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I once asked Joe Frazier, who turns 66 years old on Jan. 12, to tell me everything he knew about clinching, that regrettable survival maneuver to which all fighters resort sooner or later, mostly because they have run out of answers.
We were collaborating on an instructional book called Box Like the Pros and I wanted to make sure we included a section on this fundamental skill, which most fighters learn as amateurs.
I asked Joe, “So what do you want to say about clinching? You know, when to do it, how to do it, under what circumstances, things like that.”
Joe Frazier looked at me with what I interpreted to be a mixture of pride and disdain and said, “I never worried about it. My job was to make the other guy clinch. If I’m doing my job, he’s clinching. I never worried about it.”
Of course. What could I have been thinking?
Clinching was for cowards, for scamboogahs. He didn’t have to say it.
He is every bit a hard man and a hard fighter. Still.
When you think of all the great struggles Frazier was in, all the storms of mayhem he created with his fists, and especially the left hook, it was always the other guy trying to clinch, the other guy who had run out of answers. Who he had forced to run out of answers.
Muhammad Ali, Jerry Quarry, Jimmy Ellis, Bob Foster, George Chuvalo, so many others. At one time or another they all were compelled to grab Frazier and hang on for dear life, the way you or me would wrap our arms around a palm tree in a typhoon. It was the only way to slow him down.
The only one who didn’t worry about getting Frazier wrapped up was George Foreman, who also had a way of running guys out of answers.
“The guy who beat me up was George,” Frazier told me recently, when I asked him whether he had any regrets about his career.
“I shouldn’t have gone back at him twice. But he was always a good guy so I would never say anything against him,” he said.
Then, as if to remind anyone who might be listening and thought he heard Joe Frazier admit someone had got the best of him, he supplied a corrective.
“But I took on ‘The Butterfly’ three times and let’s say he won two, and I won one, but if you look at him now, you know who won them all.” Then he laughed. Hard.
This is one of Frazier’s favorite devices. His enmity toward Ali remains profound and deep, still, 35 years after the Thrilla in Manila. He has claimed at various times to have forgiven Ali, usually when there is some financial consideration at stake. It is a charade.
The rest of us in our comfortable living rooms and suburban memories would like Frazier and Ali to become dear old friends in these the last years of their lives. To sit around a checkerboard reminiscing about the good old days. What do you think that would sound like?
“Yeah, Butterfly, remember how fun it was when you called me an Uncle Tom and ignorant and a gorilla, and said I was the white man’s champion? Wasn’t that fun?”
Ask Frazier what it was about him that gave him the mettle to walk through hell to become the champion athlete and American hero he was, and he diffuses the credit.
“Number one from the beginning: The Lord above. And then mom and dad. They raised me the way they were brought up, with an understanding of respect for mom and dad and let’s say brother and friends and fans. And that’s why things happened for me the way they did,” he said.
“I made up my mind that I was going from the South up here and I was going to be champion of the world. And I was going to serve the world with righteousness and be a good guy and be an example, so all the young men and young ladies could say well, ‘Joe did it, so why can’t we do it?’”
Health and financial troubles have picked away at Frazier over the last few years, the way Ali’s jab did in Madison Square Garden and Manila. He’s had several surgeries on his back and neck.
He had to sell his beloved gym on Broad Street in Philadelphia. There have been family spats and failed lawsuits. The fortune he earned over a 37-fight, 11-year pro career (not including a one-fight comeback in 1981) is long gone.
If he is bitter about it, he hides it well.
“The Lord’s been good to me. I’m happy with the way my life turned out,” he said. “My mom and dad did a fine job with my brothers and sisters. I had 18 brothers and sisters and there are just two of us left. So God has been good to me.”
He earns a living making appearances all over the world, trading in the warm nostalgia people feel when they see his face and remember how he made them feel when both of them were young and strong.
But only one of them paid the price for willing himself into one of the great heavyweights.
“I keep going around saying hello to the fans and doing different things with different people,” he said. “And that’s a rougher job than fightin.’ Because you gotta smile, be a good guy, sign autographs. In the fighting game you just gottta walk in there and beat ’em up.”
To Joe Frazier, that always was the easy part
We were collaborating on an instructional book called Box Like the Pros and I wanted to make sure we included a section on this fundamental skill, which most fighters learn as amateurs.
I asked Joe, “So what do you want to say about clinching? You know, when to do it, how to do it, under what circumstances, things like that.”
Joe Frazier looked at me with what I interpreted to be a mixture of pride and disdain and said, “I never worried about it. My job was to make the other guy clinch. If I’m doing my job, he’s clinching. I never worried about it.”
Of course. What could I have been thinking?
Clinching was for cowards, for scamboogahs. He didn’t have to say it.
He is every bit a hard man and a hard fighter. Still.
When you think of all the great struggles Frazier was in, all the storms of mayhem he created with his fists, and especially the left hook, it was always the other guy trying to clinch, the other guy who had run out of answers. Who he had forced to run out of answers.
Muhammad Ali, Jerry Quarry, Jimmy Ellis, Bob Foster, George Chuvalo, so many others. At one time or another they all were compelled to grab Frazier and hang on for dear life, the way you or me would wrap our arms around a palm tree in a typhoon. It was the only way to slow him down.
The only one who didn’t worry about getting Frazier wrapped up was George Foreman, who also had a way of running guys out of answers.
“The guy who beat me up was George,” Frazier told me recently, when I asked him whether he had any regrets about his career.
“I shouldn’t have gone back at him twice. But he was always a good guy so I would never say anything against him,” he said.
Then, as if to remind anyone who might be listening and thought he heard Joe Frazier admit someone had got the best of him, he supplied a corrective.
“But I took on ‘The Butterfly’ three times and let’s say he won two, and I won one, but if you look at him now, you know who won them all.” Then he laughed. Hard.
This is one of Frazier’s favorite devices. His enmity toward Ali remains profound and deep, still, 35 years after the Thrilla in Manila. He has claimed at various times to have forgiven Ali, usually when there is some financial consideration at stake. It is a charade.
The rest of us in our comfortable living rooms and suburban memories would like Frazier and Ali to become dear old friends in these the last years of their lives. To sit around a checkerboard reminiscing about the good old days. What do you think that would sound like?
“Yeah, Butterfly, remember how fun it was when you called me an Uncle Tom and ignorant and a gorilla, and said I was the white man’s champion? Wasn’t that fun?”
Ask Frazier what it was about him that gave him the mettle to walk through hell to become the champion athlete and American hero he was, and he diffuses the credit.
“Number one from the beginning: The Lord above. And then mom and dad. They raised me the way they were brought up, with an understanding of respect for mom and dad and let’s say brother and friends and fans. And that’s why things happened for me the way they did,” he said.
“I made up my mind that I was going from the South up here and I was going to be champion of the world. And I was going to serve the world with righteousness and be a good guy and be an example, so all the young men and young ladies could say well, ‘Joe did it, so why can’t we do it?’”
Health and financial troubles have picked away at Frazier over the last few years, the way Ali’s jab did in Madison Square Garden and Manila. He’s had several surgeries on his back and neck.
He had to sell his beloved gym on Broad Street in Philadelphia. There have been family spats and failed lawsuits. The fortune he earned over a 37-fight, 11-year pro career (not including a one-fight comeback in 1981) is long gone.
If he is bitter about it, he hides it well.
“The Lord’s been good to me. I’m happy with the way my life turned out,” he said. “My mom and dad did a fine job with my brothers and sisters. I had 18 brothers and sisters and there are just two of us left. So God has been good to me.”
He earns a living making appearances all over the world, trading in the warm nostalgia people feel when they see his face and remember how he made them feel when both of them were young and strong.
But only one of them paid the price for willing himself into one of the great heavyweights.
“I keep going around saying hello to the fans and doing different things with different people,” he said. “And that’s a rougher job than fightin.’ Because you gotta smile, be a good guy, sign autographs. In the fighting game you just gottta walk in there and beat ’em up.”
To Joe Frazier, that always was the easy part
