that he, of the two eternal enemies, would be the first to go: Joe Frazier, a name too often forgotten in memories and now recalled correctly. In Philadelphia, too, we preferred a monument to Rocky Balboa — but it was Joe Frazier, the child raised the hard way, the workaholic in training. He who descended the steps of the Museum of Art and knocked the carcasses of meat from his hands. In the streets of Philly, a statue — a man — is missing.

*Editor’s Note: The quotations in this article, accurately translated, could not be verified.