Smokin' Joe by Joe Frazier

Author:Joe Frazier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2014-04-02T23:09:46+00:00

Talk about a night being electric.

Hoo-boy, March 8, 1971, was it. The Garden was high-voltage, with 20,455 ticket-buying customers shoehorned into the building.

The great fighters of the past—Joe Louis, Dempsey, Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pep, James J. Braddock, Gene Tunney—had been introduced, and now, as I headed down the aisle toward the ring, that hum of excitement turned up in volume.

“Make room, make room,” Yank was shouting over the crowd’s roar, in that deep rumble of a voice.

I was behind him, my head bobbing as I touched his shoulders with my gloves. Around me fans leaned in to shout, “Go get him, Joe.” “Kill that mutha, Joe.” Under my green-and-gold brocade robe, on which the names of my five children were printed, I was flexing my shoulders, eager to get this thing going.

The fans were with me, shouting Fray-sher, Fray-sher, Fray-sher.

Another roar: Clay was moving toward the ring now. The crowd chanted, Ah-lee, Ah-lee, Ah-lee . . .

Clay glided along the ropes, playing to the crowd. When he got to the corner of the ring where I stood, he brushed up against me and said, “Chump.”

I just glared at him, and watched him dance away. Was nothing he could do that could unsettle me now. My time was here. This was real. Me and damn Clay in the four-squares.

Then the ring announcer, Johnny Addie, in a tuxedo and blue shirt, was saying: “Ladies and gentlemen. In this corner, wearing red trunks and weighing 215 pounds, from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, the return of the champ . . . Muhammad Ali.”

Cheers, and more chants Ah-lee . . . Ah-lee. . . Ah-lee . . .

“And in this corner,” Addie said, “wearing green-and-gold trunks, weighing 205 ½ pounds, from Philadelphia, the heavyweight champion of the world . . . Joe Frazier.”

The crowd erupted with Fray-sher. . . Fray-sher. . . Fray-sher.

The bell gonged several times—a signal that it was time to remove our robes and move to center ring, where the referee, Arthur Mercante, stood, waiting to give us final instructions.

Whatever Mercante said I never heard. That was ‘cause Clay was jabbering away at me, with that bug-eyed nutball look of his. I didn’t hear any of what Clay said either. I was just staring at him, letting the anger inside me fester.

Where most fights were strictly business, Clay was another story. With that trash mouth of his, the scamboogah had made this personal. As he babbled on, I looked at him and told him: “I’m gonna kill you.”

Back in the corner, Yank said: “Get on his ass. Work him ‘til he don’t want no more.”

The crowd was on its feet. Ringside was full of celebrity faces—Senator Hubert Humphrey, Ed Sullivan, Diahann Carroll and David Frost, Alan King, Joe Namath, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, George Raft, Bing Crosby, Ted Kennedy, Pat O’Brien, New York City mayor John Lindsay, Count Basie, George Plimpton, and Burt Lancaster. I didn’t see any of them, or think of any of the 300 million fans who were watching on satellite TV and closed-circuit.

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