Inquirer Editorial: Remembering a classic Philly sports champion
There was a time when there seemed to be only two heavyweight fighters in the world. And Pennsylvania was the center of the boxing universe.
There was a time when there seemed to be only two heavyweight fighters in the world. And Pennsylvania was the center of the boxing universe.
In this corner - that is, in his North Broad Street gym in Philadelphia - was "Smokin' Joe" Frazier. Up state, at his Deer Lake training camp, was Muhammad Ali.
Ali was photogenic, playful, and glib. He was a showman, a poet, a star, the kind of guy they make movies about and immortalize in song. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Frazier, who died this week at age 67 of liver cancer, always seemed to be in Ali's shadow - although certainly not in that bout 40 years ago, at Madison Square Garden, where the bee was smacked into the canvas.
Smokin' Joe was the workhorse. He didn't float, he came right at you, relentlessly, with deadly purpose and a killer left. He was an Olympic gold medalist who kept winning, including that historic defeat of Ali, the first of their three fabled matchups.
Yet when it came time to make a movie about a blue-collar boxing hero from Philly, the title was Rocky, not Joe. It was Rocky's statue, not Joe's, that adorned the Spectrum - the venue whose first boxing event in 1967 featured, you guessed it, Smokin' Joe.
Frazier didn't seem to mind. He kept on, in his quiet, dignified way. His work spoke for him, in the ring against the pounding fists of opponents, and out, coolly enduring Ali's cruel, relentless trash talk.
That quiet dignity spoke volumes. A statue of him in his adopted hometown would say even more - but that's a fight for another day. Today, Philadelphia, and the world, remembers the sharecropper's son who fought his way to a heavyweight title.
