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Frazier's pain, anger remains years after trilogy

By Ron Borges
Special to ESPN.com
(Archive)

Updated: October 16, 2007

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Joe Frazier reflects on his life and boxing

Joe Frazier hasn't fought Muhammad Ali in 32 years but he spars with him every day.

They are both old men now, broken by difficult lives and too many years spent fighting for their paychecks. They have paid dearly for the prizes they won with the biggest price extracted from each by the other.

Although both would be diminished as fighters if they had never crossed paths, for Frazier neither time nor shared infirmities have softened his heart. He always has been a hard man and there is no harder place inside him than the spot still occupied by Ali. It's a large spot where the bruises remain even after all these years.

That's why there was always only one picture of boxing's greatest legend hanging in Frazier's Gym at 2917 North Broad St. in a rundown section of Philadelphia that few tourists visit. It was the one of Ali flat on his back, Frazier standing over him with both pain and triumph on his face.

That's how Frazier wants to be remembered -- in that moment after he sent Ali to the floor in Round 15, the final round of the first fight of their tragic trilogy. The rest he'd just as soon forget. Or rewrite.

Ali taunted and tortured Frazier outside the ring far more than he did inside it, and he did a lot of damage inside it to Frazier. He marginalized him in a way no one else could have, not only demeaning and ridiculing him but also transforming him into something he was not. The latter has been, it seems, what Smokin' Joe has never been able to forget. Or forgive.

At times there have been words of reconciliation between the two. But anyone who watched one night in Las Vegas a few years ago as George Foreman and Larry Holmes quietly took turns keeping themselves between an ever-pacing Frazier and his old and infirm nemesis, Ali, at a function called to celebrate them and heavyweight boxing's greatest living champions, understood that the river of darkness ran deep inside Frazier. And the candle still burned hot.

He'd made that clear in 1996 at the Olympics in Atlanta when he was beside himself after learning Ali would be lighting the Olympic flame. Once it was done he told a small gaggle of reporters, "I should have been picked. I wish Ali had fallen into [the flame]. If I had the chance, I'd have pushed him in."

That same week, Frazier was signing autographs along with a group of other top American Olympians selected by the United States Olympic Committee as among the best the country had ever produced. A woman and her young son approached and asked Frazier what medal he'd won. When he told her "boxing," she asked if he'd ever fought Ali. That's when the dark clouds began to brew.

He said he had and she asked if he'd beaten him. He said he did but such is the depth of his feelings on the subject of Ali that he could not stop there. He suggested she look at the physically broken man Ali is today and understand who made him that way.

Muhaammad Ali and Joe Frazier

John Shearer/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Muhammad Ali, left, may have won the mental battle prior to his fight with Joe Frazier in 1971, but Frazier beat Ali in the ring.
That is a theme Frazier has visited many times, including in the late Mark Kram's powerful book on the two entitled "Ghosts of Manila." Kram eloquently described what Ali means to Frazier when he wrote, "Nearly the end of the century and Muhammad Ali still swims inside of Joe Frazier like a determined bacillus … at times his contempt [for Ali] just lay there hissing."

A bacillus, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is a chain of bacteria. Who but Frazier would think of Ali in that way? Who but a man still deeply stung by the insults Ali threw at him so long ago, back in 1970, 1974 and 1975, could feel such hatred more than 30 years since either raised his hand to the other?

Kram also tells of Frazier claiming he'd made Ali what he is today. When the old writer asked the old fighter if he was referring to his old opponent's long battle with Parkinson's, Frazier snapped, "I made him what he is. Take it any way you want."

It's been said that Frazier has diminished both himself and his selling power by his very public hatred of his old and now revered rival. While the latter might be true the former is not. Not, at least, if one understands things from Frazier's point of view.

Ali has always said when he called Frazier a "gorilla" and when he portrayed him as an ignorant tool and, worse, "an Uncle Tom," it was all just to sell tickets. Just a marketing scheme, he has said many times. A joke. But Frazier knows what the world long ago forgot. He knows the truth.

There was no marketing scheme necessary when they first fought at Madison Square Garden in 1970. Ali, not long removed from the unfair exile imposed upon him by a government afraid of his politics and his growing social power, was a giant. He was far larger than the sport. Frazier, meanwhile, was the recognized, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, a pain machine feared by everyone. When they met, it was not a fight. It was a social and societal event, a watershed moment. It needed no more hype.

While they were different fighters in 1974 and 1975 and their skills had begun to slip, their legend had only grown, as had their symbiotic relationship. The need to insult Frazier, to make a clown of a barely educated gladiator to sell tickets, is nonsense. Today's world might not remember that, or simply might not want to remember because there was been much editing of this portion of Ali's mostly noble life, but Frazier remembers.

"I hated Ali," Frazier told writer Thomas Hauser for his seminal biography, "Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times." "God might not like me talking that way, but it's in my heart. I hated that man … How would you feel if your kids came home from school crying because everyone was calling their daddy a gorilla? … 20 years I been fighting Ali, and I still want to take him apart piece by piece and send him back to Jesus.

"I don't like him but I got to say, in the ring he was a man … He shook me in Manila; he won. But I sent him home worse than he came. Look at him now. He's damaged goods. I know it; you know it. Everyone knows it … He was always making fun of me. I'm the dummy; I'm the one getting hit in the head. Tell me now; him or me; which one talks worse now?"

While those words and others that have followed, both in Atlanta and well after, make clear the depth of the pain Frazier feels when he thinks of Ali. Some still wonder why. Certainly what they did to each other in the ring was an accepted part of their brutal business. Prize fighters come to the arena with one aim in mind -- to concuss their opponent. No one felt that way more than Frazier and he understood that what flowed from that could be only one thing -- pain and agony.

He didn't resent that. Never has. He probably could have even found a way to accept losing two of their three fights had other things been different. He was, after all, a guy who used to slip Ali a few hundred during his years of exile when no one was looking. He was the guy who appeared for him at several hearings and pre-arranged publicity stunts to keep his name alive as Ali was trying to be reinstated. He was the guy who did what he could to help Ali when he was down, only to be kicked by him when he got up.

That's what Frazier can't forgive. That and the fact that Ali took it too far.

"Before we fought, the words hurt more than the punches," Frazier said in Hauser's book on Ali. "Now he says he did it to help the gate but the gate didn't have nothing to do with it. We had our guarantees -- $2.5 million each … Calling me an Uncle Tom; calling me the white man's champion -- all that was phoniness to turn people against me."

Ali v Frazier

Keystone/Getty Images

Joe Frazier's war with Muhammad Ali, left, was dubbed the "Fight of the Century."
Fight manager and writer Dave Wolf, who would later handle Ray Mancini and author a landmark book called "Foul!" on basketball player Connie Hawkins, was a part of Frazier's camp back then and he recalls, "I'm sure Ali has forgotten most of what he did … [but] … there were moments when Joe was so hurt and which he remembers vividly, even now."

Even all these long years later Frazier, a man who willingly accepted pain for the chance to inflict it, can't forget the ache of 35-year-old insults because they cut too deep. It hurts Frazier to acknowledge that he would not be remembered the way he is without those three nights of struggle with Ali. It hurts because too many people close to him were bruised not by what happened in the ring between them, but by what happened before them.

That is a pain that time cannot erase. At least not yet. And so Joe Frazier fights on, sparring with the ghost of a legend he once put on his back but never has been able to subdue.

Ron Borges, who has won numerous Boxing Writers Association of America awards, covers boxing for HBO.com and for Boxing Monthly.

I guess I really can't blame him, Frazier actually fought for Ali so he could be reinstated, only to have Ali completely demoralize him all for the sake of a title.

Ali was a salesman and a good one. IMO he was better at selling himself than he was at boxing....yeah I know. He was the Chad Johnson/Terrel Owens of the boxing world.

He sold boxing in general. You can bet your arse if Ali wasn't involved, Frazier's name wouldn't be instantly recognized by everyone like it is now. Ali earned him millions. He should be grateful, not a whining, festering, bitter old man. Frazier acts like Ali ruined his legacy when in fact he created it. Most people remember Ali-Frazier I as much as they remember the Thrilla.

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He'd made that clear in 1996 at the Olympics in Atlanta when he was beside himself after learning Ali would be lighting the Olympic flame. Once it was done he told a small gaggle of reporters, "I should have been picked. I wish Ali had fallen into [the flame]. If I had the chance, I'd have pushed him in."

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I have to admit that I found it disgraceful that Ali was able to light the torch, considering he refused to fight for this country.

I am not an Ali fan but as for not fighting for this country ? Can't fault him at all and in fact I think it took a ton of sand to go through what he went through just to stand by his principals . Look at the time Ali grew up in and ask yourself if you would be willing to put your life on the line for a country where , in his youth , he wasn't considered an equal part of that country . Ali shook things up and "the man " didn't like that so much but instead of faltering he made a career out of his flamboyant speech and actions. Took lemons and made lemonaid but having said that I still think his is the single most overhyped boxer of all time. JMHO

As for Ali makinf Frazier well the reverse could be said also. I mean without the competition he had , Frazier , Foreman, Quarry etc... he would be like Mike Tyson . By that I mean he would have been considered the best by some but without quality opposition that would forever be in doubt . By the way in both of their primes Tyson would have DESTROYED Ali within 3 rounds rope a dope be damned.

So Lennox Lewis would dismantle Ali as well?

In the prime of both fighters careers ?? I doubt it . Now we are talking about a 19 - 23 year old Tyson not the shell that fought Lewis , who by the way was dominated by a crazy crackhead named Oliver McCall . Then again maybe Lewis had the same problem as Tyson in the competition quagmire . Boxing is dead and greed killed it .

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and ask yourself if you would be willing to put your life on the line for a country where , in his youth , he wasn't considered an equal part of that country .

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I can't say I totally disagree with that, but he certainly didn't have a problem representing that country for the attention that lighting the flame gave him. Again, just my opinion. No doubt the man was a great fighter, but I wonder who'd win if they could all fight in their primes - Ali, Tyson, Louis, Marciano, etc. Great debate with no concrete way to find the answer.

Well, right off the top you can throw out the Rock.. He was an o.k. fighter but nowhere in the neighborhood of talent that the others had . Perhaps the same could be said of Louis also because as tough as they were the evolution of atheletes left them behind. It is a useless argument but it is fun to speculate I'll admit.

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IMO Ali was the greatest heavyweight "boxer" ever. There may have been a couple better heavyweight "fighters".

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You know....I don't know if there is any boxer that could have beaten Cassius Clay on the day he beat Sonny Liston. You line all the greats up and I don't think a single one of them could have beaten that Cassius Clay....That I believe was the pinnacle of Ali's talent. Because after that he was out for several years and did great and amazing things....But in all of his fights after that one...I don't think he was as good as he was that night. He was a Baaaaaaaad Man...