Joe Frazier: Life goes on

The plan:
(subject to change)
The man called Joe Frazier
The Frazier-Ali feud
The sad tale of Patterson I
Joe Frazier: In the beginning
Muhammad Ali: In the beginning
The Frazier-Foreman fight
The sad tale of Patterson II
The sad tale of Patterson III
The Thrilla in Manila
Frazier: life goes on
Ali, Liston and Malcolm X
Mike Tyson goes to war
The sad tale of Teddy Atlas




Frazier’s life settled into the Broad Street Gym, a local fixture in the rough precinct where he had begun. His life fell into a groove,
working with his fighters, checking into hotels, minding clocks and
schedules. He had bought the gym from Cloverlay for $75,000 along
with the remaining fighters under contract to the syndicate. Among
his first fighters was a then-promising Duane Bobick, a white heavyweight;
nothing more arouses ownership interest, and Faustian pacts
are made in the endless search for one. Joe was getting him ready for
a workout and slipped a right hand glove on his left hand. Accidental,
but Bobick looked at him with disgust and said: “Yeah, and you want
to be a trainer?” Bobick disappointed; white heavyweights invariably
break your heart.




Frazier: life goes on
The Heavyweights
A series of threads about Frazier, Ali, Patterson and Tyson

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But Joe learned that you can’t be friends with fighters,
that he’d have to grow a new, tough hide in a new, subtle game.
He’d adopt the method used by Yank Durham on him, clever but definitely
not subtle. Yank insisted on obedience and punctuality, no lip
and industry; even Yank’s voice scared Joe.
Frazier began to train his son Marvis; no problem with the dogma
there. Marvis was a heavyweight, a good boxer who Joe tried to turn
into a prototype of himself. Eventually, he’d get out of the ring with
$1 million in total earnings. But Joe was having trouble with other
young fighters. They didn’t want to be told what to do, when to do it.
He lost a couple of good amateurs to others, and didn’t like it much;
so much for loyalty, they didn’t even allow him to make an offer. He
had not charged managers for training their fighters in his gym, now
he would. “You don’t go to General Motors,” he said, “build a car and
say it’s yours. Same thing at my gym. If you come here and learn, I
want to make money back.” He had a young phenom, Bert Cooper, “a
natural hitting machine.” Big things were ahead, then he lost Cooper
to coke and the streets. Joe began to despise drugs, and would find
how close to home they could touch.
One of his prizes was Chandler Durham, a light-heavy and the
son of Yank. He threw himself into the shaping of Chandler. “The boy
could fight,” says Burt Watson, Frazier’s business manager. “But Joe
just couldn’t bring him into line. He called Joe names, and Joe took
it. He thought he was Joe’s equal. Joe would shake his head and say:
‘Your daddy’s spittin’ in the grave at the things you’re doin’.
Chandler, too, was gobbled up by the environment. Chandler was a
friend of Joe Jr., whom Frazier guarded like a Doberman. Joe Jr. was
five-five, 147 pounds, and everyone who saw him not only thought
he was a duplicate of Joe, but also found him better; his ring record
was 15–0. “He positively walked through people,” says Watson. “One
of the greatest talents I’ve ever seen.” Frazier knew it, his heart
pounded with recognition of himself; he was alive, back at the hunt
again. Until Joe Jr. slipped into a haze of drugs, with Frazier cruising
the night streets in his car, looking for him, desperately trying to
break his fall; he couldn’t. Joe Jr. got into trouble and was sent to
prison for three years. Mentally, it leveled Joe to his knees.



Next:
Ali, Liston and Malcolm X

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Dear god, proteect me from my friends; my enemies I can take care of
-Voltaire



Ironic, though: Clay had rushed toward the Muslims like an orphan,
while the sect saw no utility in him, no gain, despite Malcolm X’s interest.
Clay was a Muslim in his own mind, that’s all. Elijah Muhammad
had forbade Malcolm to talk to Clay, though he had been cultivated by
Muslim underlings working on their own long before Malcolm’s arrival.
The Muslim hierarchy barely knew who Clay was, while the troops in
Miami filled his head with dogma and privately laughed at the idea of
Clay beating Liston. His name was also a minor point of derision at the
Chicago headquarters. The focus there remained on Malcolm’s disobedience;
he was meddling again and would bring ridicule to Elijah with
his “association with a fool fighter.” Muhammad Speaks did not even
send a reporter to cover the Liston fight. Besides, old Elijah hated boxing,
fighters were “slaves run by fat men with cigars who stole their
money.” No black man should perform in any capacity for a white man;
had Clay lost he would have been dropped, or drifted away, without a
single Muslim hand reaching for him
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