Come Out Smokin' by Phil Pepe

Author:Phil Pepe [Pepe, Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPORTS & RECREATION/Boxing
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2012-10-29T13:00:00+00:00

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.

It didn’t bug Joe to go anonymous and unworshiped. He is what he is and he didn’t intend to change; he didn’t intend to be what other people thought he should be.

“I’m just me, see,” he explains. “If people don’t like me, that’s their business. If they don’t notice me, that’s good. I got enough people pestering me anyway. I’m making money, ain’t I? That’s enough for me. Let the other guys take the glory. I’m the heavyweight champion of the world. They none of them can take that away from me, not outside the ring. And I don’t know any that can take it away from me inside the ring either.

“I haven’t changed. Some people say I should change, but I can’t. I wouldn’t know what to change to.”

Much of the man’s lack of public acceptance was not even of his own making. It was his misfortune to come along in the time of Muhammad Ali, the man he insisted on calling Cassius Clay.

“I call him Clay,” Joe Frazier explained, “because he said he don’t care what I call him. That’s the name his mamma and daddy gave him, so that’s what I call him.”

In the minds of many, Muhammad Ali was still the heavyweight champion of the world.

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