By Ismael AbduSalaam

Joe Frazier was laid to rest yesterday in Philadelphia in the presence of family, friends, colleagues and former enemies. It was the closing chapter to the remarkable life and death of a man that decades past once reigned as the heavyweight champion of the world. As with any person of notable achievement dies, the questions soon come around to what made them great. The answer, particularly with athletes, usually revolves around things such as work ethic. In the case of Joe Frazier, his career and life was defined by the power of his will in the face of all odds.On the night of his greatest professional achievement, March 8, 1971, Joe Frazier was facing an opponent that on paper had big physical and mental advantages. Muhammad Ali had much faster hands and feet. Frazier was at a significant height and reach advantage, which would make him susceptible to stinging counters as he tried to get on the inside. Ali’s mouth had helped transform an exciting boxing rivalry to a contentious racial and political battle that unfairly cast Frazier as a traitor to his race and the face of an oppressive government. And unknowingly at the time, Frazier was suffering from career-threatening hyper-tension.

The early rounds played out Ali’s advantages. Frazier was repeatedly clipped with straight right hands and cuffed with left hooks as he tried, mostly in vain, to make it an inside fight. When he did land, Ali would snicker and shake his head at Frazier’s power.

But as the battle progressed into the middle rounds, something that was unquantifiable on paper predictions began to manifest; Joe Frazier’s heart. Smokin’ Joe was walking through Ali punches and violently snapping the Greatest’s head to grotesque angles with left hooks. Ali’s speed had become a non-factor; Frazier’s crouch was allowing him to slip combinations and get inside with digging hooks to the body. The more physically gifted fighter was beginning to wilt to his foe’s insurmountable will.

The ninth round made it clear where the fight was headed. Ali rallied in a round he was losing with a series of vicious left hands punctuated by a right cross that marked one of the rare instances that Joe Frazier took a backwards step. And yet, by the rounds conclusion, Frazier was back in Ali’s chest, ripping hooks and forcing the Greatest to hold on. Smokin’ Joe would go on to punctuate that night with a near knockout in the 11th and an iconic 15th round knockdown to seal the victory.

It’s telling that the greatest victory achieved in a boxing ring came not to the more physically talented fighter. The Sweet Science comes down to whose spirit wants it more. Whose spirit refuses to yield in the face of pain and even death? It was Joe Frazier’s indomitable will that made him fight and run off white racists in his native Beaufort, South Carolina. It gave him the courage to venture alone, as a teenager, to Philadelphia in 1960 on the dream of becoming a professional boxer. It was his will that made a short, not particularly fast, essentially one-handed fighter develop that one hand, the left hook, into one of the most deadly blows in boxing history.

His will made him refuse to stay down after six hard knockdowns to George Foreman in ’73. It pushed Frazier through blindness and a bad beating from Ali in the Thrilla in Manila until Smokin’ Joe’s corner stepped in. And The Fight of the Century stands as the magnum opus of Joe Frazier’s will.
Death will come for us all, as it did for Joe Frazier last week. It takes the flesh, but never the legacy. And that legacy is not just of the man who whooped the Butterfly. it’s of the man who first whooped his own insecurities and limitations. Rest in peace, Smokin’ Joe.

Ismael AbduSalaam is the creator of
Beats, Boxing and Mayhem

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