Smokin' Joe

by Mark Kram, Jr.

  Columnist Jack McKinney lampooned Buster Mathis in the Philadelphia Daily News as “too big to be a man, too small to be a horse.” They called him “Little Big Daddy,” a salute to NFL defensive lineman and fellow Detroiter Eugene “Big Daddy” Lipscomb. Born the youngest of eight children in 1943 in Sledge, Mississippi, Mathis grew up in the Motor City and found himself orphaned at age fifteen, at which point he became the ward of sign painter Paul Collins and his wife in Grand Rapids. Along with working his way up on the amateur circuit as a boxer, he played some defensive tackle for the semipro Grand Rapids Blazers. By all accounts, he was an appealing young man—a jolly sort—who blamed his weight gain on his weakness for soul food, particularly fried chicken and pinto beans. As the presumptive Olympic heavyweight gold medalist, he said he dreamed of one day tangling with Cassius Clay, of whom he said: “I really believe I excel him at everything except purtiness.” Frazier liked Buster, enjoyed his company, yet dismissed his size as “baby fat.” Frazier had scouted him in the semifinals and concluded that he had “nothing on his jab” and that his hook was so long that it could stop and take on passengers. Frazier said, “My only problem will be getting out of the way when he falls.”

  Hours before they were scheduled to step into the ring, it appeared that Mathis would be forced to withdraw because of high blood pressure. When it was checked at 3 P.M., his systolic pressure was an alarming 195, apparently due to his excessive weight. But he lay down for three hours and it dropped to an acceptable enough level for the bout to proceed. While Frazier had said that he expected it to be the easiest of the tournament, he found himself flummoxed by the sheer bulk of Buster, who outweighed him by a hundred pounds. Chopping him down would be a project on the order of angling a piano up a narrow stairway. Referee Roland Schwartz told then–New York Herald Tribune columnist Red Smith: “Joe feinted a hook to the body and threw a hook to the chin and I thought, ‘Oh-oh. Get ready to start counting.’ But Buster never blinked.” Whenever Frazier penetrated his perimeter, he encountered an undulating cushion of flab. With Frazier on the attack, Mathis counterpunched effectively and revealed surprising agility, which prompted ringside announcer Don Dunphy to observe: “He moves almost like a middleweight.” Frazier continued to apply pressure in the second round, but was penalized two points by Schwartz for low blows; Joe would later complain that Buster wore his trunks almost up to his nipples. Up on his toes in the third round, Mathis wobbled Frazier with a wild right to the head. Had it been a longer bout, Frazier very well could have worn down Mathis over a period of rounds. But Buster was awarded the decision. Then–New York Journal American reporter Dave Anderson told me: “Somehow the judges voted for Buster Mathis. They seemed to be dazzled by his ballet, instead of the punches. I wondered if we were watching the same fight.”

  Frazier vowed he was done with boxing. “Pitty-pat, pitty-pat. He hit me with his best shot and it was nothing,” Frazier told flyweight Bobby Carmody, who would capture the bronze medal in Tokyo and three years later die in an ambush while serving with the U.S. Seventeenth Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam. Gene Kilroy, who would later oversee business affairs for Ali, had joined his old army buddy Carmody at the trials that week in New York and remembered how dejected Frazier was. “He said he was going to go back to Philadelphia and just get a job,” said Kilroy. Carmody reminded Frazier that he had the ability to be a good pro. Frazier just shrugged. But as he packed his gear and prepared to head to the team bus that would take him back to the Hotel Commodore, the beaten and forlorn young man did something that impressed Anderson, who was gathering notes in the dressing room. Frazier spotted Philadelphia Bulletin boxing writer Jack Fried, who had been attentive to his amateur career. Joe shook hands with him and said, “Thanks, Jack, for all you did for me.” Anderson remembered thinking, “This is a guy with some heart.”

  * * *

  At the epicenter of North Philadelphia on a humid Friday evening in August 1964, a quarrel erupted between Rush Bradford and his wife, Odessa, in the front seat of their car. Odessa grabbed the steering wheel and held her foot on the brake, which caused the vehicle to come to a stop in the shadow of the Twenty-Third PAL, at the intersection of Twenty-Second Street and Columbia Avenue—also known as “Jump Street” or “The Ave.” With traffic snarled amid a cacophony of horns, a city cop leaned into the car to extricate the woman from it, only to be seized upon from behind by a passerby. Mayhem ensued. Bricks and bottles flew through the air as police backup converged on the scene. Rumors circulated that the cops had beaten to death a pregnant black woman. Over a seventy-two-hour period, across twenty blocks of North Philadelphia, looters ransacked storefronts and incinerated buildings in an event that left one person dead, 339 injured (including one hundred police), and 775 in custody. Photographed in a half-shell riot helmet in the Philadelphia Daily News was Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo, who would use the Columbia Avenue riots as one of the underpinnings for his brass-knuckle climb to power.

  The Twenty-Third PAL was the only building in the immediate vicinity that did not have its windows shattered by rioters. Even incorrigible hoodlums appreciated the good that “Mr. Duke” performed in the community. In a Sports Illustrated cover piece written by my father that appeared on June 19, 1967, Gypsy would remember the looting and admit that he had a small hand in it himself. “I finally couldn’t help it when I see these three men tryin’ to load a refrigerator in a car,” he said. “The cops came and hauled them away, and while they were bein’ taken this chick jumps up on top of the refrigerator and starts screamin’, ‘Black men unite!’ I said to myself, ‘Baby, I’m gonna unite all right,’ and then Gypsy start diggin’ in himself.” Atop the refrigerator, the woman began shouting down local NAACP leader Cecil B. Moore, who appeared on the scene to quell the rioters. That his words were not heeded would lend weight to the belief by Rizzo and others that the civil disobedience had been the work of subversive “black militants.”

  Frazier held a pragmatic view of the rampaging that occurred in Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere during the summer of 1964: to Frazier—who kept “a low profile” during the riots, according to Mazie—it was hard to understand why someone would burn down their own neighborhood, the very place where they lived and worked. Notwithstanding, he could appreciate the rage that racism triggered, how it incited a passion to push back. While Frazier was not one to back down from any challenge to his pride as a man, he was also not one to court open confrontation with white authority. Unless he was provoked, he held a conciliatory if wary view of the white establishment, knowing that it stood squarely between the poverty from which he sprang and the actualization of a better life. The only bombs Joe would ever throw would be in the ring.

  Whatever impulse Joe had to quit boxing in the wake of his defeat to Mathis dissolved with the intervention of Durham and Dugent, both of whom impressed upon Frazier that there were better days ahead. Invited to join the Olympic squad as an alternate, Frazier was initially uncertain if he could afford it, given that leaving home to join the team would jeopardize his job at Cross Brothers. The one-hundred-dollar-a-week position that Florence had as a checkout clerk at Sears was far from enough for her and the children to get by on. Dugent elicited the aid of Rizzo, who in turn called an owner of Cross Brothers and was assured that Frazier would have a job when he came back. Thus, Frazier dipped into the few dollars he had saved to pay for his passport and inoculations, boarded a plane to California the first week of September, and reported for training at Hamilton Air Force Base, near San Francisco. There, he became reacquainted with Mathis, who was as big as ever, playfully unfocused, and in no apparent mood to seize upon an opportunity that Frazier himself still craved. By that point, Frazier had but two outside chances of competing in Tokyo: Buster would have to suffer a disabling injury or Frazier would have to drop almost twenty pounds to box as a light heavyweight.

  Only twenty-three days before the Tokyo Games commenced, Frazier and Mathis fought again in an exhibition at Hamilton Air
Force Base. Again, Frazier lost, this time by a split decision. The San Rafael Daily Independent Journal observed in its report the following day that Buster “shook like a jar of jelly” and had problems keeping up his trunks. The packed gym roared in laughter as he stopped and yanked them back in place. As he had in May, he exhibited impressive footwork and counterpunched effectively across three rounds. According to the Daily Independent Journal, Frazier hit him with “tremendous jolts.” None of them had any effect. Frazier would later tell Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich, “My gloves sank in his belly up to my wrists and nothing happened.” But Mathis broke a knuckle on his right hand. Two days later, it was announced that his hand would be in a cast until a day before the opening ceremonies, and he would be replaced on the team by Frazier. Gene Kilroy heard from Carmody that Mathis would be sidelined and called Frazier with the news. Frazier exclaimed: “Oh, God! Thank you, God!”

  Japan looked upon the Tokyo Games as far from just an extravagant sporting event. Nineteen years had passed since the United States secured its surrender by dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it viewed the Olympic Games as an occasion to position itself with renewed dignity upon the world stage. To avoid any possibility of bringing shame upon itself, Emperor Hirohito issued initiatives to clean up the city, which included a sweep of the local sex trade. In his article on the Games in Sports Illustrated, Jack Olsen quoted an unidentified athlete who said he had gone to a Turkish bath in the Ginza and complained: “They gave me a Turkish bath!” Even known pickpockets were forewarned that their pictures had been circulated and that close tabs would be kept on them. But the Japanese government did not anticipate the lawlessness that would be engaged in by the athletes themselves, who plundered Tokyo stores on shoplifting sprees that challenged the congeniality of their otherwise agreeable hosts.

  Friendly young American women could be found at the International Club in the Olympic Village. Frazier told Olsen, “They do The Crossfire, The Pony, The Hunt, [and] The Monkey.” Then, he added by way of explanation: “They’re all dances, you know?” In between his obligations with the team, he hung out with Carmody, who in long-distance phone calls with Kilroy said, “This Joe Frazier, what a good guy. We’re having a lot of fun!” Carmody told Kilroy that when the team members washed their clothes together, Frazier would collect any unused soap and send it back to Florence in Philadelphia. Florence received letters from her husband each day—sometimes two a day. In them Frazier replayed the events of his day in Tokyo, said he loved her, and reminded her, “Keep the children off the streets.” Insofar as the opponents he would face were concerned, he told her not to worry, writing: “They fight like girls.” Cockiness oozed from him. When a teammate asked, “You gonna get the gold, Joe?” he would point to his chest and reply, “You’re lookin’ at it, boy.”

  Four opponents stood between Frazier and the gold medal. Far from the smooth sailing he had anticipated, there were some challenges as the tournament unfolded. With the exception of a relatively easy first-round victory over Ugandan George Oywello—whom he stunned with left hooks and stopped on a technical knockout at 1:35 of the first round—Frazier found himself in fleeting jeopardy in his quarterfinal and semifinal bouts, against Australian Athol McQueen and Russian Vadim Yemelyanov, respectively. McQueen nailed Frazier with a right hand to the chin in the first round that dropped him to his haunches. Frazier had never been knocked down before, which became a point of pride for McQueen. “Geez, he was a tough bugger,” the Aussie said years later. Frazier answered with a barrage of body blows and stopped him on a technical knockout forty seconds into the third round. Yemelyanov wobbled Frazier in the first round of the semifinals with a solid right to the chin, but Frazier floored the 213-pound Leningrad soldier with a left hook in the second round and battered him from corner to corner until the referee halted the fight at 1:59 of the round. Frazier would be the only one of ten American boxers to advance to the finals.

  Awaiting Frazier there would be German Hans Huber, a thirty-year-old bus driver who had been rejected by the Olympic wrestling team. Unbeknownst to anyone, Frazier had injured his left thumb in his annihilation of Yemelyanov. Doctors looked it over, but Frazier would not allow them to X-ray it. “I figured if [an X-ray] showed it was bad, I’d be thrown out of the finals,” Frazier said. Three inches taller and ten pounds heavier than Frazier, Huber backpedaled from the onset of the bout as Frazier plowed ahead and launched wild left hooks. Only three of the twenty he threw in the second round alone landed. Frazier bore in again in the third and final round, yet Huber remained out of range until deep into the round, when Frazier stunned him with two left hands to the head. Even with the esoteric scoring system embraced by Olympic boxing, it seemed inconceivable that Huber could walk away with the decision. But it was far closer than it should have been. Frazier won a 3–2 split decision, which prompted Red Smith to observe in the New York Herald Tribune: “Robbery was averted only because one Argentinian judge, one Finn and one Japanese out-voted a nudnick from Fiji and a Rumanian schmo who thought they were watching a footrace.” Buster extended his good hand and said, “Congratulations, big Joe!” An exhilarated yet weary Frazier told the press, “All I intend to do is go home and take it easy for a while.”

  Five hundred people showed up at Philadelphia International Airport in late October to welcome back Frazier and eight other local Olympians, a rowing team of six oarsmen and two track-and-field athletes. A band played “The American Conquest March.” Florence was there with their three children. She told reporters that she was “a little scared,” and not sure if she wanted her husband to continue boxing. Frazier was also unsure of himself, if only because no one had yet stepped forward with a deal for him to turn pro. Unlike Olympic champions who would follow him years later, including far lesser talents upon whom big bags of money in endorsements and other commercial arrangements were heaped, Frazier found himself in a state of limbo. X-rays of his thumb performed in Tokyo before he boarded a plane back to Philadelphia revealed a break that doctors stabilized with a temporary cast that enabled him to travel. The injury would later require two operations.

  Still reeling from the September swoon of the Phillies, which had come on the heels of the riots and steeped the city into a catatonic state, Philadelphia delighted in the emergence of “The Slaughterhouse Kid.” Only twenty, he carried himself in public with an agreeable humility that Stan Hochman characterized in the Philadelphia Daily News as “doorman-like politeness.” Citations and plaques were handed out to him at banquets, where he stood in a coat and tie for group photographs with other area Olympians. One by one, they signed his plaster cast, which Frazier said he planned to keep in his trophy case. On December 1, Frazier joined 108 members of the U.S. Olympic Team in Washington for a luncheon at the White House, where President Lyndon Johnson extolled the assembled athletes for their haul of 150 medals and observed: “Perhaps I will be forgiven if I note that ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was played so often [at medal ceremonies] that people in Tokyo went around humming it like the number-one hit tune of the day.” Four days before Christmas, Frazier spoke for over an hour to the eighth-grade students at Newcomb School in Pemberton, New Jersey. W. P. Moran, their teacher, wrote in a letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer: “He was delightful. The children loved him. He was good for them. . . . There should be more Joe Fraziers in the world.”

  Even as he reveled in the acclaim that was showered upon him, Frazier remained financially strapped to the point that he had become destitute. His injury had prevented him from returning to his former job at Cross Brothers. In light of the stature he now had as an Olympic gold medalist, he hoped that his bosses there would appreciate the public relations value he added and find something for him. But no position was offered, which he later remarked upon in interviews as the cause of some dejection. To supplement Florence’s small salary at Sears, a mutual friend encouraged him to approach former Olympic and heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson for a small loan.
Patterson said he would think it over and call back. When he never did, Frazier carried a grudge that spilled into the pages of Sports Illustrated a year later. He said, “I had a wife and three bugs [children] and there was no food in the house. When that happens a man does a lot of things he don’t feel right doing. If Patterson didn’t feel he could afford to loan me a little bread, well, that was all right. But he could have wrote and said, ‘Sorry, but no go.’” Frazier looked forward to the day they met in the ring.

  Too proud to ask for any form of charity that would subtract from his manhood, he became the beneficiary of a civic expression of it when the local papers discovered he was down to the lint in his pockets just prior to Christmas 1964. Immediately, help began pouring in. Mayor James H. J. Tate offered him a temporary job with the Department of Recreation. Seven or eight other places called with jobs. Frazier jotted them down on a pad. A check in the amount of five hundred dollars came from John Taxin, the owner of Old Original Bookbinder’s seafood restaurant. Smaller sums came from others. When the donations were all counted, they came to twelve hundred dollars. And the toys! “They’ve been coming in all day,” said Frazier, who arranged them under the tree until Christmas morning for the children. Overwhelmed with appreciation, Florence would say, “It was the merriest Christmas that there ever has been.”