I recently watched Joe Frazier's fights with George Chuvalo and Jerry Quarry and I was impressed by his defense. His constant bobbing and weaving upper body movement is great but this leads to some observers not noticing his complete defensive game. His ability to block, parry, and roll with punches doesn't seem to get enough credit. I even noticed Joe rolling some shots with his shoulder and using great defensive footwork. Anyone else think Smokin' Joe has a severely underrated defense?
joes defence was very effective when he had that extra inch of timing. It wasnt like he anticipated what was coming to him, he combined rolling defensive moves and a stutter step whilst he was positioning his shoulders for the next shot he wanted to get off. He developed a rythem that combined defence and offence whilst closing the other guy down. joe was pin point at his best leaving his opponent no room for error so it was harder for them to pin down farzier before he clipped them. The motion, the closing and his own accuracy took away half of what the other guy had so he didnt get hit so much at his best. later, without that extra inch of timing the sequence of head rolls could be timed. when his head went down it was coming back up even if a punch was coming. The stutter step he used that put him closer would also be miss timed. After TFOTC, defensivley joe was half the fighter he had been against ellis and bob foster. I would agree however he had moves and the defence was good when he was sharp beacuse of the edge in timing and accuracy frazier had when at his best.
in my opinion he ranks as one of the top in-fighters of all time and one of the key things an infighter has to master is defending whilst on the inside. Joe did it perfectly against classic boxer punchers, but struggled against sluggers.
it wasnt that he struggled with sluggers it was just that they met him head on and punching room was reduced. bonavena and chuvalo stayed on him but frazier had more quality at that time and beat both. quarry actualy slugged with frazier and came off worse. dave zigglewicz slugged with frazier but was blown away. Ron stander and george foreman fought an entirely different fighter than bonnavena, ziggy and chuvalo fought -as did jumbo cummings much later.
