Frazier's blindness

His book is very detailed and I don't think he claimed to have been legally blind in any eye his whole career. He says he had a cataract forming since 1964 in one eye, which grew worse in the 1970s and by 1973 or '74 his other eye was giving him problems too.
By the later fights, yes, that probably would have been legally blind in one eye due to the long-standing cataracts.
Otherwise what we're probably talking about here is "not well sighted enough to box" (under more stringent commissons) for most, or perhaps all, of his career. But most commissions were lax.

Reputable doctors and surgeons are cited.
This isn't some made up story. His eyes were bad.

 

Yes, the Frazier autobiography says it was easy, especially at championship level, to pass the tests. Often they didn't even ask him to read the eye chart.
He says they avoided fighting in California later on because there the medical standards were enforced more stringently.

There's a lot of info in the book.

 

I can't "see" that being true........

 

being blind, and having some minor sight problem that is ongoing and developing, are very different things, you know.

blind means you see nothing, zilch.

 

I don't think Futch was the kind of guy to go along with a fighter jeopardising his health.

 

I have cataracts forming in both eyes ,I didn't know until my last eye examination. Only Joe and his corner know how bad his eyes were ,and Futch is quite specific that he wasn't blind in an eye.

Frazier fought
Mathis NY 1968
Ramos NY
QuarryNY
Ellis N Y
Ali NY
Ali 2 NY
Quarry2NY
Foreman NY 1976
A span of 8 years.
Aren't NY medicals strict?

 

Joe Frazier said he couldn't see out of his eye in later fights, or was close enough blind. That's quite specific too.
Only Joe and his eye doctors actually know. Reputable doctors. People who would fully understand the medical condition, and the man himself. The cornerman isn't an eye doctor.

I don't think many boxing medicals were strict enough in the 1970s. Other fighters have similar tales of fooling eye tests.

 

yeh but you need to learn to appraise what you read - why would you wear a contact lens in a blind eye?

 

He wore the contact lens after the cataract surgery.

Incidentally, Larry Holmes claimed to have done the same thing in the Holyfield fight, after retina surgery.

 

I don't know enough about the situation to form an opinion, so I'll keep an open mind on it.

 

Obviously you wouldn't ,unless the lens was to mask obvious deterioration? Or worn in the other eye?

 

Same here.
We will never know.

All I'd be prepared to say is that Frazier had bad eyes at some point (or points) of his career, and that it can all be made up. The level of the problem, I'm not qualified to say, I'm not his or anyone's doctor.
I can say what's in the stuff I've read.