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[punching speed bag rhythmically]
[silence falls]
Yeah.
The highlight of my career?
Being born in the world.
["Back Burner" by Stuart Moore plays]
[♪♪♪]
Joe Frazier made aggressive fighting an art form.
When Frazier throws punches, he wants to kill you.
[♪♪♪]
[Dr. Todd Boyd] He grew up in South Carolina.
They didn't have any money,
they weren't educated,
but he was especially well-spoken with his hands.
[Burt Watson] He was relentless.
There was a lot of punches,
he'd take one to give two,
but you had to get inside to give one.
Joe was a very proud man.
He never kissed anybody's ass.
He didn't want to be a political symbol.
[Joe] I speak from my heart. You know I mean?
The way I see things and the way I feel.
Joe loved cars, fighting, women, and music.
Music, to Joe Frazier, was his sanity.
That's what you saw when you saw Joe perform.
Joe Frazier was a warrior, man.
Without Joe Frazier, there wouldn't have been no Ali.
I'm the champ. You ain't! You nothing!
That kind of rivalry,
we'll never see something like that again.
Three of the biggest fights in history.
it's no coincidence.
[♪♪♪]
There was another side to Joe.
He had a big heart. Do anything for you.
If a car's broken down,
Joe Frazier will stop every time.
It's just in his DNA to help.
White America always thought Joe Frazier
was this blue-collar working man,
but man, he was the king of swag.
[Watson] No one ever did get Joe Frazier right.
No one ever got the real Joe Frazier.
[♪♪♪]
[traffic noise]
How we doing there, guys?
Uh, rolling.
[♪♪♪]
[cheering and shouting]
Ali-Frazier,
the Fight of the Century, March 8th, 1971,
transcended the sport of boxing
and entered into this realm
of America at the highest order.
Everybody was talking about Ali and Frazier.
It was the beginning of the mega-fight era.
Frazier-Ali! It was polarizing.
He's the Uncle Tom.
The guy talked from the side of his mouth.
It was the bull and the matador.
He's the other-type Negro!
Uh, he's a phony.
Who do you root for? And why?
Frazier's going to win!
It's a hell of a way
to present one's society to the world,
because, you know, that's what it meant.
Every punch that was thrown had a subtext behind it.
Totally different styles.
The one area
where they were very similar in the ring
was that they were both
mean, nasty, S.O.B. fighters.
Joe Frazier was prepared to die in that ring that night.
Joe came out of ugly origins,
and boxing became his way out.
[match bell rings]
[announcer] Round one!
[horse whinnying]
[♪♪♪]
[Joe] I was born and raised in Beaufort, South Carolina,
and my original home is the South.
[Boyd] Joe's family, they were sharecroppers.
It's not intellectual.
It's hard living.
[♪♪♪]
It was slow, and it was hot.
Bugs everywhere.
It was survival.
Joe Frazier has had to face adversity,
not from the moment he was born,
but from the moment he was conceived.
He was in his mother's stomach,
she was pregnant with him,
when his dad had an altercation
in which he was shot in his left arm by a friend.
[gunshot echoes]
Shot off by, like, a jealous husband of somebody
that Rubin might've been doing the wrong thing with,
or "the wild thing," as Joe would say.
His mom was shot in the same incident.
Could've killed Joe Frazier.
[infant crying]
Joe Frazier didn't grow up in Beverly Hills.
1944 in rural South Carolina
is really not that far removed from the end of slavery.
His earliest memory would be sitting on his father's knee
and his father would, would call him "Billy Boy,"
and, you know, he was known to be, like, a daddy's boy,
and he was basically his father's shadow.
And being his dad's favorite,
Joe had to become his dad's left arm.
[Bernstein] The whole setting of that story,
the drama,
and how it ultimately came full circle
with him using the left arm that his father never had,
and become world famous,
was really extraordinary, and in a way, poetic.
[Joe] Back in the country, they had, like,
maybe one or two televisions, you know?
Used to get around those, to watch fights at the time.
[crowd cheering]
And you had boxing on TV several times a week.
Everybody knew
who the Heavyweight Champion of the World was.
And there was, uh, Joe Louis
and Rocky Marciano,
Ezzard Charles,
Jersey Joe Walcott,
and my uncles and my aunts and my father
used to say, you know, "That kid, look at him.
Look at the body structure."
He said, "One of these days,
that boy gonna be a Joe Louis."
Chasing after a hog, and was told not to,
and fell and broke his arm.
[laughing]
They had no healthcare insurance.
They had no money to go to a hospital.
[laughing]
His mom and his dad
always said he was a fighter.
He had the bag when he was a kid,
that bag that he built with his own hands
and hung from a tree.
He filled it up with peat moss, corn cobs,
shoes, wood,
whatever he could put in there.
[Joe speaking]
That's where his power really came from.
The roots of his thoughts, and his gut feeling,
came from that time in his life,
what his mom and his dad put in him.
[Bernstein] Joe Frazier was able to come
from the most difficult beginnings
and get to a very lofty place in this world.
[Watson] Growing up in Beaufort, South Carolina,
there were hard times,
but when you actually lived in those times...
we really didn't know any better.
Joe got into a little bit of trouble
as he got a little older,
not older, much older, at 15.
Joe was, uh, 14, 15, worked on a farm.
This Black kid is being accosted by this white man.
[chuckling]
Joe had stuck up for this Black kid,
and, uh, the white man, um, decided
that, uh, he was going to, uh, beat Joe with his belt.
Joe said, being Joe,
"I wouldn't do that, man."
Joe's mom, um, said to him,
"Listen.
If you can't get along
with the white people here in Beaufort,
you better leave, 'cause, um...
that's not, it's not gonna end up good for you."
Joe was forced out of South Carolina,
but he never, ever held any grudge towards that.
His mom put him on a bus
with a couple of, uh, legs of fried chicken...
ho...
and he took the bus on his own from, uh, Beaufort to New York.
What a horrific childhood,
and what it took to get outta there.
[newsreel theme plays]
[newsreel announcer] This is a free land
in which we have a right to work anywhere.
Joe Frazier came to New York in 1959,
and moved in with his brother, Tommy.
They got to a little bit of trouble there!
I mean, they-they tried to start a little side hustle.
[newsreel] We call it "freedom of opportunity"...
[newsreel] ...and it means
there is a free market for our skills.
[Joe speaking]
[laughing]
He was married at 16 and had kids,
and he was acting like a grown man at that point.
During the day, you work at all kinds of jobs,
when you can find them.
Money's scarce, particularly when
yours and Florence's son Marvis comes along
in September of 1960.
I got married when I was real young.
He was working in a slaughterhouse.
He put on weight.
At the age of 'bout 16, I was about 230 pounds,
so I had a little problem of, you know,
of fitting up in clothes,
so therefore, I couldn't afford the clothes,
so I had to find somethin' to do to get that weight off,
and then I found out how to punch.
When I went in the gym,
they had about 12 heavyweights in there,
and by the time I left out, I was the only guy in the gym.
[Ralph Edwards] Fortunately,
you meet someone who sees potential in you.
Joe, your close friend and manager
since the beginning of your boxing career,
Mr. Yancey 'Yank' Durham.
You saw Joe's, uh, potential early, Yank?
[Durham] Yes. Joe was a dedicated boy.
He would, his determination was so great that I figured
that, uh, Joe would go all the way.
[Joe Hand Jr.] In a boxing gym,
trainers like to keep training sessions controlled,
but Yank Durham didn't let Joe do that.
He let him be
as ferocious and aggressive as he could possibly be.
Lot of people don't know, that, uh,
when I first started with him,
he thought he was the type of a fighter
that could move around the ring,
and I said, "Look, this is nonsense,
it's something we have to stop.
You're too short for a boxer.
You're a fighter, you have the power,
and you got to keep applying pressure on these fighters."
Felt like that relationship
was, uh, a father-son relationship.
And Joe relied completely on Yank Durham.
[newscaster] Frazier won 38 of 40 amateur fights,
grinding through all opposition
to three Golden Glove titles.
[announcer] Round three of the 1964 Olympic Trials
between heavyweights Buster Mathis and Joe Frazier.
Mathis is enormous! He weighs 300 pounds.
Joe lost to Buster Mathis in the Olympic trials,
but Buster broke his hand,
so Joe Frazier went to the Olympics.
[Joe speaking]
[laughing]
[♪♪♪]
He broke his hand in the semifinal,
and had to figure out a way to fight in that final
with that broken hand!
Joe had his own medication.
[Joe Hand Sr.] Dolly, his mother,
she was just a beauty.
Corn-cob pipe, sitting on a front porch.
Dolly would eat dirt every day with a spoon.
She would go out,
and then find some of this peat soil stuff,
and eat it,
and I asked Joe what it was about,
and he said, "That's where you get the goodness."
You know, she wanted the minerals from the earth.
Joe Frazier was from Gullah culture.
In the Gullah culture and tradition,
we were spiritually into the church,
but at the same time, being into root,
and witches, spirits.
You couldn't go to a doctor,
so Joe always concocted things.
They came from his childhood,
the most obscure things you could imagine
to fix something.
Whether it was the flu,
whether his back was hurting, arthritis...
Sometimes he'd write on the jar what it was.
He might just put, "hair growing" there.
If you've got bad hands from hitting the bags,
"Come here, son, let me put some of this stuff on there."
Joe used to take a big mayonnaise jar
and fill it with liquor and orange peels and rock candy,
and have it sit and marinate for about two or three months,
and shake it up,
and every time we'd go someplace,
he would take some of that,
and that would be his medication,
for whatever ailed him.
His big thing was Westley's Tire Cleaner.
It was a special cleaner
that they had for the limousine company,
for the white walls,
so he'd spray it on a toothbrush
and then brush his teeth with it.
Gargle something,
maybe Courvoisier, maybe lemon juice.
In his mind, he was, like,
"Hey, if it's gonna make the tires white,
it'll make my teeth white." [laughing]
[Bernstein] Joe Frazier made the most of his opportunity
in 1964.
He was going to get the job done, no matter what.
Fighters have, many times,
fought with injuries that they sustained during a fight,
but it's very rare
that somebody goes into a fight with that kind of injury.
It's emblematic of Frazier.
Joe Frazier, who was concealing a broken thumb,
won a gold medal.
[Slone] Joe was very patriotic.
He was the only American to win it,
and he was so, so proud of that.
[Florence Frazier] In 1964,
when Joe came back from the Olympics,
things was awful hard for Joe and myself.
Look, he was a guy with a bad hand.
Wasn't particularly verbal.
Joe Frazier was country, you know,
and Joe didn't have the wordplay to deny this.
He was a reflection of those country roots.
An Olympic gold medal
was a very different phenomenon, economically,
in those days,
and at that point,
there was no way of knowing
that hwas going to become the fighter that he became.
Well, I done spent most of the...
most of our savings to, to buy, uh, food for the kids,
and pay the bills and rent, and everything.
His hand was broke and he couldn't work,
and I had the children to care for,
I couldn't work, so...
we were just sort of stuck.
He had shrapnel in his eye from the speed bag,
a little sliver of steel that cut into his eye's retina.
It made him 80% blind in one eye,
and he fought his whole career that way.
Yank, you told Dr. Gray
that you thought it would take at least $5,000
to get Joe launched on a professional fight career.
[Durham] That's true. I sit and talk with Dr. Gray,
and I asked him about a co-operation,
so he talked to various people,
and we got the corporation together,
that's where we are today.
[interviewer] Mr. Wright,
how and why was Cloverlay formed?
[Bruce Wright] Dr. Baldwin had asked me
to give him a method of sponsoring a prizefighter.
How did you get involved with Cloverlay?
I read about it in the newspaper,
and I called Dr. Baldwin
regarding a purchase of a share.
My dad showed up at the next meeting
with 500 hours,
and now he was
one of the founding guys of Cloverlay.
[Wright] We guaranteed Joe $100 a week for three years,
and this was before any earnings had come in.
[♪♪♪]
Cloverlay really looked out for Joe Frazier.
[interviewer] Isn't it kind of unusual for a woman
to be part owner of a boxer?
Yes, that's what made it so thrilling.
[♪♪♪]
They were guiding Joe's career.
They didn't want to exploit Joe,
they wanted to see that Joe was fairly treated.
[Joe] It's a real good feeling, you know,
that you really got people like that behind ya,
and, uh, they're wonderful people to be with.
You could kind of brag to your neighbor,
to your boss or coworkers, that you owned a fighter.
They would sell these shares of stock,
and they were $250.
The Joe Frazier/Cloverlay story became popular.
As time went by, they increased in value
to, what I remember someone saying,
like, almost $14,000 a share.
You think it was a good investment?
Very good. I have no complaints.
I was rooting for Joe Frazier, who I loved as a boxing fan.
I loved watching him run through the Heavyweight Division.
[announcer] Frazier was the only American
to win a gold medal in the 1964 Olympic Boxing.
And Frazier is down!
[crowd cheering]
At 11 and 0,
he faced a very tough fighter in Oscar Bonavena,
a South American fighter who had power in both hands,
and because of the style Frazier fought,
it was two trucks coming together.
Bonavena is probably the stronger of the two,
and has fought the more experienced opponents.
Frazier down again!
There was a three-knockdown rule in effect,
so his career at that point
could have been short-circuited.
Yank Durham was furious.
Joe had gotten sloppy.
He had started to believe that he couldn't be hurt.
"I lay hands on them and they fall."
[crowd cheering]
[announcer] And there it is, the final bell!
That was a real crucible for him early in his career,
but still won a decision.
But you came on to win, I wanna congratulate you,
you're still undefeated,
and you're certainly a wonderful prospect.
One of these days,
we hope to have you in a title fight.
Thank you very much. Everybody!
Thank you very much, Joe Frazier.
Thank you!
The man to beat me hasn't been born yet.
[♪♪♪]
I'm the Heavyweight Champ of the World,
and I don't have to talk no more and say "I'm the greatest,"
because people tell me I'm the greatest.
I am the greatest. I am the king.
I'll be champion,
and I can stay in the ring ten more years
easy, I figure.
So you're not prepared to discuss your feelings
about the Vietnam War?
Mm-mm.
[reporter] World Heavyweight Champion Cassius Clay
refused to take the Oath of Induction into the Army.
The Black Muslim fighter, who's also known as Muhammad Ali,
was immediately stripped of his title
by the World Boxing Association.
My intention is to box, to win a clean fight,
but in war,
the intention is to kill, kill, kill, kill,
and continue killing innocent people!
Muhammad Ali refusing induction into the United States Army
during the height of the war
had enormous sociological and political impact.
Muhammad Ali was prohibited from fighting,
and Madison Square Garden said
that New York State would recognize a championship fight
between Joe Frazier and Buster Mathis.
Even the fighters themselves know
that they cannot be considered world champions
until they've fought Muhammad Ali.
What are your feelings about the demonstration
against the fight?
Don't know anything about it.
Got the fight on my mind.
I get out there and I go to work,
and as long as Mathis wanna be there and be smoked on,
I'm gonna smoke him.
[♪♪♪]
Even before I turned professional,
I'd seen him annihilate Buster Mathis.
He beat that boy, beat that boy,
and finally knocked him out.
From that point on,
everyone was afraid of the small guy.
Frazier wasn't that big.
He got the maximum out of his physical abilities,
fighting, you know, the best of competition,
Eddie Machen,
George Chuvalo,
and Oscar Bonavena twice.
[Hand Jr.] The second Oscar Bonavena fight,
I was ten years old.
Joe's son, Marvis, and I were around the same age,
and we were pretty good friends.
My dad, of course, put us at ringside.
I remember it being, like, kind of a brutal fight.
[Hand Jr.] After the fight was over,
they rushed Marvis and I back into Joe's dressing room,
and I see Oscar Bonavena walk in,
and Bonavena did not have his eyes open,
'cause they were swollen shut, at that point,
and somebody had to lift his arm
to put it into Joe's, and to shake his hand.
The brutality of that sport struck me that night, for sure,
and it, and it doesn't leave you.
It's a brutal, brutal sport.
Tomorrow night, Joe fights Jimmy Ellis
for the World Heavyweight Championship
at Madison Square Garden.
Music was what he, he enjoyed doing,
and people let him do it.
But right now, here he is with The Knockouts,
singing "Knock on Wood."
[match bell dings]
[crowd screaming]
[♪♪♪]
♪ I don't want to lose ♪
♪ This good thing, baby ♪
♪ That I got ♪
♪ If I do... ♪
To go on The Ed Sullivan Show
before the day he's gonna fight Jimmy Ellis...
Live! And it was live back then!
...he's supposed to be resting.
I mean, this guy was, like, made of concrete.
♪ I wonder Do you feel it, baby? ♪
♪ Oww! ♪
♪ I wonder, do you feel it? ♪
♪ Knock on wood ♪
Not only was he doing a good job on Ed Sullivan,
he walks in the ring
and does his day job extremely well.
[announcer] Champion Joe Frazier takes on Jimmy Ellis.
The bob-and-weave style was staying low...
like the Henry Armstrongs, the Tysons of the world.
That's my whole trick about fighting,
you know what I mean?
Stay close on a man, and take the room away from him.
There was a lot of nuance to what he did, you know?
He would use his jab on different levels,
then he'd double with the left hook,
so that'd surprise you.
When you perfect it,
it's very tough for any opponent to deal with.
Jimmy Ellis, to Joe,
was just too relentless and too powerful for him.
He goes out
and knocks Jimmy Ellis out in five rounds.
[sportscaster] Joe Frazier becomes
the undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World
in Madison Square Garden.
An elated...
[audience applauding]
[♪♪♪]
America in 1971
was divided over the war in Vietnam,
it was divided over racial issues.
Think about the assassination of Malcolm X,
Martin Luther King,
Robert Kennedy,
and, of course,
Muhammad Ali's three-and-a-half-year exile.
[♪♪♪]
Black people got to the point
where they couldn't take it no more.
To make some people understand sometimes
you have to use bottles and bricks.
You may not intend on it, you don't wanna use it,
but then again, you just have to.
[Hauser] Muhammad Ali and Joe
really became surrogates for that culture war,
Muhammad willingly, Joe unwillingly.
When it came to the politics, and the wars and stuff,
he said, "I'm not qualified to make a judgment on that."
For Joe Frazier to be a champion,
he's gotta beat me.
There were times during Ali's exile
when they were quite friendly.
Before he had his title, uh, stripped from him,
I had a lot of respect for him.
Joe was helpful to Ali in different ways.
You, Joe Frazier!
I want my bout with y'all!
Ali was angry.
He'd been stripped of his title.
He was being treated by many Americans
as an object of scorn.
Joe said to me,
"This scam booger has got my money in his pocket,
and he's talkin' bad about me."
The whole time, going back, he said,
"Yeah, I was talking to him in the car,
but I was thinking of how
I'm gonna kill him in the ring legally."
[chuckling]
When the white man took his title
and denied him a chance to do anything to make a living,
Joe Frazier stood up.
He came to the plate.
The main thing, we were responsible
for him to get half of the purse,
and after he got this money, and got a little foothold,
you know what I mean,
he tried to do everything and say everything
to put me down.
[Watson] It was 2.5 million each
that they got for that fight.
That was the biggest sports payoff
that an athlete got in the history of sports.
It's the biggest fight, because for the first time,
you've had a witty, quick, fast-talking heavyweight champ.
When the most of them ask him a question,
"How do you feel, champ?"
[speaking in gibberish]
I think a lot of Black people hear Ali saying,
"In addition to everything else,
you're a country boy, you're a farm boy.
If you want to really get deep, you know,
you're a field slave."
[continuing in gibberish]
Ali called him stupid, called him ignorant,
called him "Uncle Tom,"
'cause he knew Frazier was sensitive to that,
saying, "The white man is controlling you."
'Cause he's the Uncle Tom.
He told me, "Look, this guy keeps calling me Uncle Tom,"
and he said, "I don't want my wife thinking
that I'm peeping in windows."
He actually thought
he was calling him a peeping Tom.
He didn't know what an Uncle Tom was.
He's the other-type Negro.
He's not like me.
[Hauser] It was damaging to Joe,
and it also made that demeaning treatment
of a certain kind of Black person
acceptable,
which it shouldn't have been.
He's a brother.
One day, he might be like me,
but as of now, he works for the enemy.
Ali had tried to paint Joe Frazier as an Uncle Tom,
and somebody that wasn't a part of the solution
for Black people,
but was still part of the problem.
Why did he insist on calling me Cassius Clay,
when even the worst of the whites
recognize Muhammad Ali?
He keeps saying "Clay"!
"He's still Clay, he gon' stay Clay,
and, to me, he'll always be Clay."
Joe, for a long time, did call him Ali.
Uh, Ali made a statement the other day
that he wants, uh, six million,
It wasn't until Ali started disrespecting Joe
that Joe started calling him Clay.
I'm tired of all these Uncle Tom Negros!
You might be considered ignorant.
"Uncle Tom" is an entirely different thing.
[Hauser] It was very hurtful to his kids.
It's understandable
that Joe harbored the ill will that he did.
You talk from two sides of your mouth!
One to the white, and one to the Black!
Many people, as we all know, rooted for Muhammad Ali openly
because they saw him
as a symbol of the anti-war movement,
and wrongly, Joe Frazier was somehow cast
as this darling of the older white establishment
in the United States.
It's real difficult for someone to say in public,
"I hate that nigga, Muhammad Ali,"
so Joe serves the purpose
of camouflaging some of the racist ideas
of certain individuals.
Now, these people, they don't give a shit
about Joe Frazier.
The reality is,
they like Joe because he's fighting Ali.
Look at me, steady as a rock.
To Joe, it was a battle of, uh... really, of religion.
He felt like he was destined and called for that position.
Every person of note was at that fight,
whether they were in politics, entertainment, sports,
you name it.
We know it's a big fight when Frank Sinatra
is a photographer at ringside.
Yank Durham, his trainer, told him before the fight,
"You win this fight, your life's set up forever."
It was truly the fight of the century.
There hadn't been a fight like that,
with that much magnitude, that much interest,
in the history of boxing.
[Slone] Joe once told me that right before the fight with Ali,
he was in the dressing room, and he asked for some privacy,
and he claims somebody came into the room
and talked to him,
and, uh, he-he went out,
and he was upset with the security guy,
and he said, "Who was it?"
And the security guy assured him,
"Nobody's been in that room."
But Joe swore he got a visit from a man wearing white,
and he told me, he said, he said,
"Rich," he said, "When I was in that room,"
he said, uh, "God came to me."
He said, you know, like, "God, can I ask you a question?"
And God said, "Certainly."
He said, uh, "If I kill this motherfucker tonight,
will you forgive me?"
And he said, "The Lord said 'yes'."
[announcer] The undisputed
Heavyweight Championship of the World.
[commentator] Muhammad Ali in the red trunks.
Joe Frazier in the green trunks.
They appear very light.
[funky intro plays]
Frazier will try to bore in and catch this man.
I don't think that Muhammad was ready for the pressure.
[commentator] Joe keeps coming in!
As he was attacking,
there were many different nuances,
and all the while,
a big part of it was the head movement.
[commentator] Ooh, that must have hurt!
It is new for Muhammad not to be in control.
[commentator] If anybody is psyched here,
it is not Joe Frazier.
Look at that hook!
That night, that fight, Joe was possessed.
[commentator] Frazier's just laughing at him!
[bell ringing]
Round 11!
[commentator] That one hurt, so did that!
[commentator] All right, this is the final round
of the fight, and what a fight it's been!
[crowd roars]
The 15th-round knockdown?
The coup de grâce, man.
[Bentt] Joe walks away,
and I'm sure he's thinking,
"Am I a goddamn Uncle Tom now, nigga?"
He said to me once
he didn't realize how much the correlation was
between him using the left hook
and being his dad's left arm.
[Joe] My father, you know,
he had one arm, and I was his left-hand man,
so therefore, I learned to use my left hand more
than I did my right hand. -Really?
[Joe] I would go in the woods
and probably pull the saw, you know anything about that?
The knockdown came from a signature Joe Frazier move
that nobody in the sport has ever done better,
and that's a double left hook.
It's the most beautiful timed
work-of-art shot you'll ever see
in the history of boxing,
and Joe didn't get his just due,
because Ali bounced back up.
[Bernstein] In any other universe,
that knockdown would be discussed as,
"Well, Joe Frazier punctuates a big win
with a knockdown in the 15th round."
No, the narrative is,
"How did he get up? It's amazing."
We were sitting three rows ringside.
Boom! His back didn't even stay.
Just, boom, he just come right back up
and stood up, and looked at him like that.
I said, "Okay. Okay."
It's part of the bigger narrative
that somehow
the achievements of Joe Frazier overall,
and especially as it relates to Ali,
kind of get overshadowed.
[Joe speaking]
It's just hard to surpass
what Muhammad Ali represents in 1971...
-[bell ringing] -There it is!
[cheering]
...so even though Joe won the fight,
he's still cast in Ali's shadow.
The winner by unanimous decision,
Joe Frazier!
[Hand Jr.] Joe just collapses in Yank's arms,
and he gives him a fatherly hug.
It's a fatherly hug, not a trainer's hug.
[♪♪♪]
[Slone] And the action was so good,
I heard two people died of heart attacks in the arena.
People in Northern Ireland that were having their troubles,
apparently they stopped fighting
and watched the fight on the same TV in the bars.
It stopped the world.
One of the things that people tend to forget
was that Joe won that fight.
That was the greatest fight of all time,
and Joe Frazier won that fight.
You think he was clownin'? He couldn't move!
[press laughing]
All them body shots piling up on him.
One, two, three, it adds up.
He would've died
before he allowed Muhammad Ali to beat him.
Joe actually had started to have physical problems
after the Jimmy Ellis fight.
He had issues with high blood pressure.
[laughing]
The doc wanted to check me up.
He checked me up
and find out that my blood's a little high.
I was with him the whole time.
For two, three days, he was in there.
I was watching his blood pressure go up
and up and up.
I said if we got to 300 and some,
he would get a stroke.
Muhammad Ali wins when he loses,
because all the interviews afterwards,
he's going, "Look at me. Not a mark on my face.
Joe Frazier's all busted up."
If you look at Frazier's face and look at mine,
there's no comparison.
I'm sure I hit him three times more than he hit me,
if you watch the film.
Joe got much less enjoyment from his time as World Champion
than he would have had
if Ali had painted a different portrait of him.
I feel like I'm ready to go, man.
I'm trying to get out of here as fast as I can.
Number one, he's ugly...
[laughter]
[Hauser] It's a shame,
'cause Joe's experience was far more typical
of the Black experience in America
than Ali's,
and they should have been allies,
rather than adversaries.
And who told him he could sing?
He got him a big band,
he started traveling the world with his new title,
thinking that he's gonna sell 'em all out.
What is there to worry about?
[laughing]
The fighting money's good, the singing money's good.
Look, and I can do both of 'em. You know?
Why should I let it go by?
And I'm having fun while I'm doing it.
Every time I would read the paper,
there's a Joe Frazier appearance
in this place in England,
the arena held 10,000, 37 people showed up.
[laughter]
[Bentt] He's going off on this concert tour,
like, you know?
And that to me is an indication of, like, you know,
he's not really being a disciplined soldier
to his craft, man.
[♪♪♪]
♪ Girl, try to remember ♪
[crowd cheering]
♪ We've had issues ♪
♪ We stuck together Just me and you ♪
[Bentt] A fighter's life is, uh...
is brutal.
He was too courageous to admit, you know, that, um,
"I'm really not cut out for this thing right now.
I think I've hit my peak."
Joe Frazier did what he had to do for the world,
and that was quiet the butterfly.
After '71, he was the people's champion,
so he became the partying Joe.
He was with people everywhere,
drinking and having a good time.
He had an eye for the ladies, always.
He had some of the prettiest women on the planet.
[Averona Jr.] He loved women.
He would go like this, "Oof, look at that, Bo.
That's an 18-wheeler over there."
That's what he would say because she was built in the back.
[Joe speaking]
[laughing]
[Averona Jr.] So when his dad was running moonshine,
Joe would be in the car,
so he said, "We'd pull up to this place,"
he goes, "And he had me waiting in the car
for friggin' two hours,
so one day, I got out of the car and I sneaked up the driveway."
He said, "I look in the window,
and I see him kissing a woman and all,
that son of a gun! So I'd run back,
and I would hide in the car and wait."
And Rubin'd be gone for an hour or two,
and then when Joe got of a certain age,
he would, he would go in and chase the daughter.
He said, "So after a while,
I started kissing the daughters."
[laughs] It's a true story!
He said, "I started kissing the daughters."
[♪♪♪]
[Arum] Yank Durham was an old-line boxing guy,
which meant that if you had the Heavyweight Champion,
you'd take easy fights
and pick up whatever money's available.
[commentator] Frazier cutting him to ribbons now!
The title is just, it's just here.
You know what I mean? And I have it,
so anybody would like to try to take it from me,
then these guys gonna have to challenge me,
and these guys ain't doing nothin' but making noise.
[Arum] The boxing organizations said "enough."
Frazier had to fight the number-one contender,
who was George Foreman.
[blows thudding on bag]
George Foreman, back then?
Hoo! Was a beast.
[reporter] Foreman is fresh and good.
Frazier, since his bout with Ali,
has only fought twice,
and both of those opponents were nobodies.
The old bromide that styles make fights
is never more evident than in this match.
[Howard Cosell] Well, they're trying
to psych each other out.
I expected Joe Frazier to beat George Foreman.
[Cosell] We may have an interesting evening.
Frazier, quite understandably the favorite.
[Bentt] When George comes out and makes that first swing,
that is saying, "Hey, I'm here."
[Cosell] There is no fear in George Foreman.
That's a lie. He's terrified of Joe.
The one guy I'd gotten into the ring with
that I was really frightened of was Joe Frazier,
because I'd followed his career.
I'd seen him stand up to everybody.
You hit him hard, he liked it.
Foreman had this strategy of pushing Frazier off.
He was physically strong enough to do it.
When George was pushing Joe away,
he's upsetting Joe's balance.
So many times in that fight, and it didn't last long,
you'd see a left hook
4whistle past the head of Foreman, short.
[Cosell] I think he hurt Joe Frazier!
I think Joe is hurt!
We're driving in the car, I said,
"Say, champ, tell me what happened
when you fought George Foreman."
He said, "He hit me and my legs shook."
[man] Frazier's hurt!
[Cosell] Angie Dundee, Ali's trainer,
right next to me is saying, and you may hear him--
Down goes Frazier!
Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!
"Down goes Frazier!"
"So I tried everything I could," he said.
"The man hit like TNT."
[Cosell] Foreman is all over Joe Frazier.
Frazier is down again, and he may be...
oh, he is rising.
Getting hit on the chin like that
is tantamount to having your... a computer unplugged.
He was still functional, but he was like a zombie.
[Cosell] Two knock-downs in the first round
of Joe Frazier.
Down again!
Oh, saved by the bell!
[Joe speaking]
[Cosell] Frazier's knees buckled.
He is-- oh, he is down!
He is down for the fourth time in the fight!
Foreman had the perfect style
to beat a fighter of Joe's style.
He was too big.
[Cosell] It is over. It is over.
George Foreman
is the Heavyweight Champion of the World!
They could've fought ten times,
and George probably would've won all ten.
[Durham] Just one of those things.
Joe got fogged with a good shot,
and no fighter, I don't think,
no man would have stood up under that shot.
Getting up six times
after being knocked down six times?
That's courage, man,
and we have to admire that in Joe,
because he was willing to die.
[Cosell] You going to seek a rematch?
Yeah, I would like to fight,
or, you know, get a rematch with him.
Styles make fights.
I think styles have a lot to do with it,
but then, after he had beaten Muhammad Ali,
there was not much left of Joe Frazier.
If I had fought him two years earlier,
it wouldn't have been like that.
I didn't fight the best Joe Frazier.
Believe me, he wasn't the best.
What we know now
is that, uh, Joe had started to slack off in training.
Lee Grant was here, God rest his soul,
he was Joe's driver and his dear friend,
and he said to me, "Bo, don't listen to a word he said,
because two weeks before the George Foreman fight,
he was hanging out with this one,
and that one, you know what I mean?
so he didn't take him serious."
"Oh, yes, I did!"
And they started to get into it a little bit,
like with one another.
He didn't make any excuses,
and he gave George all the respect.
Yeah, "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!"
That was the... call of the West.
"Down goes Frazier!"
I mean, "Hey, come on. Relax, man.
That's... that's not cool."
Joe was a sensitive guy.
You know, he had feelings like everybody else.
[Cosell] Down goes Frazier!
Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!
[newscaster] Sad news from the world of sport.
Yank Durham, long-time trainer and manager
of former World Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier, has died.
Durham suffered a stroke two days ago,
and passed away this morning at Temple University Hospital.
He was 52 years old.
[Joe] I really don't know
where to go and what to do now.
He said that he was gonna let me know
when he think it's time for me to retire, so, uh...
I'm very relieved that, uh,
he will come back and let me know,
you know, in a dream,
uh, what to do from here.
[Hand Sr.] When Yank Durham died,
it was real easy
for Eddie Futch to just slide in.
[Bernstein] There are
a half dozen trainers in the sport of boxing
that reach legendary status.
Eddie Futch was one of those people.
[Hand Sr.] If you couldn't get along with Eddie Futch,
you didn't belong in this world.
He was really, really a nice guy.
I would say, as of now, uh, both of us have lost,
and now we going back to each other
to determine who's the best.
The second Ali-Frazier fight
was certainly less anticipated than the first.
Neither guy was champion at the time.
It was 12 rounds, not 15.
Ali-Frazier II
is sort of like The Godfather: Part III.
it's easily forgettable.
[Cosell] That was almost three years ago, Muhammad,
and you lost.
White people say I lost.
And that's some white people.
All Black people know I won.
Ali put all sorts of very ugly labels on him
that Joe was never able to shake.
[Bernstein] When they both got in the studio
with Howard Cosell,
and Ali created the mayhem he created
playing on Joe's raw emotions,
that ignited the fight,
and it ignited the interest in the fight.
Stand up, man!
-Set down, Joe. -Why you think I'm ignorant?
-Set down, Joe! -Huh?
-Set down. -Why you think I'm ignorant?
-The brothers are here. -You in this too?
Set down quick, Joe!
It's a great piece of, uh, television.
[Cosell] There is no question in my mind
that Joe Frazier is not clowning.
[Bentt] When you hurt somebody who looked out for you,
tried to, um, get your license back for you...
Come on, brother. Really?
I would say to Joe, "Joe, you, you pay him no mind,
he's just talkin' shit because that's Ali.
He wants to get your goat."
He says, "I'm gonna get his goat.
I'm gonna get his goat. I'm gonna get his goat.
I'm gonna get his goat."
[bell ringing]
[Cosell] The bell for round one,
the action begins.
[Bentt] The second Ali-Frazier fight,
there was a ghost standing right next to Joe,
and that ghost
was the person who was knocked out
at the hands of Big George.
It's not easy to overcome.
[Cosell] And that was a good right!
Joe was staggered there.
Ali shook Joe.
Referee Tony Perez thought he heard the bell.
[Cosell] Referee Tony Perez separates the fighters,
calls for the end of the round, but I didn't hear a bell.
Then the fight resumed,
and there was talk afterwards
that Ali would've knocked Joe out
if Perez hadn't made that mistake.
No, I mean, let's do the numbers,
41 rounds of boxing,
and Ali never knocked Joe down.
[Joe speaking]
The fight is about to end,
and it is over!
Muhammad Ali has won the fight
on a unanimous decision!
I don't think that was that far off.
You know what I mean?
I would say I fought.
I throw a more effective punch anyway,
so I, I got no argument about nothin'.
You ever hear Joe Frazier crying?
Stand-up guy.
George was the champ,
so Ali-Frazier II
was more for bragging rights
and the right to fight George Foreman next.
George Foreman was just...
it's hard to convey to people just how he was demolishing
individuals who got in the ring with him.
Both Joe Frazier and Ken Norton beat Ali,
and George Foreman barely broke a sweat.
When I fought Muhammad Ali in Africa,
fear had all just disintegrated.
I had no longer any fear for anything.
This was gonna be the easiest fight of my life.
When Joe Frazier fought Muhammad Ali
in Madison Square Garden,
he would've died
before he allowed Muhammad Ali to beat him.
When I fought Muhammad Ali in Africa,
I fought a Joe Frazier reincarnate.
[crowd roaring]
And so while Ali has regained the mountaintop,
Joe is almost, I think, forgotten,
but you have their rivalry.
It's mythical.
It's... it's literary. It's cinematic.
Joe Frazier had kind of
rehabilitated himself a little bit.
He beat Quarry. He beat Ellis.
That got Frazier back
in a position where they could sell the third Ali fight.
These two men and their styles were so compelling...
[crowd cheering]
...that people had in the back of their mind,
"Wow, this is still something we should pay attention to."
Without Joe Frazier,
there wouldn't have been no Ali.
Imagine if, after winning the Rumble in the Jungle,
Ali says, "I'm done."
That's a perfect narrative,
but, you know, life doesn't really work that way,
so Ali-Frazier one more time.
[Ali] Here's the way he looks when you hit him.
Come on, gorilla! We in Manila!
[laughter]
Ali's treatment of Joe Frazier,
the demeaning portrayal of Joe,
hurt a lot more people than Joe.
It involved
a lot of unfortunate comments
around his appearance, his intelligence...
the sort of thing that racist white people
would say perhaps in private
about a Black person,
Ali's saying in public.
I'm gon' keep this gorilla with me
every day until the fight.
It reinforced
the stereotypical view that some people had
of Black people,
slow-moving, shuffling...
[mumbling unintelligibly]
[Don King] This is indeed a proud moment for me
to welcome the people of the world
to the saga of our lifetime,
Superfight III,
the Thrilla in Manila.
[Arum] The Marcoses, who ran the Philippines,
knew nothing about boxing.
They wanted Ali specifically in a big fight,
because they had a big problem
with the Muslims in Mindanao,
and they felt that they could calm everything down
if they brought over this great Muslim to fight
in the Philippines.
The fighter that they wanted him to fight
was Joe Frazier.
[Don Dunphy] And here's Joe Frazier
coming into the ring.
[Hauser] The feeling was that Joe was shot,
that Ali'll dance around for eight, nine rounds,
knock Joe out,
and will go on to the next fight.
[Dunphy] It's 15 rounds, and here is round one!
[Bernstein] The Thrilla in Manila
was a fight in three parts.
The first part of the fight,
it looked for all the world
like Ali was exposing Joe
as a fighter who just had lost his ability
to fight in the upper echelon of the Heavyweight Division.
Muhammad was handling Joe for three rounds, four rounds...
[crowd shouting]
...and then, all of a sudden, boom!
[crowd erupts]
I don't think I've ever seen a sporting event
turn as dramatically
as that fight turned in those middle rounds.
Frazier is very strong!
[crowd shouting]
Joe came into that fight fueled by absolute hatred.
Ali took more punishment
than I think anybody would ever be able to take.
Joe Frazier landed hellacious shots,
and somehow Ali withstood them.
All of a sudden, the fight turned again,
because Joe Frazier just ran out of gas.
[Dunphy] And Ali is scoring on him.
He had vision problems in both eyes,
and Ali, as exhausted as he was,
was able to summon up the energy to land those straight shots
as Frazier was coming in,
and the Frazier head movement was less than it had been
earlier in the fight.
13th round, Joe can't see out of his left eye.
Muhammad was trying to cement, you know, the victory,
throws a right hand...
Joe's mouthpiece goes flying.
[crowd shouting]
Essentially, it's target practice.
There's a moment in the corner
where Joe drinks the water
and spits the water out,
and the water is completely red.
It's not water anymore, it's blood.
Eddie Futch had let the fight go on
after the 13th round
in the hope that things might change.
They didn't.
[crowd shouting]
[Dunphy] Frazier is hurt.
He was getting hit again and again and again.
[crowd shouting]
After the 14th round,
Ali and Joe went back to their corners.
[bell ringing]
Both men had been... brutalized.
Uh, Joe was getting hit
by punches that he couldn't see coming.
[Dunphy] The doctor comes up and looks at Frazier.
I think it's gonna be over!
In the most difficult moment to stop a fight,
on the biggest stage you could possibly have,
Eddie Futch had the courage of his convictions
to realize Joe was in trouble
and in danger of being hurt, badly.
[Joe speaking]
[Dunphy] It's all over!
[cheering]
[Boyd] One can't stand up
and one can't see.
Whew.
Oh, my god.
That's a supremely human moment, man.
We can see the child in Joe.
We can see the lover in Joe,
the beast in Joe,
and we can see the human hurt animal in Joe.
[♪♪♪]
[Bernstein] Eddie Futch called the fight
because he just couldn't see Joe Frazier continuing on.
While it wasn't popular with Joe Frazier,
and Joe had difficulty with it,
Eddie Futch, he never felt regret,
because he knew it was the right decision.
[Prince] That night, Marvis was in Manila.
Muhammad called Marvis into his dressing room,
and when Marvis got the apology from Muhammad,
"Tell your dad he's a great champion
and a great man,
and I said everything I said
just to promote these incredible fights,"
Marvis came running back into his dad's dressing room
to tell him,
and Joe lost it,
and said, "You ain't Joe Frazier, son.
Why ain't he apologize to me?"
But he is great.
I don't know no other fighter today
besides myself
who can beat Joe Frazier.
Going beyond the result,
which says "KO-14" in the record book,
you could almost look at that fight,
on some very primal level,
as a draw.
I don't think there were any... winners.
It was the bull and the matador.
It was... everything anybody could ever want
in a combat.
These guys were made for each other.
You look at Manila,
and it's an advertisement
for everything that's best about boxing,
and also for everything that's worst about boxing.
They both left everything in that 20-foot ring.
[Boyd] Going forward,
life for Ali, life for Joe Frazier
will never be the same.
They're beyond their prime.
It's not going to be glamorous
and celebratory
and spectacular.
They end that fight as two old men.
Joe fought Foreman again.
They didn't even sell all the tickets there.
[Cosell] Look what he's done!
He's shaved his head!
"Champ, what happened in the second fight?"
He says, "The second fight, I trained to kill him."
I said, "Smoke, I'm telling you,
when I watched you fight him, your midsection was thicker."
"No, Bo, my weight was right." I said, "Smoke, listen."
[Cosell] Joe Frazier weighed in at a surprising 224.5 pounds,
eight and a half more pounds than he's ever carried.
"Then, when I stepped in the ring,
I looked at him, and I backed up."
Joe Frazier never backs up in a fight.
He said, "On that particular night,
I was backing up, waiting,
'cause I didn't want to get hit with them punches."
[Cosell] Frazier against the ropes.
[crowd cheering]
Foreman was absolutely devastating
when he fought a smaller guy.
[Cosell] Frazier, trying to fight back.
I knew what Joe was going through
when he was fighting with one eye,
why he stayed so close to him.
I know how Joe Frazier passes eye tests, too.
He's the one who told me how to pass it.
[Cosell] One right hurts Frazier.
Frazier! Frazier's down!
[crowd roaring]
Frazier is down from a right!
He said, "You don't switch eyes, you switch hands.
I would cover with this hand,
then when you say, 'switch eyes,'
I would switch hands,
and the doctor would never say nothin'."
[Cosell] Frazier taking it from George Foreman!
Foreman kno--
Foreman again with the right!
The second knockdown in the round.
[chuckling]
[laughing]
[Cosell] Harold Valan says the fight is over!
Frazier as game as ever,
but now, inevitably,
the boxing career over for Joe Frazier.
Joe Frazier would want to be remembered
as a great World Champion,
the people's champion. He loved people.
His heart
was as big as the Empire State Building.
I'm pleased with, with Joe Frazier,
and I'm pleased with the public,
and pleased with the plan,
and, uh, I think,
for the consideration that you have for me, uh...
I think that it's time for me to put it on the wall,
and go ahead and just boogie, boogie, boogie.
[funk music playing]
[engine revving]
[♪♪♪]
[instrumental playing]
[Hand Jr.] In 1978,
I would've been a junior in college,
in a small school in Northeastern Pennsylvania,
and Joe was singing at a lounge in Scranton, Pennsylvania,
so, uh, of course, all my friends were like,
"Are you kidding me? Yes, we're coming,"
and that commercial had just come out,
the Miller Lite commercial.
♪ When you order a beer Do like Smokin' Joe ♪
♪ Order Lite beer from Miller ♪
♪ And say no more ♪
Joe starts singing a couple songs,
and I guess during a break, somebody yells out,
"Do the Miller Lite commercial!"
And he goes, "All right."
♪ 'Cause Lite's less filling ♪
♪ Hey, that really knocks me out! ♪
Before the end of the night,
he probably sang that Miller Lite commercial,
like, 15 times...
[cheering]
...and then sat down with all my college buddies,
and drank beer with us the rest of the night,
and we'd go, "Joe, sing that commercial again."
♪ Lite tastes great ♪
[Hand Jr.] And he'd sing the commercial,
and he made my friends that night, you know,
feel that if they were friends of mine,
they were friends of Joe Frazier's,
and, uh, that's why I loved him.
[funk intro playing]
[Barbara St. Lee] In the early 1980s,
I got to work with Smokin' Joe Frazier
as a Knockout singer,
and it was a real thrill.
I'm still riding on a cloud.
I know a lot of people used to say,
"Oh, Joe can't sing,"
but when you went to the show,
and saw that this man was really singing,
and he was really expressing himself
through his lyrics,
you could feel his expression,
that he was taking you from the gym,
taking you from when he was growing up,
taking you from now, performing the song.
He was, like, telling you a story
of what he did throughout his life.
You could see
that it's just something that touched his soul,
and he wanted others to feel the same way...
touch the soul of you, and you, and you,
that meant so much to him.
[Prince] White America always thought Joe Frazier
was this blue-collar working man,
but, man, he was the king of swag.
He was way more swag than Ali ever was.
[Witherspoon] When he comes in, the room shines up,
electricity just start spreading everywhere.
It was always about the best suits,
and the colors that popped, and the gold chain,
and the gold ring,
and that hat
that nobody could sport like Smokin' Joe,
and a big wad of cash, always down in his sock,
sometimes both his socks,
and he took a lot of pride in that.
If you are a star, you shine everywhere.
[Bernstein] There was a benefit in Atlantic City.
Joe Frazier and the Knockouts
were gonna come on right after my wife and her sister,
the Rocco Sisters,
and Connie was coming down some stairs,
and she had one of those combs that had, like, a tip on the end
that you would tease your hair with,
so it was very sharp,
and her heel caught on one of the stairs.
She lunged forward,
and stabbed Joe Frazier in the stomach.
He went down to one knee,
and uttered this immortal line...
"The bitch stabbed me!"
[laughing]
And so security rushed in, and, of course,
she was horrified, and everyone was horrified,
but they had to run out on stage,
so she ran out on stage after the...
[laughing] ... after the incident.
You can't make that up.
[reporter] It's 4:30 in the morning,
and former Heavyweight Champion Smokin' Joe Frazier
is running through the frigid streets of Chicago
on what he hopes will be his comeback trail.
Not bad for an old man, huh?
When fighters well past their prime continue fighting,
like Ali did with Berbick,
what Joe did with Cummings,
they can say whatever they want,
it's pride, they still have it, they want to feel young...
there's only one word why it happened,
and that word is "money."
[reporter] He's coming out of retirement
after five years
to fight Jumbo Cummings,
a relatively unknown 30-year-old
who spent 12 of those years in prison for murder.
[Bentt] Joe with Jumbo Cummings,
and Muhammad with Trevor Berbick,
they were fights that should not have been sanctioned,
but in boxing, that's allowed.
Why is that?
But, you know, I get it.
I get it.
But I, um... I don't get it.
Removed from Manila by six years,
it just demonstrated
how much that fight took out of each of them as well.
Happy ending, you knew that wasn't going to happen.
[announcer] The decision, a draw!
[crowd booing]
It's hard for an athlete to leave the game
when they're on top.
I got a chance to go down
as the greatest athlete, not boxer,
in the history.
I can make so many people wrong.
Obviously, it didn't work out well.
It-it just was not a good evening, on every level.
[man] No, no! Oh, no!
Ali, Frazier, in terms of their career,
their life as professional boxers is over,
and there's nothing spectacular or glamorous about it.
Life sometimes is not kind, but it's always real.
[♪♪♪]
[Hand Jr.] Joe definitely lived his life
on North Broad Street at that gym,
and, you know, people could walk in there
every day and say hello.
Joe bought the gym after the Foreman fight.
It was $87,000.
It looked like some of the movies I'd watch on TV,
street life, it's North Philadelphia,
ghetto.
When I walked in, I just thought,
"This is what greatness is."
And Joe came, was, "Hey, hey,
you gotta put more weight on your left leg, Tim."
Putting the weight in between my knee and my ankle,
putting it down there, and then turn, bam!
so my left hook, he taught me how to do that, yeah.
Take the room away from him, Mark!
Goddamn breathe on him!
On the top of the gym was a roof, a rooftop,
so he decided that, uh,
he was gonna turn that rooftop into a bachelor's loft.
[Averona Jr.] When you walked in Joe Frazier's office,
he had a great big desk.
He would call his back office "The Dungeon."
He had a little refrigerator.
We had liquor back there.
Then he would lift his, his couch up, like Godzilla,
and, just picked it up,
and he had all these guns piled on top of each other.
[Slone] The second story was just a big warehouse,
and at the back of that was a dormitory for fighters.
It had no hot water.
The opposite side of the steel door
was crack addicts.
And we put six beds in the back of the gym,
a heater, and a kitchen.
And then, it's cold water, and, you know, it was drafty,
which I was fine with, 'cause it was,
it was really... it made you fight harder.
[fighters grunting]
When Joe comes into the gym,
first thing he does
is walk up them steps, go to his music, hit play,
come back downstairs, and, "Let's work."
[Averona Jr.] Joe Frazier had the Fighting Fraziers,
and he just put everything he could in his fighters.
They couldn't be him,
but they all wanted to be like him.
[Joe] What time is it?
[men] It's fightin' time!
What time is it?
It's KO time!
Come on! Let's go! Let's go!
Marvis Frazier had a good amateur record,
and Marvis Frazier was a very tough fighter.
[commentator] The referee,
the only man who can stop the fight.
Round one!
Larry Holmes is a serious fighter.
[commentator] And here's Marvis, with the hands down!
Marvis got a little cocky, and he dropped his hands.
[commentator] That could be a big mistake!
Marvis Frazier's career probably got accelerated,
maybe because of the-the opportunities
for money fights,
partially because of who he was.
[crowd shouting]
When Marvis gets hit,
you could see in Joe's eyes
how he was hurtin' for his son.
Had to be very difficult for Joe Frazier
to experience that, you know, in the corner.
I think they pushed Marvis a little too fast,
'cause it was easy, it was fun for Larry.
Larry just was playing,
like, he was playing,
and, to me, that was embarrassing.
Joe loved Marvis. They were so close.
[Witherspoon] I would wait,
"My name is Marvis Frazier. My dad is Joe."
Try to build it up a little bit more,
and maybe they could've got two million,
but they did it, and this is the result, so...
[♪♪♪]
[commentator] Tyson comes out slugging.
He comes out smoking, like Marvis's father, Joe.
They said Marvis tried to fight like Joe Frazier,
"Joe's not a good trainer
'cause he trains everybody this way,"
and Joe's answer was,
"You better be able to fight like Joe Frazier
if you wanna make it."
[commentator] Uppercut, and Marvis is hurt.
Yeah, he's hurt. He's down.
I don't think Marvis ever disappointed Joe,
even in the fights he lost.
You know, Joe was super proud of him.
When you saw Marvis Frazier with his father,
there was such respect and admiration
and love from Marvis towards Joe.
It was something very, very special.
So what I know about Marvis, when he had his two big fights,
Larry and Mike Tyson,
Joe, the way he told me was,
it was to kinda help the Fraziers out
and get a little love, M-O-N-E-Y,
in his pocket.
He was just in the process of a divorce.
He was in the process of moving out
of the mansion that he had,
you know, the house that he had with his wife, Florence.
[Averona Jr.] Joe loved his family.
You know, you're with somebody for so long,
you kinda fall out of love. You know?
Joe had 11 kids, and... six different mothers.
Joe and Marvis and those guys were like this.
Marvis is a God-fearing, righteous man,
almost the polar opposite to Joe
when it comes to the party atmosphere.
He'd just say, "Aw, Pop."
He'd say, "Pop. Not again, Pop."
[Watson] Joe took care of his family.
He made sure, financially,
that he lived up to his obligations
as a father, as a man.
Once a month,
we would sit in the office and make up envelopes,
and I've never said this before to anyone.
I would personally hand-deliver the envelopes
to... different mothers,
because Joe wanted to take care of his children.
You know, any time he made a bunch of money,
he would always make sure the kids are good
and his grandkids were good.
If you have 11 kids, that costs a lot of money,
and that's gonna drain you,
no matter how much money you're able to make.
Life is conflicting. Boxing's conflicting.
Having your father as your trainer is conflicting.
-Very good! -Hit! Hit!
Don't worry 'bout it.
Joe had five of his relatives in the gym,
different weight classes.
The one that he felt had the most talent
was Hector.
G-Man 'bout to come alive.
Joe called him "G-Man,"
and he fought under Joe Frazier Jr. professionally.
[commentator] 21-year old Smokin' Joe Frazier Jr.
[Slone] No fear at all.
He'd grown up on the streets of New York.
Hector was the real deal.
[commentator] And a big left hook!
And a straight right and another left hook!
Lopez is on the bottom strand of the ropes,
and he goes down!
He was messin' with the wrong people,
and he got involved with substance abuse,
and his life went down the wrong road,
and Joe did not approve at all.
He, uh...
he would tell him, you know, "I worked my whole life
to make this Frazier name something special,
and you're fucking it up."
I might go to bed saying to myself,
"What if you do lose?" You know?
When he got arrested, that hurt Joe,
so he ended up going to jail for a long time.
That's a setback for you.
You don't want no setback.
[Slone] Joe, I think,
was way more sensitive than people realize,
and it hurt Joe so... so bad.
Joe used to always say, when he was hurt, he was like,
"I just swallowed a razor blade."
[Watson] Hector would call when he got busted, he said,
"I'm fighting three and four times a day, man."
He said, "They're challenging me.
They're challenging me because I'm Joe Frazier Jr.
I'm tired."
And he wanted to talk to his dad.
[Slone] Joe wouldn't talk to him for a long time.
He didn't take the phone calls,
and that's because he was swallowing razor blades.
In the beginning, he would visit him, and then he stopped.
[Watson] It really took a toll on Joe,
and it... it broke him, uh, as a father.
[Slone] Hector was his own man, I guess,
and he made decisions,
and, "Oh, I had a disease,"
or whatever it was
that they're calling for that kind of life.
His downfall
was something that was the toughest thing
that I saw him go through
during my time with him.
[Slone] And their relationship
never got to where it should've been
between a father and a son.
[Prince] Muhammad Ali apologized to Joe
in The New York Times,
and said, "If God called me into a holy war,
I'd want Joe Frazier there right beside me."
[laughing]
[director] That's what he said about you.
I got so excited, I called up Joe.
"Champ, I think it's time. Let's make this happen."
He goes, "You know what, Prince?
You tell that son of a bitch,
why's he gotta speak to the damn reporter?
Why can't he do that to my face?"
I was like, "Oh, my God."
There were times when they'd get together,
and Joe would be civil,
but for the most part,
the hatred was there, and it remained.
I put an agent spin on it,
just said, "It's not a sincere apology.
He'd like it to be to his face."
And then Ali, of course, came back with,
"When you see Joe Frazier, tell him he's still a gorilla."
I'm gon' keep this gorilla with me every day
until the fight.
[Slone] His way of saying who won the fights,
he would compare his physical abilities
to Muhammad.
[Averona Jr.] Joe Frazier would turn around and go,
"Yo, Bo. Look at him.
He's telling people he's got Parkinson's.
He don't have Parkinson's. He's got left-hook-itis."
[♪♪♪]
[Prince] I got a call from Howard Bingham,
"Hey, I'm with Lonnie, and we want to know
if you and Joe and Marvis will come to Muhammad's suite tonight
and have dinner with us,"
so I got to catch up with Joe,
and I'm nervous as hell, man, my palms are sweating.
He looks at me, goes,
"All right, boss man, let's do it. What time?"
As simple as could be,
I have chills right now from saying it, and...
Seven years of non-stop trying
and pushing and near-misses...
so we meet and head over to Ali's hotel,
and Joe leans down at one point
to kind of fix his sock...
he's got a holster with a gun in it.
Like, "What the heck is going on?"
We get in the hallway.
We're literally three doors down from Ali's suite,
and Marvis starts laughing, like a little kid.
He goes, "You really thought
he was gonna come here and shoot Ali?"
And we knock on the door, and what a moment!
Joe just kind of trots over to him.
Muhammad smiling.
Joe puts his hand on Ali's leg,
Ali puts his hand on Joe's hands.
Joe goes, "Come on, man. Let me help you up."
And Muhammad's shoulder is just lying on Joe's shoulder,
with both of them had tears in their eyes,
and Lonnie looks at me, and said, "Hey, Joe."
She looks over and says, "Thank you,
because Muhammad just found peace."
[Joe speaking]
Joe had a period in his life where I think
maybe he was drinking a little too much,
and there was a little surliness to him.
That wasn't really the real Joe Frazier.
[Joe speaking]
The real Joe Frazier
was the Joe Frazier
that took care of everybody in his neighborhood
and took care of the people around him.
There's not too many celebrities out here
that can be down to earth like Joe Frazier was.
He cared.
If he saw you stranded and your car was pulled over,
he got out of his car and got up under the car
to see if he could find out what was wrong.
And I remember I was 16 years old
when he took me under his wing.
It's just in his DNA to help.
You knew you had somebody covering your back,
and I don't know any other people
really like that, to that degree.
I mean, what he did for me is unbelievable.
When Nelson Mandela got out of prison,
the two people he wanted to meet
was Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali,
so I'm sitting in a room with Joe,
he's thinking, uh, "I gotta give him something,"
and on the top of the dresser was his WBC belt.
You know, to have a championship belt,
that's everything to a boxer,
and Joe gave him what was left of him,
but Nelson Mandela was trippin' that he got to meet Joe Frazier.
Every time you go into the ring,
you lose a piece of yourself
you can never get back.
The question is, how much?
[Averona Jr.] I was worried about Joe
as he started to get older.
His speech was a little slurred, and his balance was off.
[Slone] There's no way, you know,
he didn't have some damage from boxing.
At the end of the day,
the human body wasn't meant to be beaten like that.
They all pay a price, you know.
Joe is no exception to the rule.
And I don't think he was fully intact,
but I guess it was worth the price of admission, man.
He's a legend.
I couldn't get him for, like, three, four days,
so I'm starting to get worried,
and I knew he wasn't feeling good,
but I didn't know how serious it was,
so I ended up getting Denise on the phone,
and she was taking care of him.
She goes, "He's really sick. He's got cancer."
Lonnie called me on November 5th,
I was at Joe's highrise,
and he was already in hospice,
and Lonnie said, "We just saw the news.
This is as bad as I've seen Muhammad
since his mother passed."
The covers were all the way pulled up on him.
I take my phone out,
and I got a picture of a woman on there,
so I clicked on it,
and I put it to him,
and I notice that eye focusing in on it,
and like this, again,
"Oof," he goes, "Bo, that's an 18-wheeler.
Put that away." So I put it away.
He said, "When you take your last breath,"
[deep breath]
"...Lord, forgive me,"
He said, "You'll get right in Heaven."
That's what he told me.
That was it.
We held, I held his hand...
and then I left,
and then, like, two days later, he was gone.
[♪♪♪]
I was a pallbearer that day,
along with Sonny Averona
and Willie "The Worm" Munroe,
Michael Spinks,
and some of the Frazier family, Mark Frazier,
and I don't know who was, who was in charge
of being the pallbearers stuff,
but my hand was the last hand that pushed it in,
you know, "I got your back, man,
'cause I know you'd have my back."
Muhammad Ali, he wasn't in great shape himself,
but he stood basically the whole time,
and clapped the whole time,
with an action and a speed
that I hadn't seen Muhammad use in long time.
They had a special bond, and you could see it then.
I wish Joe could've seen it. Well, maybe he did.
[♪♪♪]
Joe Frazier's one of the greatest fighters of all time.
There's only a few guys you can even put in that category.
He'd go down, he'd get back up.
Joe Frazier had nothin' but fight in him.
[Tyrone Frazier] To this day,
it's still, like, man, this great man passed away.
I'm not putting the words right,
but he just seemed like a superman to me.
[♪♪♪]
The Heavyweight Champion of the World...
Joe Frazier!
[crowd roaring]
[bell ringing]
[♪♪♪]
[commentator] Round one!
[funky song playing]
A superstar, Olympic gold medalist...
winning a Heavyweight Championship back then,
he's an icon. Absolute icon.
[cheering]
There were no frills about Joe Frazier.
He didn't try to hide who he was.
"I'm Joe Frazier, and I'm gonna be me."
[laughter]
One of the most unfortunate things in sports history
is that Joe Frazier ended up having to live
under the shadow of Muhammad Ali,
because the Joe Frazier story on its own
is so extraordinary
that it serves as a beacon
to people who face long odds.
[Cosell] The crowd is chanting, "Ali!"
and Joe says, "Come on out and fight."
[Averona Jr.] I loved Joe.
He knew how to get into your soul.
He taught me how to appreciate life.
We had dinner with Denzel Washington.
I saw Lionel Richie chasing after him.
Pacino, you know, De Niro,
Stallone.
Spielberg came over to us with tears in his eyes
asking if he could get some time with him.
That always made my heart full,
because the funny thing was,
Joe really didn't know who any of these people were.
It's hard to explain what Joe Frazier's done for me.
He's made me better father, made me a better citizen,
made me a better person.
I owe a lot to him, and I'll never forget it.
Thank you very much, Joe Frazier.
Thank you!
What I do, and who I know, and where I've been,
is all thanks to Joe Frazier.
For me, what better life could you have?
For him to give me the chance that he did,
the people that I met working with Joe Frazier,
the places that I got to see,
the person that I got to know, who is Joe Frazier,
to be sitting here because of Joe Frazier...
unbelievable.
I love Joe Frazier because of what he did.
From a fighter to a fighter, he will always have my respect.
Joe Frazier was a cornerstone of boxing.
[Joe speaking]
[Cosell] I don't know anyone
who gets the sheer joy of combat
the way Joe Frazier does!
[song ending with a flourish]
[♪♪♪]