The Pecan Park Eagle

Joe Frazier was a force of nature.

As you probably know by now, former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier died of liver cancer yesterday, November 7, 2011, in his adult home town of Philadelphia. He was 67 years old.

Joe Frazier was like many of us who grew up in the early era of black and white TV. Even in his humble childhood home of Beaufort, South Carolina poverty, he came of age watching the same weekly prize fights from New York, the ones with ring announcer Johnny Addie blaring out in “New Yok” language pronunciations the classic results of these endless encounters.

“In two minutes and fourteen seconds of the third round … the winner by a knockout … Rocky … Marciano!!!”

Joe listened and he heard the local voices of other kids who thanked him for being their personal protector from bullies for the price of a school lunch treat. And he especially heard the voices of his moonshining daddy’s friends, the ones who told him he had the ability to grow up and become the next Joe Louis.

In the language of more recent times, Joe Frazier was born with the heart of a champion, but it was not the kind of spirit that fed on the mere ego of an Alex Rodriguez baseball contract or a Barry Bonds steroid-induced reach for the record books. Joe Frazier’s heart fed on the hunger that only kindles into flame among those who have grown up in the hardscrabble culture of material deprivation and spiritual longing.

When Joe became a professional boxer, he answered the cry of a longing that is buried too deep in most of us to even be heard. All it takes to snuff the smoke of constructive passion in most middle class kids is a little too much protection and creature comfort. For kids who grow up in the have not land of the nation’s housing projects, the easy access to gangs and criminal behavior most often converts that passion to wanton pillaging.

Joe Frazier got lucky. He was a poor country boy, threatened neither by the suffocation of middle class mollycoddle or the entitlement culture of those city-poor families that lived out their lives on welfare.

As you also probably know, Joe Frazier fought his way to the heavyweight division championship in 1970. In March 1971, he then defeated Muhammad Ali in the first of their three matches. They called this one “the fight of the century” and, as one who saw it in downtown Houston on a closed circuit pay-for-view telecast, I would certainly have to agree. Smokin’ Joe attacked Ali like a force of nature. He was all over Ali like the Great Storm of 1900 was when it suddenly and repeatedly hit the beaches of Galveston.

Joe later lost his crown to George Foreman as well as two additional great fights with Ali, but he never lost that charging, always embering push to be a champion in everything he took on as a challenge. Sadly for Joe, he was born to become a contemporary of the most eloquent, most charismatic, most handsome, and best boxing heavyweight to ever put on the gloves. Even Joe’s smokin’ heart of fury could not stand up forever to the skill of the man who became best known to the world as Muhammad Ali.

But none of those truths about Ali have altered my reasons for liking Joe Frazier as my favorite heavyweight champion. – Joe Frazier fought as he did because that’s who the man was. He was a fighter to the core. And unlike Ali, and most of the others, Joe Frazier was not motivated by ego or social cause. He fought because he was a 100% fighter to the very end. Had there been a way to knock out liver cancer, Joe Frazier would have done it.

Rest in Peace, Smokin’ Joe. – Rest in Peace in the Hands of the Lord with all our prayers and best wishes for your new life in eternity. And thanks for being an inspiration to so many of us while you were here.