Smokin Joe Frazier

Joe Frazier on long-time rival Muhammed Ali in the May 2009 Details:


Q: Where would you be right now if Muhammed Ali hadn't been stripped of his title in 1967?

A: Joe Frazier's life didn't start with Ali. I was a Golden Gloves champ. Gold medal in Toyko '64. Heavyweight champion of the world long before I fought Ali in the Garden. And I went down to D.C. to help Ali get his license back, man. President Nixon invited me up for tea: "Joe, if I do that, can you take him?" he said. I said, "You dust him off, I'll beat him up." Nixon kept his word. So did I.

Q: So why did he come down to your gym and challenge you to a fight in a park?

A:He's just a noisemaker, an empty wagon going down a road: bumpity-bumpity bump. 'Joe's got my title. Joe's a tom. Joe the white-man fighter!' Hes a pretty boy from Louisville. Light-bright and damn near white. I'm a sharecroppers son from Beaufort, South Carolina. Bumpity-bump.

[...]

Q: Ali took from you too. Do you respect him?

A: Hell, yeah. And I feel sorry for him now, but I did what the Lord told me to do. Him going around all "I am The. I am The Greatest. I am The Prettiest. I am The Butterfly." Well, you can't be The—Thee is the Lord. Ali even told me in the ring, "You can't beat me—I'm your Lord." I just told him, "Lord, you're in the wrong place tonight."

Q: What wisdom did you take from the ring?

A: Stick with the plan. That's you and the trainer. And train every day to make the plan come true. Stay close and when he misfires, Boom. [Imitating Howard Cosell] "Muhammad is down, Muhammad is down." See, the thing no one knew, 'cause I'd never get a license, was I've been pretty much blind in my left eye since '64. Had an accident with an old speed bag and pieces of metal flew into my eye. When my right eye swelled up in Manila, 14th round, and it looked like Ali's beating Joe Frazier up? I was a blind man. That's why Eddie Futch wouldn't let me come out in the 15th.

Q: That was the third fight. He beat you twice.

A: Who?

Q: Ali.

A: He never beat me.

Q: That's not what the history books say.

A: History books? Go back far enough, the earth's flat. That's what them books say.


Read the rest of the interview with the smack-talking Smokin' Joe
online.