Henry Cooper 1934-2011 popular British heavyweight with a murderous left hook that,
in his most famous fight, knocked a brash, future world champion
then known as Cassius Clay on his backside
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/sports/03cooper.html
Gregory Edward Page, boxer
1958-2009 The dangers of boxing in fights
where the organisers provide inadequate emergency medical facilities
at the ringside were made devastatingly apparent in 2001,
when the former world heavyweight champion Greg Page
entered the ring at the age of 42,
for a purse that amounted to little more than loose change
compared with the pay cheques he had earned in his prime.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/apr/30/obituary-greg-page
Eddie Futch, boxer and trainer
1911-2001 Boxing is a sport not renowned for its compassion.
But by retiring a battered and virtually blind Joe Frazier
in the closing stages of his third titanic showdown
with Muhammad Ali on October
1st, 1975,
Eddie Futch, the legendary fight trainer who has died aged 90,
set an unforgettable and moving example of a cornerman
unafraid to put the well-being of his fighter first.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2001/oct/12/boxing.theguardian
Bert Sugar,
boxing’s human encyclopedia, a prolific writer and editor and a flamboyant and
ubiquitous presence in the world of the ring, died on Sunday in Mount Kisco,
N.Y. He was 75.
He had lung cancer and died of cardiac arrest at Northern Westchester Hospital,
his daughter, Jennifer Frawley, said.
The author or editor of dozens of books; the editor, at various times, of The
Ring magazine and Boxing Illustrated; and a television and radio commentator who
rarely turned away from a microphone, Mr. Sugar was as voluminous a speaker as
he was a writer.
Garrulous, opinionated, an eager conversationalist who was known to talk with
just about anybody, he was an accomplished raconteur with a bottomless sack of
anecdotes and an incorrigible penchant for wisecracks and bad jokes. You could
pick him out in a crowded room by his voice — a distinctively upbeat growl — or
by the omnipresent wide-brimmed fedora on his head and the fat cigar in his
mouth.
Mr. Sugar, who was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, was
not simply a character, however. He wrote about the sport with swagger and
panache, a prose style that carried the weight of expertise and that simply
assumed the authority to bellow and bleat:
“In the world of the early 1900s, still awash with Victorian gentility and
doily-type embroidery on everything from manners and modes to conversation and
conventional heroes,” he wrote to introduce an essay on the great black champion
Jack Johnson, “the name of the heavyweight champion stood out in stark relief, a
man of swaggering virility who epitomized the turbulent yet proud surety of the
populace of a nation destined for greatness.”
In the 1980s, he dared to choose and rank the 100 greatest boxers of all time,
and 20 years later he revised the list (and the book explaining it). In
“Boxing’s Greatest Fighters” (2006), he ranked Sugar Ray Robinson No. 1, Joe
Louis at 4 (after Henry Armstrong and Willie Pep) and Muhammad Ali at 7 (after
Harry Greb and Benny Leonard). At 100, he listed Mike Tyson, whose chapter he
began this way:
“To perplexing questions like ‘Why does Hawaii have interstate highways?’ and
‘Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?’ can be added another: What the hell
happened to boxing’s kamikaze pilot, Mike Tyson?”
Herbert Randolph Sugar was born in Washington on June 7, 1936, and, according to
family lore, legally changed his name to Bert as a child because he was tired of
classmates taunting him with, “Herbert, please pass the sherbet.”
He attended public schools, graduated from the University of Maryland and earned
business and law degrees at the University of Michigan, where he wrote for The
Michigan Daily and played rugby. He passed the Washington bar in 1961 — “the
only bar I ever passed,” he was wont to remark — but instead of going into the
law, he moved to New York City and worked for a time in advertising.
An obsessive sports fan and an inveterate memorabilia collector who had a
700-pound chunk of stone from the original Yankee Stadium planted in his rock
garden, he leapt into sports journalism by the beginning of the 1970s,
purchasing Boxing Illustrated — which he edited well but ran as a business badly
— and a handful of lesser-known, short-lived sports publications. For a while in
the mid-’70s, he edited the men’s magazine Argosy.
In 1979, he and several others, including Dave DeBusschere, the former
basketball star, and Bill Veeck, the former maverick baseball club owner,
purchased The Ring; Mr. Sugar was its editor through troubled financial times
until 1983. Mr. Sugar’s book about Muhammad Ali, “Sting Like a Bee,” written
with the boxer Jose Torres, was published in 1971, and Mr. Sugar was the
co-writer, with Angelo Dundee, Ali’s longtime cornerman, of Dundee’s
autobiography, “My View From the Corner: A Life in Boxing.” (Dundee died on Feb.
1.)
With the former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, he wrote “Inside Boxing”
(1974), an examination of boxing technique. And he wrote on other subjects as
well: a history of ABC Sports, a biography of the escape artist Harry Houdini, a
primer on horse racing. Nearly as immersed in baseball arcana as in boxing
arcana, he edited several volumes of statistics and trivia.
Mr. Sugar lived in Chappaqua, N.Y. In addition to his daughter, he is survived
by his wife, the former Suzanne Davis, whom he married in 1960; a son, JB; a
brother, Steven; and four grandchildren.
Angelo Dundee, Trainer of Ali and Leonard, Dies at 90
February 1,
2012
The New York Times
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Angelo
Dundee, the renowned trainer who guided Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard to
boxing glory, died Wednesday in Tampa, Fla. He was 90.
His death was announced by his son, Jimmy, The Associated Press said.
In more than 60 years in professional boxing, Dundee gained acclaim as a
brilliant cornerman, whether healing cuts, inspiring his fighters to battle on
when they seemed to be reeling or adjusting strategy between rounds to counter
an opponent’s style.
“In that one minute, Angelo is Godzilla and Superman rolled into one,” Dr.
Ferdie Pacheco, who often worked with Dundee and then became a TV boxing
analyst, once remarked.
“You come back to the corner and he’ll say, ‘The guy’s open for a hook,’ or this
or that,” Ali told The New York Times in 1981. “If he tells you something during
a fight, you can believe it. As a cornerman, Angelo is the best in the world.”
Dundee’s first champion was Carmen Basilio, the welterweight and middleweight
titleholder of the 1950s from upstate New York. Although best remembered for Ali
and Leonard, Dundee also trained the light-heavyweight champion Willie Pastrano,
the heavyweight titleholder Jimmy Ellis and the welterweight champion Luis
Rodriguez. Dundee advised George Foreman when he regained the heavyweight title
at age 45. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994.
Born Angelo Mirena, a Philadelphia native and the son of a railroad worker, he
became Angelo Dundee after his brother, Joe, fought professionally under the
name Johnny Dundee, in tribute to a former featherweight champion, and another
brother, Chris, also adopted the Dundee name.
After working as a cornerman at military boxing tournaments in England while in
the Army Air Forces during World War II, Dundee served an apprenticeship at
Stillman’s Gym near the old Madison Square Garden, learning his craft from
veteran trainers like Ray Arcel, Charley Goldman and Chickie Ferrara. In the
early 1950s, he teamed with his brother Chris to open the Fifth Street gym in
Miami Beach. It became their longtime base, Angelo as a trainer and Chris as a
promoter.
In the late 1950s, Dundee gave some tips to a promising amateur named Cassius
Clay, and in December 1960, after Clay’s first pro bout, Dundee became his
trainer, working with him in Miami Beach. He guided him to the heavyweight title
with a knockout of Sonny Liston in February 1964.
Dundee avoided the temptation to tamper with the brilliance of his young and
charismatic fighter, and he used a bit of psychology in honing his talents.
“I never touched that natural stuff with him,” Dundee recalled in his memoir,
“My View From the Corner,” written with Bert Randolph Sugar. “However, training
Cassius was not quite the same as training another fighter. Some guys take
direction and some don’t, and this kid had to be handled with kid gloves. So
every now and then I’d subtly suggest some move or other to him, couching it as
if it were something he was already doing. I’d say something like: ‘You’re
getting that jab down real good. You’re bending your knees now and you’re
putting a lot of snap into it.’ Now, he had never thrown a jab, but it was a way
of letting him think it was his idea, his innovation.”
When Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali soon after winning the heavyweight title,
his boxing management and financial affairs were handled by the Nation of Islam.
Dundee was the only white man in his camp, and he grew disturbed over references
to that fact.
In his memoir, Dundee said that he and Ali “had this special thing, a unique
blend, a chemistry.”
“I never heard anything resembling a racist comment leave his mouth,” he said.
“There was never a black-white divide.”
Dundee knew all the tricks in the boxing trade, and then some.
When Ali — or Clay, as was still known at the time — sought to regain his senses
after being knocked down by Henry Cooper in the fourth round of their June 1963
bout, Dundee stuck his finger in a small slit that had opened in one of Ali’s
gloves, making the damage worse. Then he brought the badly damaged glove to the
referee’s attention. Dundee was told that a substitute glove wasn’t available,
and the few seconds of delay helped Clay recover. He knocked Cooper out in the
fifth round.
In the hours before Ali fought Foreman in Zaire in 1974 — the Rumble in the
Jungle — Dundee noticed that the ring ropes were sagging in the high humidity.
He used a razor blade to cut and refit them so they were tight, enabling Ali to
bounce off them when Foreman unleashed his “anywhere” punches from all angles.
Ali wore Foreman out, hanging back with the “rope-a-dope” strategy Ali undertook
on his own, and he went on to win the bout.
Dundee became Leonard’s manager and cornerman when he turned pro in 1977. He
taught Leonard to snap his left jab rather than paw with it and guided him to
the welterweight championship with a knockout of Wilfred Benitez in 1979.
Roberto Duran captured Leonard’s title on a decision in June 1980, but Leonard
won the rematch in November when Dundee persuaded him to avoid a slugfest and
instead keep Duran turning while slipping his jabs. A thoroughly beaten Duran
quit in the eighth round, uttering his inglorious “no mas.”
Dundee enjoyed chatting with reporters — he called himself a “mixologist” — and
he tried to “blend” with his fighters, creating a rapport rather than imposing
himself on them.
In talking about his boxing savvy, he liked to say, “When I see things through
my eyes, I see things.”
“When Dundee speaks, traditional English usage is, to say the least, stretched
and malapropisms abound,” Ronald K. Fried wrote in “Cornermen: Great Boxing
Trainers.”
“Yet the language is utterly original and Dundee’s own — and it conveys exactly
what Dundee knows in his heart.”
After retiring from full-time training, Dundee had stints in boxing
broadcasting. He taught boxing technique to Russell Crowe for his role as the
1930s heavyweight champion Jimmy Braddock in the 2005 Hollywood movie
“Cinderella Man.”
A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
Dundee once remarked: “I’m not star quality. The fighter is the star.”
But he took pride in his craft. As he put it: “You’ve got to combine certain
qualities belonging to a doctor, an engineer, a psychologist and sometimes an
actor, in addition to knowing your specific art well. There are more sides to
being a trainer than those found on a Rubik’s Cube.”
December 2,
2011 The New York Times By COREY KILGANNON
EDWIN
VIRUET does not have to talk about what he accomplished in the ring. His career
lies laminated on a small ringside table that stakes out the spot where he
trains fighters at John’s Boxing Gym in the South Bronx.
Clippings and grainy photographs and promotion posters attesting to Mr. Viruet’s
31 victories during his professional lightweight career are protected by clear
tape from the blood and sweat and spit. One shot shows his fist smashing the
face of the great champion Roberto Durán, whom he fought twice. There he is
carried on shoulders after winning a lightweight title in Puerto Rico.
“That’s a beautiful record right there,” he said Wednesday in the gym packed
with fighters sparring, skipping rope, shadow-boxing and pounding the bags.
As for his six supposed losses and two draws, the real explanation cannot be
seen on the table. It falls to Mr. Viruet himself to offer an explanation. They
were not really losses, but rather fights he says were fixed against him —
especially his two close fights against Mr. Durán in the 1970s, the second for
the world lightweight title. The judges’ decisions for Mr. Durán in both fights
were disputed by people other than just Mr. Viruet.
Back then, Mr. Viruet fought at 135 pounds. Now he weighs in at 210. He subsists
on food stamps and Social Security benefits, and rents a $400-a-month room in an
apartment near the gym. He lives on the fumes of his beautiful record.
There was the victory over Alfredo Escalera, a featherweight champion, and the
one over Vilomar Fernandez, who had beaten the great Alexis Arguello. But now we
arrive at the 1971 draw with Saoul Mamby — which Mr. Viruet says should have
been a win. Once again he was robbed, he said, and other fighters and promoters
avoided setting up fights with him. It all got so frustrating that he decided to
end his career with a statement: He took $5,000 to step into the ring with a
lesser fighter named Alvin Hayes in Detroit in 1983 and, he says, he took a
first-round dive.
“That was it,” he said, miming a wiping clean of his hands. “My message was,
‘What do I need to win? Shoot the other guy with a gun?’ ”
On it goes — Mr. Viruet can pummel you with this stuff for 15 rounds.
The Puerto Rican-born Mr. Viruet grew up in New York City, one of four boxing
brothers, including Adolfo, also an illustrious pro who fought Mr. Durán as well
as Sugar Ray Leonard. Growing up on the Lower East Side, Edwin and Adolfo would
spar at a boys’ club and fight each other on the sidewalk for money.
Edwin was undefeated as an amateur, with 18 wins and Golden Gloves titles in
1968 and 1969 — when he and Adolfo met in the finals and were declared
co-champions. While Adolfo was more of a slugger, Edwin was a dancing stylist
who patterned himself after Muhammad Ali.
As a teenager, Edwin began training at Gleason’s Gym, which at the time was in
the Bronx, next to where John’s is now.
Like many former fighters, Mr. Viruet only feels right in a busy gym. So he
shows up every day, though he lacks the large following of the dozen other
trainers at this first-floor space in a graffiti-strewn building on Westchester
Avenue.
The place calls itself home to current champions like Joseph Agbeko and Joshua
Clottey, and colorful trainers like Understanding Allah. Mr. Viruet knocks
around, waiting for his next budding champ, or next payday, to walk in.
He trained Alex Stewart during the heavyweight’s ascent, before he fell to the
likes of Holyfield, Tyson and Foreman. He prepared Wesley Snipes for fight
scenes in the 1986 film “Streets of Gold,” and even snagged a cameo. When the
mobster Salvatore Gravano, widely known as Sammy the Bull, wanted to take up
boxing, he paid Mr. Viruet good money to play patty-cake in the sparring ring
with him. “He was a cupcake,” laughed Mr. Viruet, who bides his time by training
amateur fighters, many of whom lack the money to pay him.
Last week, Mr. Viruet agreed to watch a YouTube replay of his second Durán
fight, the 15-rounder in 1977, on a laptop propped up on a car hood outside the
gym. Suddenly, there was Howard Cosell, in his yellow blazer, declaring that
“each man genuinely hates the other,” and noting that their 10-rounder in 1975
ended in a decision for Mr. Durán that was booed.
“One of the classiest boxers you’d want to see,” Mr. Cosell said of Mr. Viruet
as the lithe fighter danced around his plodding opponent and taunted him.
The money Mr. Viruet earned is gone now, he said, but not the pleasure of
watching himself punch Mr. Durán’s face open in the 12th round. “I’m the only
fighter who cut him,” he crowed into the Bronx night, with the No. 5 train
clattering by.
The ex-fighter known around here as the Butcher, affectionately, has a signed
photograph of Joe Frazier that he keeps like a laminated Mass card in his
wallet. He has other personalized mementos, too, including a couple of scars on
his fist-dented face, the handiwork of Smokin’ Joe.
The Butcher knew Frazier as well as anyone can in the public intimacy of a
boxing match, where exhausted men hold each other in sweaty, slow-dance
clinches. But he did not go to Frazier’s funeral in Philadelphia on Monday,
attended by boxing’s elite. Among other reasons, the Butcher drives a school bus
now; he had to make his rounds.
Besides, Frazier is forever with the Butcher. It has been this way for nearly 40
years, since May 25, 1972, when Frazier, the heavyweight champion of the world —
the world — came to Omaha to fight an obscure long shot from the neighboring
Iowa city of Council Bluffs: a challenger with a steel-driving punch and a
penchant for bleeding by the name of Ron Stander, also called “The Bluffs
Butcher.” Or, simply, the Butcher.
“If,” the Butcher says, past bridgework that he often pops out with his tongue
as a joking but startling reminder of his brutal past life. His hair is gray,
his gut is pronounced, and his mind is sharp enough to know the toll that the
Butcher has taken.
“If,” he says. “The biggest word in the dictionary.”
The Butcher’s “if” moment — if he wins, he becomes world champion — took place
on national television and before nearly 10,000 fans in the Omaha Civic
Auditorium. Nearly all of them were chanting, “Go, Big Ron,” for the boxy man in
red trunks, with a mop of dark hair and sideburns that didn’t know where to
stop.
The Butcher, a beefy 27, was 23-1-1, with a wow knockout against the powerful
Earnie Shavers, an uh-oh loss against a forgotten nobody, and a reputation for
patiently taking beatings until he could unload his knockout punch. He lacked
discipline, liked his beer, and had virtually no chance of winning.
Not even his wife at the time gave him a shot; she famously said: You don’t take
a Volkswagen into the Indy 500, unless you know of a hell of a shortcut.
“And in this corner, the world heavyweight champion,” trumpeted the ring
announcer. “Weighing in at 217 and one-half pounds. Unbeaten in 28 fights, 25 by
knockouts, World Champion Joe Frazier.”
Out jogged Frazier, a rock-solid 28, his face a mask of all business. He had
beaten Muhammad Ali a year earlier, and was looking forward to the big payday
chance to do it again. For him, the Bluffs Butcher was merely a human tuning
fork.
Imagine sitting on that stool a few feet away, in front of everyone you’ve ever
known in your life, about to challenge a world heavyweight champion known for a
left hook that could knock you into tomorrow. And just to make it fun, a pug
named Mighty Joe Young had recently broken your nose while sparring.
“It was bothersome,” the Butcher says of his sore nose.
The two men tapped their gloves in center ring. “You ready?” Frazier asked, as
the Butcher recalls. He says he winked, went back to his corner, and said a
quick prayer.
If.
If only the Butcher had capitalized on his first-round punch that buckled
Frazier’s knees — a blow that had the television announcer shouting that
“Stander is carrying the fight to Frazier.” If only he had connected with that
uppercut that just missed Frazier’s jaw, just. If only his own jaw had not met a
Frazier uppercut that Jell-O-jiggled his brains.
“I was out on my feet,” the Butcher recalls. “But I wasn’t going down.”
In Omaha, at least, that is what is most remembered: the Butcher never went
down. But the blood seeping from cuts to the bridge of his nose and his right
eye could not be stemmed by his corner men. “I couldn’t look up,” the Butcher
says. “I tried to follow him around by his feet.”
By the fourth round, the television announcer was shouting a sad ballad for the
Butcher: “Stander with the crowd behind him, but Frazier doing the dynamite. ...
Stander going for broke. ... And a cut over the eyebrow, but look at this kid
battle. ... And the claret continues to flow ...”
DING! DING! DING! DING!
In the auditorium, Toddy Ann Leytham, who had gone to high school with Ronnie,
as she called him, became so upset by the bloodbath she was watching through
binoculars that she tumbled onto the concrete floor. She spent the next several
hours in the hospital with a concussion.
Meanwhile, Dr. Jack Lewis, the attending physician, was telling the Butcher he
was done. “Hell, he couldn’t see me!” Dr. Lewis recalls. “He didn’t know where
Joe was. He was just swinging.”
Soon the announcer was again at center ring, his Kleenex-white tuxedo in sharp
contrast to the blood just shed. “The winner, by a technical knockout after the
fourth round, and still heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Frazier!
Frazier!”
The greatest opportunity of the Butcher’s life lasted 12 minutes — or a split
second, if you just count that missed uppercut. The crowd cheered their
gladiator, while commentators made his gruesome loss sound epic. He received 17
stitches to his puffy face, and then he went off somewhere and broke down.
Joe Frazier continued on. He lost his championship; lost two rematches to his
tormenter, Ali; made and lost millions; and died of liver cancer last week at
the age of 67. He ranks among the very best fighters of all time: a lunch-pail
warrior who never gave up. All business.
As for the Butcher?
He kept on fighting for another decade, barreling away in boxing rings from
Hawaii to South Africa, but his career effectively ended that night in Omaha.
You might say he left more than his blood on the mat.
Divorced, remarried, divorced, with four children all told. Bought a bar called
the Sportsman Inn (“Come See the Butcher and Friends”), drank too much, and had
a few run-ins with the law. Drove a cement truck. Worked as a bodyguard for
celebrities; you can find his name among the credits on the Eagles album “Hotel
California.”
Worked as a machine operator for 13 years, but lost that job when the plant
closed. Worked now and then as a boxing referee. Received a perfect-attendance
certificate at a heating and air-conditioning school, only to find no work. Quit
a lousy maintenance job at an apartment complex. Did odd jobs around town.
Collected cans. Gave up drinking, but still drinks a little.
A scramble of a life, it turned out, always looking for that one clear shot at
security. But as the Butcher says, more than once: “You can’t change destiny.”
Three years ago, the Butcher attended his 45th high school reunion in Council
Bluffs. Who was there but Toddy Ann Leytham, the only one to be carried out
after the Frazier-Stander fight, widowed and still harboring a crush for Ronnie.
They married a year later.
Destiny for the Butcher at 67 means driving a school bus, helping out
disadvantaged kids and living in a cozy house with Toddy, his biggest fan. She
wears a T-shirt that bears his younger image and the words “My Hero.” She makes
reprints of boxing posters to have him sign and sell. She hangs photographs from
his boxing years, including a particularly gory one from the fight with Frazier,
always with him.
People in Omaha have not forgotten that fight. And when they see Frazier’s
bloodied victim around town, they call out his name. Hey, Butcher, they say.
Hey, Champ.
November 7,
2011
The New York Times
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Joe
Frazier, the former heavyweight champion whose furious and intensely personal
fights with a taunting Muhammad Ali endure as an epic rivalry in boxing history,
died Monday night. He was 67.
His business representative, Leslie Wolff, told The Associated Press on Saturday
that Frazier had liver cancer and that he had entered hospice care.
Known as Smokin’ Joe, Frazier stalked his opponents around the ring with a
crouching, relentless attack — his head low and bobbing, his broad, powerful
shoulders hunched — as he bore down on them with an onslaught of withering jabs
and crushing body blows, setting them up for his devastating left hook.
It was an overpowering modus operandi that led to versions of the heavyweight
crown from 1968 to 1973. Frazier won 32 fights in all, 27 by knockouts, losing
four times — twice to Ali in furious bouts and twice to George Foreman. He also
recorded one draw.
A slugger who weathered repeated blows to the head while he delivered
punishment, Frazier proved a formidable figure. But his career was defined by
his rivalry with Ali, who ridiculed him as a black man in the guise of a Great
White Hope. Frazier detested him.
Ali vs. Frazier was a study in contrasts. Ali: tall and handsome, a wit given to
spouting poetry, a magnetic figure who drew adulation and denigration alike, the
one for his prowess and outsize personality, the other for his antiwar views and
Black Power embrace of Islam. Frazier: a bull-like man of few words with a
blue-collar image and a glowering visage who in so many ways could be on an
equal footing with his rival only in the ring.
Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Ali
at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of
the Century. Ali scored a 12-round decision over Frazier at the Garden in a
nontitle bout in January 1974. Then came the Thrilla in Manila championship
bout, in October 1975, regarded as one of the greatest fights in boxing history.
It ended when a battered Frazier, one eye swollen shut, did not come out to face
Ali for the 15th round.
The Ali-Frazier battles played out at a time when the heavyweight boxing
champion was far more celebrated than he is today, a figure who could stand
alone in the spotlight a decade before an alphabet soup of boxing sanctioning
bodies arose, making it difficult for the average fan to figure out just who
held what title.
The rivalry was also given a political and social cast. Many viewed the
Ali-Frazier matches as a snapshot of the struggles of the 1960s. Ali, an
adherent of the Nation of Islam who had changed his name from Cassius Clay, came
to represent rising black anger in America and opposition to the Vietnam War.
Frazier voiced no political views, but he was nonetheless depicted, to his
consternation, as the favorite of the establishment. Ali called him ignorant,
likened him to a gorilla and said his black supporters were Uncle Toms.
“Frazier had become the white man’s fighter, Mr. Charley was rooting for
Frazier, and that meant blacks were boycotting him in their heart,” Norman
Mailer wrote in Life magazine after the first Ali-Frazier bout.
Frazier, wrote Mailer, was “twice as black as Clay and half as handsome,” with
“the rugged decent life-worked face of a man who had labored in the pits all his
life.”
Frazier could never match Ali’s charisma or his gift for the provocative quote.
He was essentially a man devoted to a brutal craft, willing to give countless
hours to his spartan training-camp routine and unsparing of his body inside the
ring.
“The way I fight, it’s not me beatin’ the man: I make the man whip himself,”
Frazier told Playboy in 1973. “Because I stay close to him. He can’t get out the
way.” He added: “Before he knows it — whew! — he’s tired. And he can’t pick up
his second wind because I’m right back on him again.”
In his autobiography, “Smokin’ Joe,” written with Phil Berger, Frazier said his
first trainer, Yank Durham, had given him his nickname. It was, he said, “a name
that had come from what Yank used to say in the dressing room before sending me
out to fight: ‘Go out there, goddammit, and make smoke come from those gloves.’
”
Foreman knocked out Frazier twice but said he had never lost his respect for
him. “Joe Frazier would come out smoking,” Foreman told ESPN. “If you hit him,
he liked it. If you knocked him down, you only made him mad.”
Durham said he saw a fire always smoldering in Frazier. “I’ve had plenty of
other boxers with more raw talent,” he told The New York Times Magazine in 1970,
“but none with more dedication and strength.”
Billy Joe Frazier was born on Jan. 12, 1944, in Laurel Bay, S.C., the youngest
of 12 children. His father, Rubin, and his mother, Dolly, worked in the fields,
and the youngster known as Billy Boy dropped out of school at 13. He dreamed of
becoming a boxing champion, throwing his first punches at burlap sacks he
stuffed with moss and leaves, pretending to be Joe Louis or Ezzard Charles or
Archie Moore.
At 15, Frazier went to New York to live with a brother. A year later he moved to
Philadelphia, taking a job in a slaughterhouse. Durham discovered Frazier boxing
to lose weight at a Police Athletic League gym in Philadelphia. Under Durham’s
guidance, Frazier captured a Golden Gloves championship and won the heavyweight
gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
He turned pro in August 1965, with financial backing from businessmen calling
themselves the Cloverlay Group (from cloverleaf, for good luck, and overlay, a
betting term signifying good odds). He won his first 11 bouts by knockouts. By
winter 1968, his record was 21-0.
A year before Frazier’s pro debut, Cassius Clay won the heavyweight championship
in a huge upset of Sonny Liston. Soon afterward, affirming his rumored
membership in the Nation of Islam, he became Muhammad Ali. In April 1967, having
proclaimed, “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong,” Ali refused to be
drafted, claiming conscientious objector status. Boxing commissions stripped him
of his title, and he was convicted of evading the draft.
An eight-man elimination tournament was held to determine a World Boxing
Association champion to replace Ali. Frazier refused to participate when his
financial backers objected to the contract terms for the tournament, and Jimmy
Ellis took the crown.
But in March 1968, Frazier won the version of the heavyweight title recognized
by New York and a few other states, defeating Buster Mathis with an 11th-round
technical knockout. He took the W.B.A. title in February 1970, stopping Ellis,
who did not come out for the fifth round.
In the summer of 1970, Ali won a court battle to regain his boxing license, then
knocked out the contenders Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena. The stage was set
for an Ali-Frazier showdown, a matchup of unbeaten fighters, on March 8, 1971,
at Madison Square Garden.
Each man was guaranteed $2.5 million, the biggest boxing payday ever. Frank
Sinatra was at ringside taking photos for Life magazine. The former heavyweight
champion Joe Louis received a huge ovation. Hubert H. Humphrey, back in the
Senate after serving as vice president, sat two rows in front of the Irish
political activist Bernadette Devlin, who shouted, “Ali, Ali,” her left fist
held high. An estimated 300 million watched on television worldwide, and the
gate of $1.35 million set a record for an indoor bout.
Frazier, at 5 feet 11 1/2 inches and 205 pounds, gave up three inches in height
and nearly seven inches in reach to Ali, but he was a 6-to-5 betting favorite.
Just before the fighters received their instructions from the referee, Ali,
displaying his arrogance of old, twice touched Frazier’s shoulders as he whirled
around the ring. Frazier just glared at him.
Frazier wore Ali down with blows to the body while moving underneath Ali’s jabs.
In the 15th round, Frazier unleashed his famed left hook, catching Ali on the
jaw and flooring him for a count of 4, only the third time Ali had been knocked
down. Ali held on, but Frazier won a unanimous decision.
Frazier declared, “I always knew who the champ was.”
Frazier continued to bristle over Ali’s taunting. “I’ve seen pictures of him in
cars with white guys, huggin’ ’em and havin’ fun,” Frazier told Sport magazine
two months after the fight. “Then he go call me an Uncle Tom. Don’t say, ‘I hate
the white man,’ then go to the white man for help.”
For Frazier, 1971 was truly triumphant. He bought a 368-acre estate called
Brewton Plantation near his boyhood home and became the first black man since
Reconstruction to address the South Carolina Legislature. Ali gained vindication
in June 1971 when the United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction for
draft evasion.
Frazier defended his title against two journeymen, Terry Daniels and Ron
Stander, but Foreman took his championship away on Jan. 22, 1973, knocking him
down six times in their bout in Kingston, Jamaica, before the referee stopped
the fight in the second round.
Frazier met Ali again in a nontitle bout at the Garden on Jan. 28, 1974. Frazier
kept boring in and complained that Ali was holding in the clinches, but Ali
scored with flurries of punches and won a unanimous 12-round decision.
Ali won back the heavyweight title in October 1974, knocking out Foreman in
Kinshasa, Zaire — the celebrated Rumble in the Jungle. Frazier went on to knock
out Quarry and Ellis, setting up his third match, and second title fight, with
Ali: the Thrilla in Manila, on Oct. 1, 1975.
In what became the most brutal Ali-Frazier battle, the fight was held at the
Philippine Coliseum at Quezon City, outside the country’s capital, Manila. The
conditions were sweltering, with hot lights overpowering the air-conditioning.
Ali, almost a 2-to-1 betting favorite in the United States, won the early
rounds, largely remaining flat-footed in place of his familiar dancing style.
Before Round 3 he blew kisses to President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife,
Imelda, in the crowd of about 25,000.
But in the fourth round, Ali’s pace slowed while Frazier began to gain momentum.
Chants of “Frazier, Frazier” filled the arena by the fifth round, and the crowd
seemed to favor him as the fight moved along, a contrast to Ali’s usually
enjoying the fans’ plaudits.
Frazier took command in the middle rounds. Then Ali came back on weary legs,
unleashing a flurry of punches to Frazier’s face in the 12th round. He knocked
out Frazier’s mouthpiece in the 13th round, then sent him stumbling backward
with a straight right hand.
Ali jolted Frazier with left-right combinations late in the 14th round. Frazier
had already lost most of the vision in his left eye from a cataract, and his
right eye was puffed and shut from Ali’s blows.
Eddie Futch, a renowned trainer working Frazier’s corner, asked the referee to
end the bout. When it was stopped, Ali was ahead on the scorecards of the
referee and two judges. “It’s the closest I’ve come to death,” Ali said.
Frazier returned to the ring nine months later, in June 1976, to face Foreman at
Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Foreman stopped him on a technical knockout in
the fifth round. Frazier then announced his retirement. He was 32.
He later managed his eldest son, Marvis, a heavyweight. In December 1981 he
returned to the ring to fight a journeyman named Jumbo Cummings, fought to a
draw, then retired for good, tending to investments from his home in
Philadelphia.
Both Frazier and Ali had daughters who took up boxing, and in June 2001 it was
Ali-Frazier IV when Frazier’s daughter Jacqui Frazier-Lyde fought Ali’s daughter
Laila Ali at a casino in Vernon, N.Y. Like their fathers in their first fight,
both were unbeaten. Laila Ali won on a decision. Joe Frazier was in the crowd of
6,500, but Muhammad Ali, impaired by Parkinson’s syndrome, was not.
Long after his fighting days were over, Frazier retained his enmity for Ali. But
in March 2001, the 30th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier bout, Ali told The
New York Times: “I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I
shouldn’t have said. Called him names I shouldn’t have called him. I apologize
for that. I’m sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight.”
Asked for a response, Frazier said: “We have to embrace each other. It’s time to
talk and get together. Life’s too short.”
When Frazier’s battle with liver cancer became publicly known, Ali was
conciliatory. “My family and I are keeping Joe and his family in our daily
prayers,” Ali said in his statement. “Joe has a lot of friends pulling for him,
and I’m one of them.”
Fascination with the Ali-Frazier saga has endured.
After a 2008 presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, the
Republican media consultant Stuart Stevens said that McCain should concentrate
on selling himself to America rather than criticizing Obama. Stevens’s
prescription: “More Ali and less Joe Frazier.”
Frazier’s true feelings toward Ali in his final years seemed murky.
The 2009 British documentary “Thrilla in Manila,” shown in the United States on
HBO, depicted Frazier watching a film of the fight from his apartment above the
gym he ran in Philadelphia.
“He’s a good-time guy,” John Dower, the director of “Thrilla in Manila,” told
The Times. “But he’s angry about Ali.”
In March 2011, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier
fight, Frazier attended a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden and told
reporters that he had not seen Ali in person for more than 10 years.
“I forgave him for all the accusations he made over the years,“ The Daily News
quoted Frazier as saying. “I hope he’s doing fine. I’d love to see him.”
But as Frazier once told The Times: “Ali always said I would be nothing without
him. But who would he have been without me?”
September
18, 2011
Guardian Unlimited By GREG BISHOP
LAS VEGAS —
The final sequence came quickly, brutally, not even four rounds into Floyd
Mayweather Jr.’s latest boxing triumph Saturday night.
One minute, his overwhelmed opponent, Victor Ortiz, was being deducted a point
for a clear and illegal head butt. The next minute, Mayweather feigned as if to
hug Ortiz, stepped back, and hit him hard, twice — first with a quick left hook
and then with a devastating right hand. Ortiz fell to the canvas, knocked out,
dazed, confused. He would not rise for several minutes.
After the fight, Ortiz summed up its end this way: “And then, boom, he
blindsided me.”
The crowd, which never seemed behind Mayweather, did not cheer the new World
Boxing Council welterweight champion. In fact, it booed, loudly, lustily, as
Mayweather assumed the role of villain once again.
It is a role that Mayweather seems to relish more with each passing fight, that
of heel, a champion perhaps respected, but hated nonetheless. In fact,
Mayweather swore at the HBO analyst Larry Merchant during an in-ring interview
immediately after the bout.
“In the ring you have to protect yourself at all times,” Mayweather said. “We
touched back after the break.”
He added: “He did something dirty.”
That was true, and the consensus ringside afterward seemed to be that
Mayweather, the victim of the purposeful head butt, had not done anything
illegal, even if he would not win any awards for sportsmanship. That is not his
style, anyway.
The question now, as always, is whether Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will ever
cease with substandard opposition and actually fight each other. But that is for
another night.
The fight took place under a surreal backdrop, even by boxing’s circus-like
standards, a confluence of crazy strange to anyone not named Mayweather, but
normal, too, given the Mayweather clan’s involvement.
The fighter, a world champion in five weight classes, returned to the ring for
the first time in 16 months. In recent weeks, he feuded with his father on HBO,
contested numerous lawsuits and defended his legacy so loudly, so often, he
seemed a bit jumpy, if not genuinely concerned. At the weigh-in Friday, he put
his right hand on Ortiz’s neck, strange behavior for a 5:1 favorite.
Ortiz, 10 years younger, visibly bigger, entered the ring with muscles carved
like some sort of Greek boxing god. He came here with a back story worthy of the
big screen: abandoned by his parents, guardian to his younger brother, a fighter
who sang in the school choir and played piano; whose leisure pursuits include
skydiving and surfing and triathlons.
If Ortiz had pursued another vocation, he said he would have become an
architect. Indeed, he constructed an unusual team. His trainers work day jobs,
one a truck driver, one a landscaper, and his brother, when not in camp, drives
a semi truck.
Ortiz’s career path seemed equally unorthodox. In 33 career fights, he lost
twice and earned two draws, yet he knocked every single opponent down. The power
in both his hands was evident, but his mental state begged questions, especially
after he quit two years ago in a fight against Marcos Maidana. Ortiz said he
went into that contest with a broken wrist and had shot himself with cortisone,
without telling his trainers.
Still, doubt lingered, and even though Ortiz came into this fight as the W.B.C.
titleholder, he said, “I don’t see myself as the champion.” And neither did
anybody else.
That status went to Mayweather, boxing’s most divisive figure, loved and hated,
sometimes all at once. Ortiz referenced often Mayweather’s “beautiful mouth,”
and it worked overtime all month. In one odd twist, Mayweather took several
shots at Oscar De La Hoya, the namesake of the company Mayweather hired to
promote the fight, a boxing legend who recently left rehab.
For his part, De La Hoya said Mayweather picked opponents too old, too green, or
too damaged. The undefeated Mayweather bristled at that suggestion, although the
last time he faced a fighter age 25 or younger was in January 2001.
“I’ve been dominating the fight game since Victor Ortiz was 9 years old,” said
Mayweather who called this training camp his longest ever and most grueling.
“And I’m still sharp.”
Sunday December 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Gregg Roughley and agencies
Ricky Hatton's extraordinarily brave bid to wrest the WBC
welterweight title from Floyd Mayweather ended when he was dramatically knocked
out in the 10th round in Las Vegas.
In the early hours of Sunday morning Mayweather clattered Hatton
to the canvas via the ring post with a left hook and after the Briton clambered
gamely to his feet, the champion finished the job with another huge left which
sent Hatton stumbling backwards and then flat onto his back.
Hatton had attempted to outhustle Mayweather from the start but his tactics
seldom worked and the American held a huge points advantage by the time the
fight was stopped.
"I felt alright tonight, really big and strong but I left myself open. He's
better inside than I thought, with all the elbows and shoulders and forearms he
used," said Hatton after the fight. "I didn't quite stick to my game-plan. He's
not the biggest welterweight I've fought but he was very strong. I don't think
he was the hardest puncher tonight but he was a lot more clever than I expected.
I'll be back, don't worry."
Hatton's fans continued roaring their hero's name as he was counted out on his
back on the canvas before he was helped back to his corner on unsteady legs. And
Mayweather paid a rich tribute to his vanquished foe. "He was definitely the
toughest competitor I've ever faced. I was throwing body shots and he kept
coming. I see now why they call him the 'Hitman', he said. "I feel like one of
my last fights I gave the fans a dud so I wanted to give back and give the fans
a great fight."
Mayweather had landed the first meaningful punch with a swinging left hook in
the opening seconds, but Hatton raised the roof when he landed a left hand which
caused the champion to momentarily loose balance.
Another clean left from Mayweather cracked home before the bell ended an
action-packed first round, which Hatton perhaps shaded, and Mayweather headed
back to his corner in some discomfort.
Hatton continued to stalk his opponent in the second round, taking the champion
further out of his comfort zone, but increasingly leaving himself open to the
champion's tremendously accurate left hands.
The furious exchanges continued into round three, when Hatton barged his
opponent to the ropes and dug in under the watchful eye of referee Joe Cortez,
who was perhaps being a little too pernickety in regulating Hatton's inside
work.
Hatton fired a superb jolting jab in response to another Mayweather swing but
the American responded with a cracking right hand and Hatton went back to his
corner with blood seeping out from a cut above his right eye.
Hatton landed a fine body shot but Mayweather began picking up the pace in the
fourth round, jolting home a left hand and two rights over the top which forced
Hatton to take his first backward steps. Things looked grim for Hatton but to
his enormous credit he stuck resolutely to his painful strategy in the fifth,
and was at least continuing to succeed in dragging the champion into a tear-up.
Hatton's aggression alone probably shaded the scrappy fifth, and landed a good
right in the sixth before a shot to the back of the head knocked Mayweather half
through the ropes and brought Hatton a one-point sanction from referee Cortez.
Hatton responded by briefly showing his backside to Mayweather before setting
about the champion with renewed vigour, wrestling him into the ropes but still
being picked off by Mayweather's cleaner shots.
Hatton had promised to rough up Mayweather as much as possible - and he was
clearly walking a fine line with Cortez through a number of infringements.
Meanwhile he continued to drop further behind on the scorecards.
Mayweather ended round seven with a flourish, jolting Hatton's head with two
booming right hands, and stepped things up further in the eighth, slamming home
a right from which it was a minor miracle that Hatton was able to stay upright.
There was worse to come for Hatton. Mayweather crashed in a left hand and jerked
Hatton's head as he had him in all sorts of trouble in the corner. Amazingly,
Hatton looked unfazed and fired back with a right of his own.
Cortez paid Hatton close attention at the end of the round but Hatton insisted:
"I'm OK", and strode out to continue his seemingly fruitless quest, but lacked
the clean work required to bring him back into the fight.
Early in the 10th, Mayweather finally dropped Hatton with a sweeping left hook
which sent the challenger clattering head-first into the ring post then down for
a count of eight.
Hatton gamely got back to his feet but Mayweather responded by smashing him back
to the canvas with another left hook, and referee Cortez wisely called time on
the Brit's extraordinarily brave bid one minute and 35 seconds into the round.
As if to underline the futility of Hatton's quest at that point, two officials
were scoring the fight 89-81 in the champion's favour, and the other had him
leading 88-82.
LAS VEGAS— Turns out the
obituaries written for boxing were a bit premature.
Oscar De La Hoya's fight with
Floyd Mayweather Jr. set a record for most televised buys for a fight, according
to figures released Wednesday, surpassing Mike Tyson's second fight with Evander
Holyfield and making it boxing's richest event.
A total of 2.15 million households
paid $54.95 for the fight, generating revenue of $120 million. The previous
record set by Tyson-Holyfield was 1.99 million buys.
"This puts to bed this theory of boxing being in trouble, or being dead or
dying," said Ross Greenburg, head of HBO Sports. "This fight would have never
materialized if boxing was dying."
A person close to the promotion said De La Hoya would end up making about $45
million for the fight and Mayweather just over $20 million. That person
requested anonymity because the promoters did not want official figures
released.
The $45 million would be the biggest purse paid to a fighter, higher than the
$35 million purses Tyson and Holyfield reportedly were paid for the infamous
"Bite Fight."
Mayweather beat De La Hoya on a split decision Saturday night in an entertaining
fight that drew a record live gate of $19 million at the MGM Grand Garden arena.
Mayweather won on two of the three ringside scorecards to win the WBC 154-pound
title.
The fight will be replayed Saturday at 10 p.m. ET.
Greenburg credited the success of the network's "24/7" reality show that ran in
a coveted Sunday night slot behind the "Sopranos" and "Entourage" for three
weeks leading up to the fight with helping sell both the public and the media on
its worth.
Mayweather and his dysfunctional family, including his estranged father, Floyd
Sr., and his trainer and uncle, Roger, became the stars of the show, allowing
non-boxing fans a glimpse into the life of the fighter.
"The series was not only well received by the American public, who were suddenly
attracted in a very human way to these two fighters, but it allowed the media to
cover the fight in more depth," Greenburg said. "They were able to dive deeper
into the backgrounds of both fighters."
The reality show concept never had been done among top fighters in boxing, but a
similar series on the Spike network was credited with making Ultimate Fighting
Championship mixed-martial arts fighters popular.
Greenburg said the 2.15 million buys have to be multiplied because most people
who bought the fight invited others over to watch. Multiplied by five fans or
more a household, the fight likely was seen live by well over 10 million people,
he said.
"I'm not going to say that boxing was thriving, but it was thriving on our
network," Greenburg said. "I think we were losing the average sports fans, but
this proves if you do the right names and the right matches you can win the
average fan back."
The huge success and competitive nature of the fight also brings up the
possibility of a rematch.
"You can't generate this kind of revenue and think the two fighters wouldn't
want to do it again," Greenburg said. "I haven't heard from Oscar, so I don't
know. You never know in boxing."
