By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
November 8, 2011
He comes out of another time in boxing and another time, certainly, at the Garden, Joe Frazier does, out of those two fights there with Muhammad Ali in the 1970s when the place was as alive with the magic of the two men and the differences between them as the Garden ever was for boxing. It was the left hook and the heart of Smokin’ Joe Frazier against the speed and dazzling style of Muhammad Ali and what happened between them, first in the New York fights and then finally in Manila, was something that is a high, permanent place of American sports history.
Joe Frazier is dead now of liver cancer and so that means Ali, diminished himself over time by illness, has managed to outlast him in the end, and once more. But they were joined again Monday night with the news of Frazier’s passing the way they were joined by those three fights, by the perfect left hook that Joe Frazier hit Ali with in the 15th round of the first fight and then the decision Ali won in Ali-Frazier II at the Garden in 1974, the first big fight I ever saw there, Ali winning that time by staying away from that left hook and spending so much of the night draped all over Joe Frazier.
And of course there was Manila, when one of the true and lasting gentlemen of the sport, Eddie Futch, would not let Frazier go back out for the 15th round, when he signaled to the referee, Carlos Padilla, that the fight was over, that Futch’s man had no more to give, after having given everything.
“I want him, boss,” Frazier said to Futch, even though by then he could barely see.
And Eddie Futch, in a moment that will live forever the way Ali vs. Frazier will live forever, said to Frazier, “It’s all over. No one will forget what you did here today.”
This was such a hard, complicated relationship, the one between these two men. Ali said things about Frazier that he should not have said, because in his prime Ali always said so much about everything and sometimes too much. But when you fight three long, hard fights the way these two men did, you do not just see the punches thrown, you see into the heart of the other man. And Ali knew better than the world did what he had seen from Joe Frazier from New York to Manila, what he saw in the fight that will always be known in legend as the Thrilla in Manila.
Ali would say, and famously, that that fight was as close to dying as he had ever been, and that Frazier quit right before he did. Finally he said when it was over, in a way that only Muhammad Ali could say, that Frazier was the greatest fighter of all time, “next to me.”
A long time after that, I was in Philadelphia with Frazier, at his gym, and he talked about the heart and strength of Ali, talked about the first fight in the Garden, when the left hook Frazier threw in the 15th round would not just have put any man down — the way it put down Ali that night, in a prizefight as anticipated as any the Garden or the city had ever seen — but kept him down.
Only Ali got up. Somehow he got up from as ferocious a left hook as anybody had ever thrown, and somehow he finished the fight, which Frazier won by decision. And by the way? Later there were smart people who thought Frazier should have won a close decision in Ali-Frazier II.
“You don’t find out about a man from what puts him down,” Frazier said that day in Philly, “you find out about him by what he gets back up from.”
He always looked so much smaller than Ali, and so much smaller than George Foreman, against whom Frazier had no chance. But you were never surprised how much bigger Frazier fought at his best. Ali was so much better with style and with the words and with his movie-star looks and star power as immense as any great American sports star has ever had.
But the majesty of Frazier was that he just kept ducking and moving in, just kept coming, looking to throw the one great left hook that could put you down even if it could not keep you down. He kept coming until the night for which he will always be remembered best, the one in Manila when Eddie Futch, bless his own great heart and boxing soul, would not let him go out for the 15th round.
So they had fought 41 rounds between them in the end, the 15 rounds in their first fight in the Garden in March of 1971, what was called the Fight of the Century at the time, and then the 12 rounds of a non-title bout in the second fight, and finally the 14 rounds in Manila, what really did become one of the fights of the century, one that will be always be remembered with anything the sport has seen, the best of the sport and these two men.
“I always knew who the real champ was,” Joe Frazier said.
He lost four fights in his life, two to Foreman and two to Ali. He came out of South Carolina and Police Athletic League gyms in Philadelphia and a gold medal in the ’64 Olympics in Tokyo and made himself into a lasting name of his sport, and American sports. Now he is gone to cancer, at 67.
“Lawdy, Lawdy, he’s great,” Frazier said to the great boxing writer Mark Kram of Ali when that fight in Manila was over. So was Joe Frazier. Lawdy, Lawdy, so was he.
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