Great fighters are supposed to have something called “heart,”
but it’s not easy to understand where it comes from or what its
limits are. In
Joe Frazier’s case, it came from a rural upbringing replete
with bootleg whiskey, one-armed fathers, and enough poverty and
mysticism to keep a stable of Delta bluesmen busy. As for limits,
no man found his inside a boxing ring. In his first fight against
Muhammad Ali, he was tattooed with so many punches that it was a
wonder he was still standing, let alone winning. By the middle
rounds, with Frazier still there in front of him, even returning
his taunts, what must have gone through Ali’s mind? What must he
have thought in Manila four years later, when, after scarcely
missing him over the first three rounds, Ali saw Frazier came out
for the fourth round and begin stalking him, thudding those awful
Frazier left hooks into his kidneys? The temperature inside the
amphitheater in Quezon City, just outside the Philippine capital,
was well over 100 degrees by all accounts: spectators said they
were pouring sweat just sitting still. All the seats were filled
and so were many of the aisles. The place was a fire trap, sauna,
and torture factory rolled into one. The fighters’ gloves became
waterlogged and soggy, making sounds through the television I’d
never heard in a fight before and have never heard since.
Frazier went into those fights with Ali, his old friend
and confidant Dave Wolf said, prepared to put his life on the line
— and he did. He nearly died after the first one. He saw his blood
pressure spike to terrifying levels not long after his victory.
Doctors kept him on a sheet of ice for 24 hours as they tried to
stabilize him. He spent weeks in the hospital, a fact Ali wouldn’t
let him forget. Frazier also apparently waged most of his career
with a cataract in his left eye, meaning he was essentially a
one-eyed fighter — adding a profound dimension to his achievements
in the ring. In the third fight with Ali, Frazier eventually lost
the use of his one good eye, closed shut by Ali’s punches.
Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, decided to halt that fight before
the 15th and final round. But Frazier seemed prepared to give his
life in Manila.
What kind of man does this? Mark Kram wrote after the
first Ali fight that Frazier had fought with a “fortitude only
surpassed by men in war.” It’s true. But war has its reasons; what
is boxing’s excuse? Isn’t the sport, at its core, crazy? Probably.
But even if it is, that wouldn’t be sufficient to persuade people
not to watch, and in fact it might compel them to watch.
The Frazier obituaries have been heartening — generous
and even sometimes apologetic. Better late than never, but in life
Frazier never got the public embrace he deserved. In another era,
he might have been loved and admired, maybe even becoming an icon
on the order of Joe Louis. Frazier was another victim of the 1960s
and of the cultural madness that made a portion of the public
willing to accept assertions that on their face should have been
rejected as absurd. This mentality allowed, for a time, a virtual
whitewash of Ali’s serial assaults on a good man’s dignity. Now,
perhaps, the ledgers are balancing back just a bit. (Ali did have
his good points, though they’re hard to find in the Frazier
chapter.)
Frazier spent the last 15-20 years of his life unleashing
his rage at what Ali had done to him, even chillingly seeming to
take pleasure in Ali’s decrepit condition. “I’ll open up the
graveyard and bury his ass when the Lord chooses to take
him,” he wrote of Ali in his 1996 autobiography. Pain and
rage, however well-earned, rarely make for appealing company, and
Joe’s bitterness cost him dearly in public affection and commercial
opportunities, to say nothing of the costs to his own well-being.
The truth is, despite many good efforts to bring them together,
Frazier and Ali never really did make peace. And maybe that is the
way it had to be.
We wanted them to reconcile to expiate our own guilt for
the mayhem they had worked on one another and to obscure what we
all knew was true: that they had destroyed one another long ago,
body and soul, and we had thrilled to it. I don’t know if boxing
should exist or not. It’s a sport with enough moral challenges to
occupy a full-time ethicist. And I don’t know what it means that,
when I was young, instead of artists, thinkers, or statesmen, I
chose prizefighters for my heroes. What I do know is that in
choosing Joe Frazier as the foremost among them, I couldn’t have
picked a nobler exemplar. Rest in peace, champ.
