Come Out Smokin'

by Phil Pepe

  “The vicissitudes of fortune may have a lot to say as to the longevity of his ring work, but he can go on for somethime in clubs, niteries, concerts and TV. He will appeal to many layers of folk.”

  But even while Joe was out there shouting, fighting was never out of his mind. There was still one little bit of unfinished business. Though there was no logical reason why Frazier should have thought he would ever have the opportunity to take care of it, still he kept thinking, dreaming and hoping. And he kept singing.

  We’ll find a place out in the sunshine,

  No man should be a rolling stone.

  Now ain’t that truly, truly lovin’ me,

  Truly, truly lovin’ me.

  Ali

  While Joe Frazier was appearing in Las Vegas, Muhammad Ali was doing some singing of his own—all over the country, on college campuses, on television talk shows, anywhere he could find an audience. He preached a doctrine that condemned his country for racial injustice and religious persecution and he deplored the inequity of a system that would permit recognition as world heavyweight champion of a man “so flat-footed, so ugly” instead of one “so beautiful, so graceful.”

  “Joe Frazier?” he shouted. “Joe Frazier? He has my title. He is a pretender to my throne. I am the real champ. I have never been defeated.”

  Thirty-two months of exile from boxing had not treated him too harshly. His weight was up to two hundred and thirty pounds, but on Ali it didn’t look bad.

  In many ways, Muhammad Ali was bigger in exile than he had been as champion. He was a fighter for his principles, a martyr courageous enough to lock horns with the establishment, courageous enough to face a five-year jail term for those principles, courageous enough to resist the pressures of the world around him.

  Deprived of his right to earn his living in the ring, Muhammad Ali took up other means of moneymaking without ever compromising his cause. He appeared on Broadway in a musical called Big Time Buck White. It was, in the vernacular of the stage, a dog.

  “The show was bad,” he admitted with characteristic modesty, “but I was great.”

  He went on a lecture tour that took him to hundreds of college campuses all over the country at $1,000 a shot and he never let up on his theme—he never let up on Joe Frazier.

  As if moved by some diabolical plot to step up his harassment, Ali moved to a new home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a plush suburb of Philadelphia, where, it seemed, he could be close to Joe Frazier and continue his verbal assault. Actually, it was merely coincidence that the two were practically neighbors. One of the reasons why Ali chose a Philadelphia suburb for his home is the same as Frazier’s—he was advised that there he would get the best tax arrangement for a man in his business and bracket. Another was personal. Muhammad had assumed he would have a great deal of business in New York. He also enjoys visiting the city and he wanted to be close enough to be able to jump in his car and drive there in a couple of hours.

  Ali abhors flying. Often he has said, “It’s not the fight that worries me; the only thing that worries me is the flight on the way to the fight.”

  Ali and Frazier got to be friends, not good friends, but acquaintances. They could never be good friends. Their life-styles were so different and they were natural rivals. But Ali, on a whim, would pick up the telephone from time to time and call Frazier. Always, Muhammad’s message was the same, “You just keep whuppin’ those guys in the ring,” he said, “and I’ll keep fighting Uncle [Sam] and one day we’ll make a lot of money together.”

  Whether Ali really believed it or whether he was playing a charade, trying to convince himself he would return to the ring, is something he alone knew. But his campaign never let up. And he never strayed too far from a gym or passed up an opportunity to stay in reasonably good shape. He ran frequently in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. One day he almost ran right into Frazier, who was out doing roadwork.

  According to Frazier, Ali put up his hands and “started jivin’. He likes to do that with guys he might fight. He likes to measure them, see if he can hit them.”

  “You really think you can whup me?” Ali probed.

  “I’ll whup Mamma she try to take my title,” Frazier said.

  “I think you mean that, Frazier.”

  “You doggone right I do.”

  “Well, let’s get it on right here,” Ali said, putting up his hands and flicking his left.

  “I walked away from him,” Frazier remembers. “He wasn’t going to do that to me. Not until they put up the money. I told him, ‘I ain’t fightin’ you now, Clay. I don’t even want to waste it in private. I want the whole world to see what I’m gonna do to you and in a ring, not here.’ ”

  Ali continued his campaign, making Joe Frazier his personal whipping boy, hurling insults whenever, wherever he could. Even the mild-mannered Frazier could take only so much. Enraged, he issued a challenge to his tormentor.

  “Talkin’ about me being flat-footed and ugly. No man is ugly,” Frazier said. “I’ll show him. He came here to run me out of my own hometown. If I don’t take him on, he’ll try to run me out of my house next.”

  Muhammad had Frazier where he wanted him. Joe had lost his usual cool and retaliated by issuing the challenge. “Show up at the PAL gym and we’ll have it out,” he said. “We’ll see who the real champ is.”

  Muhammad Ali showed up. So did 1,000 fans anticipating the fireworks, hoping to see for free what could cost a week’s wages in an arena. The police also showed up and they suggested the two fighters take their bout outdoors, to Fairmont Park, where there would be no fire hazard.

  Ali put on his coat and, accompanied by his usual entourage, marched defiantly to Fairmont Park. Now there were 2,000 people in the park, the crowd swelling as the news of a rumble spread through the streets of Philadelphia.

  “He wants to show he can whup me,” Muhammad shouted. “He says he’s the champ. Let him prove it here in the ghetto where the colored folks can see it.”

  Muhammad was waiting in the park, waiting to rumble. So were 2,000 people. But they were waiting in vain. Joe Frazier never came. Stood up, Ali was enraged.

  “Here I am,” he bellowed, “I haven’t had a fight in three years, I’m twenty-five pounds overweight, and Joe Frazier won’t show up. What kind of champ can he be?”

  “A smart one,” replied Yank Durham. “Joe wasn’t going to have a street fight in Fairmont Park and Clay wasn’t going to either. They’ll fight . . . when the time and the money are right.”

  The time was coming. At that moment, the machinery was working to get Muhammad Ali licensed and into the ring in Detroit. It was the brainchild of the late Doc Greene, a columnist for the Detroit News, and Jerry Kavanaugh, the city’s former mayor. The date and site had already been selected—September 21, 1970, in Cobo Arena.

  The only holdup, Doc Greene said, was Yank Durham. Cloverlay was willing, Frazier was willing, but Yank Durham, in his role as negotiator for Cloverlay, was being difficult again.

  “Yank is acting like a world champion manager,” Greene said. “We’re at the crucial point in our negotiations. I’ll know where we stand after I talk to Yank.”

  With Yank’s OK, Greene and Kavanaugh would take the signed contracts to Chuck Davey, the former southpaw welterweight who was chairman of the Michigan State Athletic Commission.

  “I have been in touch with Davey,” Greene said, “and I have every reason to believe he’ll OK it. Now, it’s up to Yank.”

  Meanwhile, in Miami Beach, Angelo Dundee sat and waited for a call. When Ali calls, Dundee springs into action and in recent months Ali had called several times.

  “He’ll call and say, ‘I’m coming down, Angelo,’ and he comes down and we work. He worked down here about a month and a half ago and every day he got better. I’d say he’s about seventy-five percent of what he was. I d
on’t know if this Frazier match will ever come about. I’ll believe it when I see it. Does that make me a pessimist?”

  Not a pessimist, just a realist. There had been so many other rumors of fights for Ali—in Houston, in New Orleans, in South Carolina—but they never came off. Neither did the one in Detroit. Complications arose. Submitting to the pressure of patriot groups, the state commission refused to license the fight and Muhammad Ali’s return to the ring, if there was ever to be one, would have to wait for another time and place.

  But the ice was broken and the work done by Doc Greene and Jerry Kavanaugh, and others in other cities, would not be in vain. Frazier agreed to make the first defense of his undisputed title in Detroit’s Cobo Arena on November 18, 1970, against light-heavyweight champion Bob Foster. Muhammad Ali’s future was his problem. Whenever he was ready, Joe Frazier would be waiting.

  A succession of appeals had postponed disposition of the Ali case and kept him out of jail. Then, on June 15, 1970, a historic ruling by the Supreme Court cleared the way for his return. Although the ruling attracted little attention at the time, it was the opening crack that attorneys could work on to have Ali free to reenter the ring. The highest court in the land ruled that “conscientious objector” status for those unwilling to enter the armed services applied not only to those having moral and ethical grounds for refusing to serve, but also to those motivated strictly by religious belief.

  It was on those grounds that Ali had refused to step forward and accept induction in Houston, contending that he deserved to be recognized as a conscientious objector as a minister of the Black Muslim faith.

  With that roadblock cleared, all it would take to get Ali back in the ring was a city willing to take the match and promoters with enough courage to risk public outrage and put on the fight.

  There was such a city and there were men with that kind of guts. The city was Atlanta, Georgia, and the prime movers were LeRoy Johnson, a state senator from Atlanta; Sam Massell, the mayor of the city; and Robert Kassell, a thirty-year-old lawyer.

  The fight was scheduled for October 26, 1970, and the opponent was Jerry Quarry, the Californian who had fought such a tough fight with Joe Frazier just sixteen months before.

  This time, the fight took place without incident. It went on in a tiny Atlanta arena that was used mostly for square dances and hog-calling contests. It went on before a capacity crowd of 5,000 that included black society from all over the country. It was a happening, not a fight, a revolution, not a sporting event, and it brought out such luminaries as Mrs. Martin Luther King, Whitney Young, and Dr. Ralph Abernathy.

  There was great speculation on how Ali would perform after a three-and-a-half-year absence from the ring. Would he be too slow, too heavy? Would he be ring-rusty?

  What happened that October 26, 1970, was truly miraculous. For two rounds, Muhammad Ali danced and jabbed as though he’d never been away. It was an incredible performance. But could he sustain it for twelve rounds?

  He didn’t have to. Midway in the third round, Ali drove Quarry into the ropes with a right hand and when Jerry fought his way out, blood was streaming from an ugly cut over his left eye. A little more attention to the area of the cut and referee Tony Perez stopped the fight. It took fifteen stitches to close the gash over Jerry Quarry’s eye.

  Muhammad Ali had come back. That was significant enough. Muhammad Ali had come back in style, looking like the Ali of old. That was more significant. Joe Frazier had best be alerted—the king of boxing was back and he was ready to recapture the crown that he believed belonged to him.

  Now there was nothing to stop Ali and Joe Frazier from meeting. It would be the biggest fight of all time—the greatest sporting event in history—and promoters lined up for a chance to talk to representatives of both fighters, to push money at them. One million dollars . . . two million dollars . . . three million dollars. The sky was the limit.

  And the rumors flew. The fight was going to be in Madison Square Garden . . . in the Houston Astrodome . . . in the Los Angeles Forum. It was going to be in December . . . in January . . . in March.

  But first Joe Frazier had a commitment to defend his title against Bob Foster in Detroit on November 18.

  And second, Muhammad Ali would have to have another fight. The Quarry fight in Atlanta was too short, too inconclusive. Ali was not convinced that he had come all the way back. He needed a good, hard fight, a good, hard, long fight to be sure he was ready to take on a tough customer like Joe Frazier.

  Madison Square Garden came up with the perfect match. What better opponent was there than the bull from Argentina, Oscar Bonavena, the man who had gone twenty-five rounds with Frazier? He was the perfect yardstick by which Ali might measure his readiness. The match was made for December 7.

  Frazier’s fight with Foster was nothing more than a brisk workout, a warm-up for what lay ahead. Foster was hardly more than a light heavyweight, some twenty-five pounds lighter than Frazier, a lean and lanky man who could punch, but who looked as if a stiff wind might blow him down. What blew Bob Foster down, though, was more like a hurricane.

  In the second round, Frazier hit Foster with a crushing left. He went down and barely got up at eight, wobbling all over the ring on uncertain legs. Another left hook almost ripped Foster’s head from his shoulders and he collapsed into the ropes. It was over. It was a tremendous display of animal power, a frightening revelation of punching might. But when it was over, Joe Frazier heard a strange sound from a crowd of blacks in the balcony seats.

  “Ah-lee, Ah-lee,” they chanted, leaving no doubt where their allegiance lay.

  Joe Frazier would never be free of his personal burden. Not until he met the Big Mouth. Not until he beat him good.

  Ali’s performance against Bonavena in New York was quite another matter. He was sloppy and slow. By the middle rounds he was flat-footed. The dancing, the sticking and moving suddenly vanished. He was walking, clutching, holding, playing, resting, everything but hitting and moving, which is his style . . . was his style. He was comfortably ahead in the scoring, but for fourteen rounds Muhammad Ali was exposed, the rustiness was exposed, the inactivity, the lack of training, the extra weight, the age, the prolonged layoff. Not only did Muhammad Ali need this fight with Bonavena, but he obviously needed several more. If he went into the Frazier fight in that kind of shape, he wouldn’t last three rounds.

  Then suddenly, miraculously, magically, Muhammad Ali exploded a left hand and Oscar Bonavena went down. It came from nowhere and it came from a man who was exhausted, totally spent. But however weary, Muhammad Ali did what Frazier had failed to do in twenty-five rounds.

  Somehow, it gave Ali the idea that he was imbued with mystical powers, that he could do anything he set his mind to. It gave others the same idea.

  “I could announce that tomorrow Muhammad Ali will walk across the Hudson River and charge twenty dollars admission,” said Garden matchmaker, Teddy Brenner, “and there would be twenty thousand down there to see him do it. And half of them would be rooting for him to do it and the other half would be rooting for him to sink.”

  Now it was full steam ahead to make the match of the century. Time was wasting. Any day now, the Supreme Court would hear the final appeal of Ali’s draft evasion conviction; any day now Muhammad Ali could be behind bars. Ali’s management would have liked him to have another pre-Frazier fight, but there wasn’t time. It had to be now, as soon as possible.

  Twenty-three days after Ali knocked out Oscar Bonavena, the announcement was made on that Tuesday afternoon in Toots Shor’s restaurant in midtown New York in the most spectacular, headline-making press conference in sports history.

  Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier would meet on March 8, 1971, in Madison Square Garden in what Jerry Perenchio was calling “the greatest spectacle of all time.”

  The Champ Nobody Knows

  Two days before he was to
defend his crown for the first time, Joe Frazier walked through busy downtown Detroit at high noon. Nobody recognized him.

  He wandered into a crowded department store, slipping and sliding through hordes of lunch-hour shoppers. Only one little old lady thought she knew him. Hesitating for a moment as if to overcome shyness, she slowly approached. “Excuse me,” she said, “but aren’t you Joe Frazier?”

  “No, ma’am,” Frazier said politely. “I’m his brother. Joe is back at the hotel resting. He’s fighting in two days, you know.”

  “Oh, well, please wish him the best of luck for me.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I will,” Frazier said. “Thank you very much, ma’am.”

  No heavyweight champion in history, with the possible exception of Ezzard Charles, has been pushed so far in the background of public acceptance and recognition as has Joe Frazier. John L. Sullivan, James J. Corbett, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali were idols of their day. Jess Willard, Jim Jeffries, and Primo Camera were easily recognized because of their size. Bob Fitzsimmons’ bald pate, Jack Johnson’s flamboyance, Sonny Liston’s scowl, Gene Tunney’s culture, Floyd Patterson’s unflappable calm, Ingemar Johansson’s Scandinavian good looks and Jersey Joe Walcott’s age made them well known to people outside boxing. But Joe Frazier was the champion nobody knew.

  Even the august and painfully accurate Reader’s Digest Almanac, in its annual listing of sports champions, called him “Joe Frazier.”

  Joe Frazier is totally uncomplicated and non-controversial. He is devoid of any special public appeal, either as a fighter or as a man, inside the ring or out. It is not a knock against the man. That’s simply the way he is, because that’s the way he wants to be.