Smokin' Joe Takes The Final Count

I was saddened today to read that World Champion Joe Frazier took the final count last night after a battle with liver cancer. He was 67.

Smokin' Joe will be remembered as long as boxing exists for the three fights he had with Muhammad Ali. Those two warriors went at each other like men possessed, and even watching films of their bouts still sends chills up and down the spine.They were like matter and anti-matter, two immutable forces.. greatest fighters of their age and arguably two of the best of all time.

In many ways, Frazier was the model used for the motion picture 'Rocky'. The scenes in the film that showed Rocky punching meat carcasses and running up and down the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art were things Frazier actually did to train, and the action in the final bout between Rocky and Apollo Creed parallels the action in the final Ali-Frazier fight.

Frazier's style was simple - he just kept coming at you, throwing punches designed to seriously rock your world. A then-undefeated Ali found out about that in a personal way in their first meeting at Madison Square Garden in 1971, when a vicious left hook from Frazier put him down in the 15th round.It's worth remembering that it was Joe Frazier, the existing champ, who personally petitioned President Nixon to restore Ali's right to box so the fight could take place.

Frazier later lost the title a couple of years later to George Foreman, who took him out early with a surprise attack in the early rounds.

Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier clashed again at Madison Square Garden in 1974, and this time Ali was wise enough to handle Frazier's power by using his speed to keep Frazier out of range and tiring him by illegally holding him behind the neck in clinches, something Ali was warned repeatedly about by the referee but managed to get away with without a points deduction. Ali won that fight with a decision and went on to regain his crown by taking out George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire.

The third fight, the Thrilla In Manilla was an epic clash, one that everyone remembers but that neither fighter ever recovered from.

While Ali won the early rounds, Frazier just kept coming and dominated the middle rounds, punishing Ali with tremendous shots to the body.Both fighters were visibly hurt, but Ali was able to rally enough in the 11th round to inflict enough damage on Frazier to close his right eye so that Frazier was fighting virtually blind by the 14th round.

Frazier's corner, Eddie Futch stopped the fight after Round 14 over Frazier's protests. Ironically, Ali had also had more than enough, walking back to his own corner after the 14th and instructing his corner Angelo Dundee to cut his gloves off. Ali later said that "Frazier quit just before I did. I didn't think I could fight any more".

41 rounds they fought together, and it ended with both of them fighting each other to a standstill. Two of January's children, locked together in a combat that in the end,neither one could really win. Both of them Olympic Gold medal winners,both of them undefeated when they first met, both of them men who didn't understand what the word 'quit' meant.

No one who ever saw the two of them collide will ever forget it.

R.I.P.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!