How long did frazier

It was a joke. I thought he was just some Hollywood clown. I penciled it out. Judge [Roy] Hofheinz in Houston — we had done some fights together — called and said he could come up with the money. I told him not to worry. I call it sneaky vitriol. People choosing sides. To whites, Frazier was the good Black man. Ali was the favorite of younger people, the more liberal ones.

And get it! I think Perenchio died a billionaire. Nothing else even comes close. He saw a crowd of celebrities, much more than usual for a big fight. People had clear rooting agendas. The older white people were for Frazier, the younger people and most Black people for Ali. To the Frazier backers, their fighter was a hard worker who did his job and kept his mouth shut, while Ali was a draft dodger and a loudmouth, anti-war extremist.

The crowd represented racism, anger, irrationality and even hate. By , Tim Ryan had advanced past the fuzzy-faced, new-kid reporter phase. He was asked to do a radio play-by-play of Ali-Frazier. His boxing experience had been limited to occasional fights on Mutual Radio. Perenchio and Cooke had decided to protect their close-circuit telecasts however possible. One way was to shut out radio. At the last minute, New Zealand asked for a broadcast. Then, just days before the fight, it was discovered that Armed Forces Radio had no broadcast.

It had been traditional that soldiers abroad would get broadcasts of major fights. Perenchio and Cooke had missed that nuance and said no. When the potential controversy started to be understood, the idea was floated that Armed Forces Radio could piggyback onto the only English broadcast going out — to New Zealand.

Jerry Izenberg, reporter recalling an interaction Joe Frazier had with kid after the fight. To whites, Frazier was the good [Black man]. They fought for 15 rounds, furiously at times, with Frazier moving forward in a crouch throwing big left hooks while Ali shot out fast jabs and right hands to counter him coming in.

The two talked as well as they fought, trading taunts with left hooks and right hands. At one point referee Arthur Mercante warned them to stop talking so much, though neither listened. His punches were sharp even if he was a half-step slower, and he had no trouble finding the smaller target in front of him.

But Frazier kept pressing ahead, and the left hook began landing more regularly, especially in the 11th when Ali was knocked backward with one and took a beating the rest of the round.

Still, Ali had won the 14th round and seemed to be rallying when Frazier suddenly unleashed his best left hook in a night filled with them. Shockingly, Ali was on the canvas. He managed somehow to get up and finish the round and the fight — but his fate that night had been decided. Frazier would win a unanimous decision mostly because he simply refused to lose. But while Frazier left the ring as the undisputed heavyweight champion, Ali emerged a winner, too.

He had fought magnificently and there was no shame in losing the way he did. The next day Ali met the press, speaking softly through his swollen jaw while lying on his bed at the Hotel New Yorker.

Frazier took the fight with a unanimous decision, delivering Ali his first professional defeat. The victory catapulted Frazier to full-fledged stardom and riches.

He purchased a acre farm not far from where he'd grown up and became the first African American since Reconstruction to speak in front of the South Carolina Legislature. In , Frazier, who'd lost his title the year before to George Foreman , stepped into the ring against Ali again.

This time it was Ali who came out victorious. Their final battle came in in the Philippines. Dubbed the Thrilla in Manila, it's considered the sport's greatest fight by some boxing historians. The match lasted 14 bruising rounds before Frazier, battling eyesight issues, was prevented from coming out for the final round by his trainer, Eddie Futch.

In , at the age of 32, Frazier retired. He briefly returned to the ring in , but quickly retired again, and for good, after just one fight. His post-boxing years saw him manage the career of his oldest son, Marvis, a heavyweight. Ali came out victorious. He and his wife Florence Smith divorced in Frazier remained with his longtime girlfriend of forty years, Denise Menz, until his death.

It was that relentlessness -- the near-total abandonment of duck-and-cover, the philosophy that one must absorb punishment before one can properly distribute it -- that defined Frazier's boxing career and has defined his life. It carried him to an Olympic gold medal and to the heavyweight championship of the world. And it was that relentlessness that made him the perfect foil for his nemesis, Muhammad Ali.

Discussing Frazier's boxing career without bringing up Ali is like talking about Neil Armstrong without mentioning the moon. The two are forever linked, thanks to their three timeless bouts -- Frazier won only the first, and the third was a near-death experience for both of them -- the contrasting styles with which they fought, and the vitriol they hurled at each other for so long.

For years, Frazier has voiced his bitterness over the way Ali had insulted him, over how Ali had called him "ugly," "a gorilla," and an "Uncle Tom. These are men who, like it or not, have become prisoners of each other and those three nights. Born on Jan. The Fraziers had a 12th child, David, who died of diphtheria at nine months old. Rubin was a sharecropper, who, according to Frazier's autobiography, "Smokin' Joe," ran a moonshine still and grew "this musk, which I figure now must've been tobacco or marijuana.

By , Joe was on his own, and that year, at 15, he moved to New York to live with an older brother, Tommy, and Tommy's wife, Ollie. Did it ever.