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  • 7/24/2025
A feature documentary celebrating the rise of a humble but driven boxing perfectionist who triumphantly emerged from Muhammad Ali's long shadow to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World and redefined greatness in his own image.
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Transcript
00:00:00Music
00:00:25Hey, Joe. Yeah. What's the highlight of your career?
00:00:28The highlight of my career. Being born in the world.
00:00:41Joe Frazier made aggressive fighting an art form.
00:00:45When Frazier throws punches, he wants to kill you.
00:00:49He grew up in South Carolina. They didn't have any money.
00:00:53They weren't educated, but he was especially well-spoken with his hands.
00:00:58He was relentless. There was a lot of punches.
00:01:01You take one to give two, but you have to get inside to give one.
00:01:07Joe was a very proud man. He never kissed anybody's ass.
00:01:10He didn't want to be a political symbol.
00:01:12I speak from my heart, you know what I mean?
00:01:14The way I see things and the way I feed.
00:01:16Joe loved cars, fighting, women, and music.
00:01:21Music to Joe Frazier was his sanity.
00:01:24That's what you saw when you saw Joe perform.
00:01:27Joe Frazier was a warrior, man.
00:01:29Without Joe Frazier, there wouldn't have been no Ali.
00:01:32I'm the champ. You ain't. You the champ. Right on.
00:01:35That kind of rivalry, we'll never see something like that again.
00:01:38Three of the biggest fights in history. It's no coincidence.
00:01:44There was another side to Joe. He had a big heart.
00:01:46Do anything for you.
00:01:48If a car's broken down, Joe Frazier will stop every time.
00:01:51He's just in his DNA to help.
00:01:52White America always thought Joe Frazier was this blue-collar working man,
00:01:56but man, he was the king of swag.
00:01:58No one ever did get Joe Frazier right.
00:02:00No one ever got the real Joe Frazier.
00:02:08No one ever got the real Joe Frazier.
00:02:28How are we doing there, guys?
00:02:30I'm rolling.
00:02:31There's a lot of things in my life that the whole world just don't know.
00:02:37Because I never sit down and tell him.
00:02:48Ali Frazier, the fight of the century, March 8th, 1971,
00:02:54transcended the sport of boxing
00:02:56and entered into this realm of America at the highest order.
00:03:01Everybody was talking about Ali and Frazier.
00:03:05It was the beginning of the megafight era.
00:03:08Frazier Ali.
00:03:09It was polarizing.
00:03:10He's the Joe Frazier.
00:03:11The guy talked from the side of his mouth.
00:03:14He was the bull and the matador.
00:03:15He's the other type negro.
00:03:17He's a phony.
00:03:18Who do you root for and why?
00:03:20Frazier's gonna win!
00:03:21It's a hell of a way to present one's society to the world because,
00:03:24you know, that's what it meant.
00:03:25Every punch that was thrown had a subtext behind it.
00:03:28Totally different styles.
00:03:30The one area where they were very similar in the ring was that they were both mean, nasty,
00:03:37SOB fighters.
00:03:39Joe Frazier was prepared to die in that ring that night.
00:03:43Joe came out of ugly origins and boxing became his way out.
00:03:48Round one.
00:03:49I was born and raised in beautiful South Carolina.
00:04:03My original home is the South.
00:04:05Joe's family, they were sharecroppers.
00:04:07It's not intellectual.
00:04:09It's hard living.
00:04:12It was slow.
00:04:13It was hot.
00:04:14Bugs everywhere.
00:04:15It was survival.
00:04:16Joe Frazier has had to face adversity, not from the moment he was born, but from the moment he was conceived.
00:04:23He was in his mother's stomach.
00:04:25She was pregnant with him when his dad had an altercation in which he was shot in his left arm by a friend.
00:04:32Shot off by, like, a jealous husband of somebody that Reuben might have been doing the wrong thing with.
00:04:38Or the wild thing, as Joe would say.
00:04:40His mom was shot in the same incident.
00:04:42Could have killed Joe Frazier.
00:04:44Joe Frazier didn't grow up in Beverly Hills.
00:04:481944 in rural South Carolina is really not that far removed from the end of slavery.
00:04:57His earliest memory would be sitting on his father's knee and his father would call him Billy Boy.
00:05:01And, you know, he was known to be, like, a daddy's boy, and he was basically his father's shadow.
00:05:06Mom and dad had, like, probably 15 together.
00:05:10Out of all of them, you know, like, I was the youngest one.
00:05:13And being his dad's favorite, Joe had to become his dad's left arm.
00:05:19The whole setting of that story, the drama, and how it ultimately came full circle with him using the left arm that his father never had and become world famous was really extraordinary and, in a way, poetic.
00:05:32Back in the country, they had, like, maybe one or two televisions, you know.
00:05:36You'd get around there just to watch fights at the time.
00:05:41You had boxing on TV several times a week.
00:05:45Everybody knew who the heavyweight champion of the world was.
00:05:49And there was, uh, Joe Lewis and Rocky Marciana, there's a Charles, Jersey Joe Walker.
00:05:55My uncles and my aunts and my father used to say, you know, let the kid look at him.
00:06:00Look at the body structure.
00:06:02He said, one of these days, that boy's gonna be a Joe Lewis.
00:06:05I knocked my arm out of place when I was a little boy.
00:06:09Chasing after a hog and was told not to, and fell and broke his arm.
00:06:14My mom, he said, listen, you go down to the pen, feed the hog, do not tease him.
00:06:20I said, yes, ma'am.
00:06:22When I went down to feed the hog, I started teasing him.
00:06:26And he was a big old boy, man.
00:06:28He was that high.
00:06:29And he jumped on the fence.
00:06:30He couldn't run no faster than me.
00:06:32I took away from him.
00:06:33But when I tripped, it hit the brick.
00:06:35The brick, like, took the arm out of place.
00:06:37And back in them days, mom and dad didn't have the finance.
00:06:42They had no health care insurance.
00:06:44They had no money go to a hospital.
00:06:47My dad didn't have the love.
00:06:49You know how you spell that, right?
00:06:51Everyone knew why.
00:06:54His mom and his dad always said he was a fighter.
00:06:59He had the bag when he was a kid.
00:07:01That bag that he built with his own hands and hung it from a tree, he filled it up with peat moss, corn cobs, shoes, wood, whatever he could put in there.
00:07:11I grew up with a bad arm, but it never stopped me.
00:07:14Come home in the evening, I had like 30 minutes to punch the bag.
00:07:18It was like a daily recitation.
00:07:21That's where his power really came from.
00:07:23The roots of his thoughts and his gut feeling came from that time in his life, what his mom and his dad put in him.
00:07:34So I decided that I'd find a better way for mom and dad.
00:07:39Joe Frazier was able to come from the most difficult beginnings and get to a very lofty place in this world.
00:07:46Tell him one of these days, I'm going to build y'all whatever you want.
00:07:49I'm going to be the champion of the world.
00:07:56Growing up in Buford, South Carolina, there were hard times.
00:08:00But when you actually lived in those times, we really didn't know any better.
00:08:05I couldn't understand why they had different schools.
00:08:08I couldn't ride the bus.
00:08:10I had to get out of town at certain times during the day.
00:08:15Joe got into a little bit of trouble as he got a little older.
00:08:18Not older much, only at 15.
00:08:20Joe was 14, 15, worked on a farm.
00:08:24This black kid was being accosted by this white man.
00:08:27We had problems, you know, racial problem, you know, with my white brothers.
00:08:33I never could understand why.
00:08:35Because we all had the same arm, the same leg.
00:08:38Some of them shot another.
00:08:42Joe had stuck up for this black kid.
00:08:44And the white man decided that he was going to beat Joe with his belt.
00:08:51Joe said, me and Joe, I wouldn't do that, man.
00:08:56Joe's mom said to him, listen, if you can't get along with the white people here in Buford,
00:09:05you better leave because that's not going to end up good for you.
00:09:09Joe was forced out of South Carolina, but he never ever held any grudge towards that.
00:09:15His mom put him on a bus with a couple of legs of fried chicken.
00:09:20And he took the bus on his own from Buford to New York.
00:09:27What a horrific childhood and what it took to get out of there.
00:09:33This is a free land in which we have a right to work anywhere.
00:09:39Joe Frazier came to New York in 1959 and moved in with his brother, Tommy.
00:09:44They got through a little bit of trouble there.
00:09:46I mean, they tried to start a little side hustle.
00:09:49We call it freedom of opportunity.
00:09:51I was borrowing cars that there wasn't mine and didn't bring it back.
00:09:56And it means there is a free market for our skills.
00:09:59I had to leave because that wasn't going to work, you know, being a thief.
00:10:06And I lived with her aunt. She was like a maid.
00:10:09And my uncle, who was here, his name was Cadillac.
00:10:14He was married at 16 and had kids.
00:10:16He was acting like a grown man at that point.
00:10:18During the day, you work at all kinds of jobs when you can find them.
00:10:21Money's scarce, particularly when yours and Florence's son, Marvis, comes along in September of 1960.
00:10:27I got married when I was real young.
00:10:29He was working in a slaughterhouse. He put on weight.
00:10:32At the age of about 16, I was about 230 pounds.
00:10:36So I had a little problem of, you know, fitting up in clothes.
00:10:39So, therefore, I couldn't afford any clothes.
00:10:41So I had to find something to do, get that weight on.
00:10:43And then I finally had a punch.
00:10:45When I went in the gym, they had about 12 heavyweights in there.
00:10:49And by the time I left out, I was the only guy in the gym.
00:10:53Fortunately, you meet someone who sees potential in you.
00:10:56Joe, your close friend and manager since the beginning of your boxing career,
00:10:59Mr. Yancey Yank-Durham.
00:11:02You saw Joe's potential early, Yank.
00:11:05Yes, Joe is a dedicated boy.
00:11:07His determination was so great that I figured that Joe would go all the way.
00:11:11In a boxing gym, trainers like to keep training sessions controlled.
00:11:16But Yank-Durham didn't let Joe do that.
00:11:18He let him be as ferocious and aggressive as he could possibly be.
00:11:23A lot of people don't know that from our first start with him,
00:11:26he thought he was a type of fighter.
00:11:28When we were on the ground, you had to look at this mindset.
00:11:30This is something we have to stop.
00:11:31You are too short for a boxer.
00:11:33You are fighting.
00:11:34You have the power.
00:11:35And you've got to keep applying pressure on these fighters.
00:11:37It felt like that relationship was a father-son relationship.
00:11:41And Joe relied completely on Yank-Durham.
00:11:45Mr. Yank-Durham, God bless him.
00:11:47I didn't go anywhere without him.
00:11:49Frazier won 38 of 40 amateur fights, grinding through all opposition to three Golden Globe titles.
00:11:55I had all knockouts before I went to the tryout.
00:11:59I'm telling my family and my friends, yeah, I'm going to beat them all.
00:12:04Round three of the 1964 Olympic trials between heavyweights, Buster Mathis and Joe Frazier.
00:12:10Mathis is enormous.
00:12:11He weighs 300 pounds.
00:12:13I didn't think Mathis won the fight, but he got it anyway, so he came back with a little tear dripping down.
00:12:20Joe lost to Buster Mathis in the Olympic trials, but Buster broke his hand, so Joe Frazier went to the Olympics.
00:12:28Cook here was like a whole different world altogether.
00:12:31Same like that.
00:12:33He was 231 pounds, another muscle and bone.
00:12:40I said, come on with it.
00:12:44I stopped in two times.
00:12:46Third time, he didn't come back out.
00:12:48And that's where I busted up the thumb then.
00:12:51He broke his hand in the semifinal and had to figure out a way to fight in that final with that broken hand.
00:12:59Joe had his own medication.
00:13:02With some hot water, some salt and sugar.
00:13:05A little old remedy that Mom used to give me and Dad, you know.
00:13:09Dolly, his mother, she was just a beauty.
00:13:12Corn trout pipe, sitting on a front porch.
00:13:15Dolly would eat dirt every day with a spoon.
00:13:17She would go out and find some of this peat soil stuff and eat it.
00:13:22And I asked Joe what it was about, and he said, that's where you get the goodness.
00:13:25You know, she wanted the minerals from the earth.
00:13:27Joe Frazier was from Gullah culture.
00:13:30In the Gullah culture and tradition, we were spiritually into the church,
00:13:36but at the same time, being into root and witches, spirits.
00:13:41You couldn't go to a doctor.
00:13:42So Joe always concocted things.
00:13:45They came from his childhood, the most obscure things you could imagine to fix something.
00:13:49Whether it was the flu, whether his back was hurting, arthritis.
00:13:53Sometimes he'd write in the jar what it was.
00:13:55You might just put hair grow on there.
00:13:56If you've got bad hands from hitting the bags,
00:13:58come here, son, let me put some of this stuff on there.
00:14:00Joe used to take big mayonnaise jar and fill it with liquor and orange peels.
00:14:06And rock candy.
00:14:07And have it sit and marinate for about two or three months.
00:14:11And shake it up.
00:14:12And every time we'd go someplace, he would take some of that.
00:14:14And that would be his medication.
00:14:15For whatever ailed him.
00:14:16His big thing was Wesley's Tire Cleaner.
00:14:18It was a special cleaner that they had for the limousine company.
00:14:21For the white walls.
00:14:22So he'd spray it on their toothbrush and brush his teeth with it.
00:14:25Gaggle something.
00:14:27Maybe curvasia, maybe lemon juice.
00:14:28In his mind, he was like, hey, if it's going to make the tires white,
00:14:31it'll make my teeth white.
00:14:32Joe Frazier made the most of his opportunity in 1964.
00:14:38He was going to get the job done no matter what.
00:14:42Fighters have many times fought with injuries that they sustained during a fight.
00:14:46But it's very rare that somebody goes into a fight with that kind of injury.
00:14:51It's emblematic of Frazier.
00:14:53Joe Frazier, who was concealing a broken thumb, won a gold medal.
00:14:57Joe was very patriotic.
00:14:58I think he was the only American to win it.
00:15:00And he was so proud of that.
00:15:02Nobody won a gold medal but me.
00:15:04It was like a great thrill to know that I saved America.
00:15:10In 1964, when Joe came back from the Olympics, things were awful hard for Joe and myself.
00:15:18Time was real bad.
00:15:20I didn't have a job.
00:15:21I was working at the slaughterhouse.
00:15:24And then I got laid off.
00:15:26Look, he was a guy with a bad hand.
00:15:29Wasn't particularly verbal.
00:15:30Joe Frazier was country.
00:15:32You know, and Joe didn't have the wordplay to deny this.
00:15:37He was a reflection of those country roots.
00:15:41An Olympic gold medal was a very different phenomenon economically in those days.
00:15:49And at that point, there was no way of knowing that he was going to become the fighter that he became.
00:15:55Well, I then spent most of our savings to buy food for the kids and pay the bills and rent and anything.
00:16:04His hand is broken.
00:16:05He couldn't work.
00:16:06And I had the children to care for.
00:16:08I couldn't work.
00:16:09So, we were just sort of stuck.
00:16:12Well, I was going blind in 64 when I came back from the game.
00:16:17He had shrapnel in his eye from the speed bag.
00:16:21A little sliver of steel that cut into his eye, his retina.
00:16:25It made him 80% blind in one eye.
00:16:28And he fought his whole career that way.
00:16:29Blind and broke was no fun.
00:16:32Jake, you told Dr. Gray that you thought it would take at least $5,000 to get Joe launched on a professional fight career.
00:16:38That's true.
00:16:39I sit and talk with Dr. Gray and I ask him about her cooperation.
00:16:41So, he talked to various people and we got the cooperation together.
00:16:44And that's where we are today.
00:16:45Mr. Wright, how and why was Cloverley formed?
00:16:48Dr. Baldwin had asked me to give him a method of sponsoring a prize fighter.
00:16:53How did you get involved with Cloverley?
00:16:55I read about it in the newspaper and I called Dr. Baldwin regarding a purchase of a share.
00:17:01Her dad showed up at the next meeting with 500 hours.
00:17:04And now he was one of the founding guys of Cloverley.
00:17:07We guaranteed Joe $100 a week for three years.
00:17:10And this was before any earnings had come in.
00:17:15Cloverley really looked out for Joe Frazier.
00:17:18Isn't it kind of unusual for a woman to be part owner of a boxer?
00:17:22Yes, that's what made it so thrilling.
00:17:24They were guiding Joe's career.
00:17:29They didn't want to exploit Joe.
00:17:30They wanted to see that Joe was fairly treated.
00:17:33It's a real good feeling, you know, that you really got people like that behind you.
00:17:36And they're wonderful people to be with.
00:17:39You could kind of brag to your neighbor or to your boss or coworkers that you owned a fighter.
00:17:44They would sell these shares of stock and they were $250.
00:17:48The Joe Frazier Cloverley story became popular.
00:17:52As time went by, they increased in value to what I remember someone saying like almost $14,000 a share.
00:17:59Do you think it was a good investment?
00:18:00Very good.
00:18:01I have no complaints.
00:18:03I was rooting for Joe Frazier, who I loved as a boxing fan.
00:18:07I loved watching him run through the heavyweight division.
00:18:10Frazier was the only American to win a gold medal in the 1964 Olympic boxing tournament.
00:18:16At 11-0, he faced a very tough fighter, an Oscar Bonavena, a South American fighter who had power in both hands.
00:18:31And because of the style Frazier fought, it was two trucks coming together.
00:18:36Bonavena is probably the stronger of the two and has fought the more experienced opponents.
00:18:41That one particular fighter, I didn't like the way I performed.
00:18:46He hit punch.
00:18:49Frazier down again.
00:18:50There was a three knockdown rule in effect, so his career at that point could have been short circuited.
00:18:56He was trying to get that third knockdown with a push and a shove.
00:19:00Because he knew if he'd push down a third time, they were going to stop the fight.
00:19:05Yank Durham was furious.
00:19:07Joe had gotten sloppy.
00:19:08He had started to believe that he couldn't be hurt.
00:19:12I lay hands on them and they fall.
00:19:15And there it is, the final bell.
00:19:17That was a real crucible for him early in his career, but still won a decision.
00:19:23But you came on to win. I want to congratulate you.
00:19:26You're still undefeated and you're certainly a wonderful prospect.
00:19:29One of these days, we hope you have you on a title fight.
00:19:32Thank you very much.
00:19:33Thank you very much, Joe Frazier.
00:19:36The man to beat me haven't been born yet.
00:19:42He said he was the greatest. Nobody could beat him.
00:19:45I'm the heavyweight champion of the world and I don't have to talk no more and say I'm the greatest,
00:19:48because people tell me I'm the greatest.
00:19:50I came at a moment like this.
00:19:52I am the greatest. I am the king.
00:19:54I want to shut him down.
00:19:55I'll be champion. I can stay in the ring ten more years.
00:19:58It's easier, I figure.
00:19:59So you're not prepared to discuss your feelings about the Vietnam War?
00:20:03World heavyweight champion Cassius Clay refused to take the oath of induction into the army.
00:20:14The black Muslim fighter, who's also known as Muhammad Ali, was immediately stripped of his title by the World Boxing Association.
00:20:20My intention is to box to win a clean fight. But in war, the intention is to kill, kill, kill, kill, and continue killing innocent people.
00:20:31Muhammad Ali refusing induction into the United States Army during the height of the war had enormous sociological and political impact.
00:20:42Muhammad Ali was prohibited from fighting and Madison Square Garden said that New York State would recognize a championship fight between Joe Frazer and Buster Mathers.
00:20:57Even the fighters themselves know that they cannot be considered world champions until they fought Muhammad Ali.
00:21:03What are your feelings about the demonstration against the fight?
00:21:06I don't know anything about it. I got the fight on my mind. I get out there and I go to work.
00:21:10And as long as Mathers want to be there and be smoked down, I want to smoke him.
00:21:19Even before I turned professional, I seen him annihilate Buster Mathers.
00:21:23He beat that boy, beat that boy, and finally knocked him out.
00:21:26From that point on, everyone was afraid of small guys. Frazer was not big.
00:21:31He got the maximum out of his physical abilities, fighting, you know, the best of competition.
00:21:37Eddie Machen, George Chavalo, and Oscar Bonaventure twice.
00:21:42The second Oscar Bonaventure fight. I was 10 years old.
00:21:45Joe's son Marvis and I were around the same age, and we were pretty good friends.
00:21:49My dad, of course, put us at ringside. I remember it being, like, kind of a brutal fight.
00:21:55I hit him with everything. No, he just wouldn't fall, man. He was a tough guy.
00:21:59After the fight was over, they rushed to Marvis and I back into Joe's dressing room.
00:22:04And I see Oscar Bonaventure walk in. And Bonaventure did not have his eyes open,
00:22:09because they were swollen shut at that point. And somebody had to lift his arm to put it into Joe's and to shake his hand.
00:22:16The brutality of that sport struck me that night, for sure. And it doesn't leave you. It's a brutal, brutal sport.
00:22:29Tomorrow night, Joe fights Jimmy Ellis for the World Heavyweight Championship at Madison Square Garden.
00:22:35Music was what he enjoyed doing, and people let him do it.
00:22:40But right now, here he is with the knockout singing, Knock on Wood.
00:22:52I don't want to lose this good thing, baby.
00:22:55That I'm not. If I do not.
00:22:58To go on the Ed Sullivan Show before the day he's going to fight Jimmy Ellis.
00:23:03Live. And it was live back then.
00:23:05He's supposed to be resting. I mean, this guy was, like, made of concrete.
00:23:08I wonder, could you feel it, baby?
00:23:11I wonder, could you feel it?
00:23:13I wonder, could you feel it?
00:23:15Not only was he doing a good job on Ed Sullivan, he walks in the ring and does his day job extremely well.
00:23:20Champion Joe Frazier takes on Jimmy Ellis.
00:23:23The Bobby Weave style is staying low, like the Henry Armstrongs, the Tysons of the world.
00:23:32That's my old trick about fighting, you know what I mean?
00:23:34Stay close on the man and take the room away from him.
00:23:37There was a lot of nuance to what he did.
00:23:39You know, he would use his jab on different levels.
00:23:42Then he doubled with the left hook, so that surprised you.
00:23:44When you perfect it, it's very tough for any opponent to deal with.
00:23:48Jimmy Ellis Joe is just too relentless and too powerful.
00:23:52He goes out and knocks Jimmy Ellis out in five rounds.
00:23:56Joe Frazier becomes the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world in Madison Square Garden.
00:24:11America in 1971 was divided over the war in Vietnam.
00:24:17It was divided over racial issues.
00:24:19Think about the assassination of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and of course, Muhammad Ali's three-and-a-half-year exile.
00:24:29Black people got to the point where they couldn't take it no more.
00:24:35To make some people understand sometimes, you have to use bottles and bricks.
00:24:40You may don't intend that you don't want to use them, but then again, you just have to sometimes.
00:24:45Muhammad Ali and Joe really became surrogates for that culture war. Muhammad willingly, Joe unwillingly.
00:24:55When he came to the politics and the wars and stuff, he said, I'm not qualified to make a judgment on that.
00:25:00For Joe Frazier to be a champion, he's got to beat me.
00:25:03He said, you got my title. I said, I ain't got your title. I didn't take it away from you.
00:25:08Huh? You know what happened. You didn't fulfill your responsibility. That's why you lost his title.
00:25:14There were times during Ali's exile when they were quite friendly.
00:25:19Before he had his title stripped from him, I had a lot of respect for him.
00:25:23Joe was helpful to Ali in different ways.
00:25:27He said, come for you. How do you go to New York? I said, all right. I'll take you to New York.
00:25:32I put him in my car. I took him to New York. We got to start talking. He said he didn't have enough money.
00:25:38I can remember what it was, $500, $200, $300. I gave him some money.
00:25:45Then we got into New York. He got out of the car.
00:25:48Joe Frazier got my title. I want my title. Man, come on, man.
00:25:54Give me a break. I brought you. That's Joe Frazier.
00:25:57You're Joe Frazier. I'm on my car with y'all.
00:26:00Ali was angry. He'd been stripped of his title.
00:26:03He was being treated by many Americans as an object of scorn.
00:26:10Take it easy, man. We sit together. Just chill out. You know what I mean?
00:26:15Joe said to me, this scam booger has got my money in his pocket, and he's talking bad about me.
00:26:21The whole time going back, he said, yeah, I was talking to him in the car, but I was thinking of how I'm going to kill him in the ring legally.
00:26:28I helped him with a lot of things that most people wouldn't do. We went to the president of the United States, President Nixon.
00:26:35Mr. President, for me, would you give Muhammad his license?
00:26:39He said, oh, you think you can take it? I believe I can take it. I got it in my back pocket.
00:26:46When the white man took his title and denied him a chance to do anything to make a living, Joe Frazier stood up. He came to the plate.
00:26:56The main thing, we were responsible for him to get half of the purse. And after he got this money and got a little foothold, you know what I mean?
00:27:04He tried to do everything and say everything to put me down.
00:27:08He was the champion of the world. If you ain't got something right to say to me, then you better keep me quiet.
00:27:17Why? Because I'm going to peel off and hit you.
00:27:20It was 2.5 million each that they got for that fight.
00:27:23That was the biggest sports payoff that an athlete got in the history of sports.
00:27:28It's the biggest fight because for the first time you've had a witty, quick, fast talking heavyweight champ.
00:27:33When the most of them ask the question, how do you feel champ?
00:27:35I think a lot of black people hear Ali saying, in addition to everything else, you're a country boy. You're a farm boy.
00:27:44If you want to really get deep, you know, you're a field slave.
00:27:49Ali called him stupid. Called him ignorant. Called him Uncle Tom.
00:27:54Because he knew Frazier was sensitive to that. And a white man is controlling you.
00:27:59Because he's the Uncle Tom.
00:28:01Joe Frazier. He's the Tom.
00:28:03Tom? Ain't no people in town. What are you talking about?
00:28:06That people didn't know about his window.
00:28:08He told me, look, this guy keep calling me an Uncle Tom.
00:28:12And he said, I don't want my wife thinking that I'm peeping in windows.
00:28:15He actually thought he was calling him a peeping Tom.
00:28:18He didn't know what an Uncle Tom was.
00:28:20He's the other type Negro. He's not like me.
00:28:23It was damaging to Joe.
00:28:26And it also made that demeaning treatment of a certain kind of black person acceptable.
00:28:35Which it shouldn't have been.
00:28:36He's a brother. One day he might be like me.
00:28:39But as of now, he works for the enemy.
00:28:42Ali had tried to paint Joe Frazier as an Uncle Tom and somebody that wasn't a part of the solution for black people,
00:28:48but was still part of the problem.
00:28:50Why did he insist on calling me Cassius Clay when even the worst of the white enemies recognized Muhammad Ali?
00:28:54He keeps saying Clay. He's still Clay. He gonna stay Clay.
00:28:57And to me, he's gonna always be Clay.
00:28:59Joe, for a long time, did call him Ali.
00:29:02Ali made a statement the other day that he want six million.
00:29:06It wasn't until Ali started disrespecting Joe that Joe started calling him Clay.
00:29:12I'm Tom. I'm Uncle Tom, Negro.
00:29:15You might be considered ignorant. Uncle Tom is an entirely different thing.
00:29:20It was very hurtful to his kids.
00:29:23It's understandable that Joe harbored the ill will that he did.
00:29:28You talk some deuce out of your mouth. One did a white and one did a black.
00:29:33Many people, as we all know, rooted for Muhammad Ali openly because they saw him as a symbol of the anti-war movement.
00:29:41And wrongly, Joe Frazier was somehow cast as this darling of the older white establishment in the United States.
00:29:48It's real difficult for someone to say in public, I hate that nigga Muhammad Ali.
00:29:54So Joe serves the purpose of camouflaging some of the racist ideas of certain individuals.
00:30:03Now these people, they don't give a shit about Joe Frazier.
00:30:06The reality is, they like Joe because he's fighting Ali.
00:30:10I was there to get the job done. I can't let the people down.
00:30:14Look at me, studies are out.
00:30:16To Joe, it was a battle of, really, of religion.
00:30:20He felt like he was destined and called for that position.
00:30:24Every person of note was at that fight, whether they were in politics, entertainment, sports, you name it.
00:30:32We know it's a big fight when Frank Sinatra is a photographer at ringside.
00:30:36Yank Dormish trainer told him before the fight,
00:30:39to win this fight, your life's set up forever.
00:30:41That was truly the fight of the century.
00:30:43It hasn't been a fight like that with that much magnitude, that much interest in the history of boxing.
00:30:49Joe once told me that right before the fight with Ali, he was in the dressing room and he asked for some privacy.
00:30:55And he claimed somebody came into the room and talked to him.
00:30:59And he went out and he was upset with the security guy.
00:31:03He said, who was it?
00:31:04And the security guy assured him, nobody's been in that room.
00:31:07But Joe swore he got a visit from a man wearing white.
00:31:10Then he told me, he said, Rich, when I was in that room, he said, God came to me.
00:31:15He said, you know, like, God, can I ask you a question?
00:31:19And God said, certainly.
00:31:21He said, if I kill this motherfucker tonight, will you forgive me?
00:31:25And he said, the Lord said yes.
00:31:27The undisputed heavyweight championship of the world.
00:31:32Muhammad Ali in the red trunk, Joe Frazier in the green trunk.
00:31:36They appear very light.
00:31:37Frazier will try to bore in and catch this man.
00:31:43I don't think that Muhammad was ready for the pressure.
00:31:47They'll keep coming in.
00:31:49As he was attacking, there were many different nuances.
00:31:52And all the while, a big part of it was the head movement.
00:31:57Some of the shots that I hit him with, he would knock down buildings.
00:32:02Oh, that must have hurt.
00:32:05I went back to the corner.
00:32:07I said, Yen, what's wrong with this guy, man?
00:32:09He can call one guy.
00:32:10Just go right back where you left him.
00:32:13And body shots, he would fall after a while.
00:32:16It is new for Muhammad not to be in control.
00:32:20If anybody is psyched here, it is not Joe Frazier.
00:32:24That night, that fight, Joe was possessed.
00:32:27Frazier is just laughing at him.
00:32:29Round 11.
00:32:32I caught him coming out the corner.
00:32:34He was going to my left.
00:32:36I caught him with a hook on a ricochet.
00:32:39Boom!
00:32:44If it wasn't the rope was there, he would fall out of the ring.
00:32:47All right, this is the final round of the fight, and what a fight it's been.
00:32:50I do a two-level guy.
00:32:51Second one on the chin.
00:32:52Bang!
00:32:53Boom!
00:32:58The 15th round knockdown?
00:32:59The coup de grace, man.
00:33:03Joe walks away, and I'm sure he's thinking,
00:33:06am I a goddamn Uncle Tom now, nigga?
00:33:11He said to me once, he didn't realize how much the correlation was
00:33:16between him using the left hook and being his dad's left arm.
00:33:20My father, you know, he had one arm, and I was his left hand man.
00:33:23So, therefore, I learned to use my left hand more than I did my right hand.
00:33:26Really?
00:33:27We'd go in the woods and probably pull the saw, you know?
00:33:30You know anything about that?
00:33:31The knockdown came from a signature Joe Frazier move
00:33:35that nobody in the sport has ever done better,
00:33:38and that's a double left hook.
00:33:39It's the most beautiful, timed work of art shot
00:33:43you'll ever see in the history of boxing.
00:33:45And Joe didn't get his chest, too, because Ali bounced back up.
00:33:50In any other universe, that knockdown would be discussed as,
00:33:55wow, Joe Frazier punctuates a big win with a knockdown in the 15th round.
00:34:00No.
00:34:01The narrative is, how did he get up?
00:34:03It's amazing.
00:34:05We sit in three rows ringside.
00:34:07Boom!
00:34:08His back didn't even stay.
00:34:10Boom!
00:34:11Boom!
00:34:12He just come right back up and stood up and looked at him like that.
00:34:15I said, okay.
00:34:17Okay.
00:34:18It's part of the bigger narrative that somehow the achievements of Joe Frazier overall,
00:34:23and especially as it relates to Ali, kind of get overshadowed.
00:34:26If I didn't dust him off, he might have got the decision.
00:34:30But he got hurt in the third round, 11th round, and every round.
00:34:35Every round, he got hurt.
00:34:37Trust me.
00:34:38It's just hard to surpass what Muhammad Ali represents in 1971.
00:34:47So, even though Joe won the fight, he's still cast in Ali's shadow.
00:34:54The winner, by unanimous decision, James Mason!
00:35:00Joe just collapses in Yank's arms, and he gives him a fatherly hook.
00:35:05It's a fatherly hook, not a trainer's hook.
00:35:11I feel like I did a, let's say, a blessing to the world.
00:35:17The action was so good, I heard two people died of heart attacks in the arena.
00:35:20The people in Northern Ireland that were having their troubles,
00:35:22apparently they stopped fighting and watched the fight on the same TV in the bars.
00:35:26It stopped the world.
00:35:28One of the things that people tend to forget was that Joe won that fight.
00:35:33That was the greatest fight of all time, and Joe Frazier won that fight.
00:35:37You think he was clowning? He couldn't move.
00:35:41All mean body shots been piled up on him.
00:35:43One, two, three, that's up.
00:35:45He would have died before he allowed Muhammad Ali to beat him.
00:35:49I know what the people would know while I went to the hospital.
00:35:53Joe actually had started to have physical problems after the Jimmy Ellis fight.
00:35:58He had issues with high blood pressure.
00:36:01I used to go to the doctor every day after training to make sure that that blood pressure is right.
00:36:07I'd take a handful of pills, you know what I mean? Like, hey, babe, what's happening? What's happening?
00:36:14When the doctor wanted to check me up, he'd check me up and find out that his blood was a little high.
00:36:19I was with him a whole high for two, three days he was in there.
00:36:23I was watching his blood pressure go up and up and up.
00:36:26I said, if we got to 300 and some, he would get a stroke.
00:36:30Muhammad Ali wins when he loses because all the interviews afterwards, he's going, look at me.
00:36:35Not a mark on my face. Joe Frazier's all busted up.
00:36:38If you look at Frazier's face and look at mine, there's no comparison.
00:36:41I'm sure I hit him three times more than he hit me if you watch the film.
00:36:45Joe got much less enjoyment from his time as world champion than he would have had
00:36:50if Ali had painted a different portrait of him.
00:36:53I feel like I'm ready to go, man. I'm trying to get out of here as fast as I can.
00:36:57Number one, he's ugly.
00:36:59It's a shame because Joe's experience was far more typical of the black experience in America than Ali's.
00:37:09And they should have been allies rather than adversaries.
00:37:13And who told him he could sing?
00:37:16He got him a big band and started traveling the world with his new title,
00:37:20thinking that he's going to sell them all out.
00:37:23What is there to worry about?
00:37:25The fighting money is good, the singing money is good.
00:37:28Look, and I can do both of them.
00:37:30You know, why sit around and let it go back?
00:37:32And I'm having fun while I'm doing it.
00:37:34Every time I would read the paper, they'd say,
00:37:36Joe Frazier appears to this place in England.
00:37:38Arena held 10,000, 37 people showed up.
00:37:42He's going off on this concert tour, like, you know,
00:37:45and that to me is an indication of, like, you know,
00:37:48he's not really being a disciplined soldier to his craft, man.
00:37:54A fighter's life is, uh, is broken.
00:38:10He was too courageous to admit, you know, that, um,
00:38:13I'm really not cut out for this thing right now.
00:38:17I think I've hit my peak.
00:38:19Joe Frazier did what he had to do for the world,
00:38:22and that was Quiet the Butterfly.
00:38:25After 71, he was the people's champion.
00:38:28So he became the partying Joe.
00:38:31He was with people everywhere, drinking and having a good time.
00:38:35He had an eye for the ladies, always.
00:38:38He had some of the prettiest women on the planet.
00:38:40He loved women.
00:38:41He would go like this.
00:38:42Ooh, look at that, Bob.
00:38:44That's an 18-wheeler over there.
00:38:45That's what he would say, because she was built in the back.
00:38:47But Dad was a hardworking man.
00:38:50He drove to the farm bus, pick up the workers in the field,
00:38:55where they're all ladies.
00:38:57So Dad had control of all the females.
00:39:00Which Mom didn't like that, you know, but that was my Daddy.
00:39:06So when his Dad was running moonshine, Joe would be in the car.
00:39:09So he said, we pull up to this place, he goes,
00:39:11and he had me waiting in the car for friggin' two hours.
00:39:14So one day I got out of the car and I sneaked up the driveway.
00:39:17He said, I look in the window and I see him kissing a woman and all that.
00:39:20I said, that's son of a gun.
00:39:21So I run back and I would hide in the car and wait.
00:39:24The room would be gone for an hour or two.
00:39:26And when Joe got of a certain age,
00:39:28he would go in and chase the daughter.
00:39:31He said, so after a while, I started kissing the daughters.
00:39:35That's a true story.
00:39:37He said, I started kissing the daughters.
00:39:43Yank Durham was an old line boxing guy,
00:39:48which meant that if you had the heavyweight champion,
00:39:51you'd take easy fights, you'd pick up whatever money is available.
00:39:55Frazier cutting him to ribbons now.
00:39:58The title is just hair, you know what I mean?
00:40:00And I have it.
00:40:01So anybody would like to try to take it from me,
00:40:04these guys gonna have to challenge me.
00:40:06And these guys ain't doing nothing but making noise.
00:40:08The boxing organizations said enough.
00:40:12Frazier had to fight the number one contender,
00:40:16who was George Foreman.
00:40:22George Foreman, back then, was a beast.
00:40:26Foreman is fresh and good.
00:40:28Frazier, since his bout with Ali, has only fought twice,
00:40:31and both of those opponents were nobodies.
00:40:33The old bromide that styles make fights
00:40:35is never more evident than in this match.
00:40:38Well, they're trying to psych each other out.
00:40:40I expected Joe Frazier to beat George Foreman.
00:40:43We may have an interesting evening.
00:40:46Frazier, quite understandably, the favorite.
00:40:48When George comes out and makes that first swing,
00:40:51that is saying, hey, I'm here.
00:40:53There is no fear in George Foreman.
00:40:56That's a lie. He's terrified of Joe.
00:40:59The one guy I'd gotten into the ring with
00:41:00that I was really frightened of was Joe Frazier,
00:41:03because I'd followed his career.
00:41:04I'd seen him stand up to everybody.
00:41:06You hit him hard, he liked it.
00:41:08Foreman had this strategy of pushing Frazier off.
00:41:11He was physically strong enough to do it.
00:41:14When George was pushing Joe away,
00:41:18he's upsetting Joe's balance.
00:41:21So many times in that fight,
00:41:23and it didn't last long,
00:41:24you'd see a left hook whistle pass
00:41:26the head of Foreman short.
00:41:29I think he hurt Joe Frazier.
00:41:31I think Joe is hurt.
00:41:32We're driving in the car.
00:41:34I said, I said, champ,
00:41:35tell me what happened when you fought George Foreman.
00:41:37He said, he hit me and my legs shook.
00:41:40Angie Dundee Ali's trainer right next to me
00:41:43is saying that you may hear him.
00:41:45Down goes Frazier!
00:41:47Down goes Frazier!
00:41:49Down goes Frazier!
00:41:50Down goes Frazier!
00:41:51Down goes Frazier!
00:41:52So I tried everything I could.
00:41:53He said, the man hit like TNT.
00:41:55Foreman is all over Joe Frazier!
00:41:58Frazier is down again!
00:42:00And he made me!
00:42:01No!
00:42:02He is rising!
00:42:03Getting hit on the chin like that
00:42:05has tantamount to having your computer unplugged.
00:42:08He was still functional.
00:42:10He was like a zombie.
00:42:11Two knockdowns in the first round of Joe Frazier!
00:42:15Down again!
00:42:16No saving by the bell!
00:42:18Like, you did never knock me down.
00:42:20You got mad one time.
00:42:21Joe, would you stay down?
00:42:23No!
00:42:24His knees buckled!
00:42:25He is down!
00:42:26He is down for the fourth time in the fight!
00:42:30Why don't you stay down there, man?
00:42:31I'm tired of knocking you down.
00:42:33Yeah.
00:42:34Foreman had the perfect style to be a fighter of Joe's style.
00:42:39He was too big.
00:42:41It is over!
00:42:42It is over!
00:42:43George Foreman is the heavyweight champion of the world!
00:42:47They could have fought ten times and George probably would have won all ten.
00:42:52Just one of those things.
00:42:53Joe got caught with a good shot and no fighter.
00:42:56I don't think no man would have stood up under that shot.
00:42:58Getting up six times after being knocked down six times?
00:43:01That's courage, man.
00:43:02And we have to admire that in Joe because he was one to die.
00:43:06You gonna see the rematch?
00:43:08Yeah, I would like to fight a rematch with him.
00:43:10Styles make fights.
00:43:13I think Styles have a lot to do with it.
00:43:15But then, after he had beaten Muhammad Ali, there wasn't that much left of Joe Frazier.
00:43:20If I had fought him two years earlier, it wouldn't have been like that.
00:43:23I didn't fight the best Joe Frazier.
00:43:25Believe me, he wasn't the best.
00:43:27What we know now is that Joe had started to slack off in training.
00:43:33Lee Grant was here.
00:43:34God rest his soul.
00:43:35He was Joe's driver and his dear friend.
00:43:37And he said to me,
00:43:38Bo, don't listen to a word he said because two weeks before the George Foreman fight,
00:43:42he was hanging out with this one and that one.
00:43:45You know what I mean?
00:43:46So, he didn't take him serious.
00:43:48Oh, yes, I did.
00:43:49And they started to get into it a little bit like one another.
00:43:52He didn't make any excuses and he gave George all the respect.
00:43:56It wasn't no fight.
00:43:57The guy just came and took me out.
00:43:59He was much too powerful for me.
00:44:01Yeah, down at Rose Frazier, down at Rose Frazier.
00:44:04That was a horror of the West.
00:44:06Down goes Frazier.
00:44:07I mean, hey, come on, relax, man.
00:44:09That's not cool.
00:44:11Joe was a sensitive guy and, you know, he had feelings like everybody else.
00:44:15Down goes Frazier.
00:44:16Down goes Frazier.
00:44:17Down goes Frazier.
00:44:18Down goes Frazier.
00:44:19Down goes Frazier.
00:44:20Sad news from the world of sport.
00:44:22Yank Durham, long-time trainer and manager of former World Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier, has died.
00:44:29Durham suffered a stroke two days ago and passed away this morning at Temple University Hospital.
00:44:34He was 52 years old.
00:44:37I really don't know where to go and what to do now.
00:44:40He said that he was going to let me know when he thinks it's time for me to retire.
00:44:44So, I'm very believed that he would come back and let me know, you know, in a dream what to do for him.
00:44:59When Yank Durham died, it was real easy for Eddie Fletch to just slide in.
00:45:04There are a half dozen trainers in the sport of boxing that reach legendary status.
00:45:10Eddie Fletch was one of those people.
00:45:12If you couldn't get along with Eddie Fletch, you didn't belong in this world.
00:45:16He was really, really a nice guy.
00:45:18I would say, as of now, both of us have our loss and now we're going back to each other to determine who's the best.
00:45:26The second Ali-Frazier fight was certainly less anticipated than the first.
00:45:31Neither guy was champion at the time.
00:45:33It was 12 rounds, not 15.
00:45:35Ali-Frazier II is sort of like The Godfather Part III.
00:45:40It's easily forgettable.
00:45:41That was almost three years ago, Muhammad, and you lost.
00:45:45White people say I lost.
00:45:47There's some white people.
00:45:49All black people know I want.
00:45:51Ali put all sorts of very ugly labels on him that Joe was never able to shake.
00:45:58When they both got in the studio with Howard Cosell and Ali created the mayhem he created,
00:46:05playing on Joe's raw emotions, that ignited the fight.
00:46:09And it ignited the interest in the fight.
00:46:12Shut up, man.
00:46:13Shut up, man.
00:46:14Shut up, man.
00:46:15Shut down, Joe.
00:46:16Huh?
00:46:17Shut down quick.
00:46:18How you think I'm going to be...
00:46:19The problem isn't here.
00:46:20You want this too?
00:46:21No.
00:46:22Shut down quick, Joe.
00:46:23I'm good.
00:46:24It's a great piece of television.
00:46:26There is no question in my mind that Joe Frazier is not clamped.
00:46:31When you hurt somebody who looked out for you, tried to get your license back for you.
00:46:37Come on, bro.
00:46:38Really?
00:46:39I would say to Joe, Joe, you don't pay him no money.
00:46:42He's just talking shit because that's Ali.
00:46:45He wants to get your gold.
00:46:46He's like, I'm going to get his gold.
00:46:47I'm going to get his gold.
00:46:48I'm going to get his gold.
00:46:49I'm going to get his gold.
00:46:50I'm going to get his gold.
00:46:51Bell for round one.
00:46:53The action begins.
00:46:54The second Ali Frazier fight, there was a ghost standing right next to Joe.
00:46:59And that ghost was the person who was knocked out.
00:47:03At the hands of Big George, it's not easy to overcome.
00:47:06And that was a good right.
00:47:08Joe was staggered there.
00:47:09Ali shook Joe.
00:47:11Referee Tony Perez thought he heard the bell.
00:47:14Referee Tony Perez separates the fight across from the end of the round, but I didn't hear a bell.
00:47:19Then the fight resumed and there was talk afterwards that Ali would have knocked Joe out if Perez hadn't made that mistake.
00:47:27No. I mean, let's do the numbers.
00:47:2941 rounds of boxing and Ali never knocked Joe down.
00:47:34The problem was that we were trying to find a referee breaking the mugging around my neck with my left hand.
00:47:43The fight is about to end and it is over.
00:47:46Muhammad Ali has won the fight on a unanimous decision.
00:47:51I don't think that was that far off.
00:47:53You know what I mean?
00:47:54I would say I'd throw more effective punts anyway.
00:47:58So I got no argument about nothing.
00:48:01You ever hear Joe Frazier crying?
00:48:04Stand up guy.
00:48:06George was the champ.
00:48:07So Ali Frazier too was more for bragging rights and the right to fight George Foreman next.
00:48:14George Foreman was just, it's hard to convey to people just how he was demolishing individuals who got in the ring with him.
00:48:21Both Joe Frazier and Ken Norton beat Ali and George Foreman barely broke a sweat.
00:48:29When I fought Muhammad Ali in Africa, fear had all just disintegrated.
00:48:34I had no longer any fear for anything.
00:48:37This was going to be the easiest fight of my life.
00:48:39Land for the head of Foreman.
00:48:42Foreman with that right.
00:48:44Joe Frazier fought Muhammad Ali in Madison Square Garden.
00:48:47He would have died before he allowed Muhammad Ali to beat him.
00:48:50When I fought Muhammad Ali in Africa, I fought a Joe Frazier reincarnated.
00:48:55I thought George was going to catch him a little earlier.
00:48:58The guys that fought Muhammad, they let him have his way.
00:49:01Didn't they move when he wanted?
00:49:03Throw punches when he wanted?
00:49:04No.
00:49:05No.
00:49:06And so while Ali has regained the mountaintop, Joe is almost, I think, forgotten.
00:49:16But you have their rivalry.
00:49:18It's mythical.
00:49:19It's literary.
00:49:20It's cinematic.
00:49:21Joe Frazier had kind of rehabilitated himself a little bit.
00:49:24E.B. Corey, E.B. Dallas, that got Frazier back in a position where they could sell the third Ali fight.
00:49:30These two men and their styles was so compelling.
00:49:35People had in the back of their mind, well, this is still something we should pay attention to.
00:49:39Without Joe Frazier, there wouldn't have been no Ali.
00:49:49Imagine if after winning the Rumble in the Jungle, Ali says, I'm done.
00:49:53That's a perfect narrative.
00:49:54But, you know, life doesn't really work that way.
00:49:57So, Ali, Frazier, one more time.
00:50:00Here's the way he looks when you hit him.
00:50:02Come on, girl.
00:50:03We in the north.
00:50:04Yeah!
00:50:05Yeah!
00:50:06Yeah!
00:50:07Ali's treatment of Joe Frazier, the demeaning portrayal of Joe, hurt a lot more people than Joe.
00:50:13It involved a lot of unfortunate comments around his appearance, his intelligence.
00:50:19The sort of thing that racist white people would say, perhaps in private, about a Black person.
00:50:27Ali's saying in public.
00:50:28I'm gonna keep this gorilla with me every day until the fight.
00:50:32It reinforced the stereotypical view that some people had of Black people.
00:50:41Slow-moving, shuffling.
00:50:44I put nothing in that desert just like most of them.
00:50:50This is indeed a proud moment for me to welcome the people of the world to the soccer of our lifetime.
00:50:56Super Fight 3, the Thriller in Manila.
00:50:59All the Marcuses who ran the Philippines knew nothing about boxing.
00:51:03They wanted Ali specifically in a big fight because they had a big problem with the Muslims in Mindanao.
00:51:13And they felt that they could calm everything down if they brought over this great Muslim to fight in the Philippines.
00:51:22The fighter that they wanted him to fight was Joe Frazier.
00:51:25Muhammad stayed at the palace, and I stayed at the hotel.
00:51:29I was into politics, you know.
00:51:31I was into sports, being a champion, and getting the job done.
00:51:36And here's Joe Frazier coming into the ring.
00:51:39The feeling was that Joe was shot.
00:51:41That Ali will dance around for eight, nine rounds, knock Joe out, and we'll go on to the next fight.
00:51:48It's 15 rounds, and here is round one.
00:51:50The Thriller in Manila was a fight in three parts.
00:51:53The first part of the fight, it looked for all the world like Ali was exposing Joe as a fighter who just had lost his ability to fight in the upper echelon of the heavyweight division.
00:52:04Muhammad was handling Joe for three rounds, four rounds.
00:52:09And then all of a sudden, boom.
00:52:13I don't think I've ever seen a sporting event turn as dramatically as that fight turned in those middle rounds.
00:52:20Rangers very strong.
00:52:25Joe came into that fight fueled by absolute hatred.
00:52:31Ali took more punishment than I think anybody would ever be able to take.
00:52:36Joe Frazier landed hellacious shots, and somehow Ali withstood them.
00:52:40All of a sudden, the fight turned again because Joe Frazier just ran out of gas.
00:52:47And Ali is pouring on him.
00:52:50He had vision problems in both eyes.
00:52:53And Ali, as exhausted as he was, was able to summon up the energy to land those straight shots as Frazier was coming in.
00:53:01And the Frazier head movement was less than it had been earlier in the fight.
00:53:05Thirteenth round, Joe can't see out of his left eye.
00:53:07Muhammad was trying to cement, you know, the victory.
00:53:11He throws the right hand.
00:53:13Joe's mouthpiece goes flying.
00:53:20Essentially, it's target practice.
00:53:22There's a moment in the corner where Joe drinks the water and spits the water out.
00:53:28And the water is completely red.
00:53:32It's not water anymore. It's blood.
00:53:35Eddie Fudge had let the fight go on after the thirteenth round in the hope that things might change.
00:53:42They didn't.
00:53:48It was getting hit again and again and again.
00:53:56After the fourteenth round, Ali and Joe went back to their corners.
00:54:02Both men had been brutalized.
00:54:09Joe was getting hit by punches that he couldn't see coming.
00:54:13My right eye got closed. The left eye, I couldn't see.
00:54:17The doctor comes up and looks at Frazier.
00:54:21I think it's gonna be over.
00:54:23In the most difficult moment to stop a fight,
00:54:28on the biggest stage you could possibly have,
00:54:32Eddie Fudge had the courage of his convictions to realize Joe was in trouble
00:54:37and in danger of being hurt badly.
00:54:40He said, let's go. I tell him no.
00:54:43He said, no, no, wait me now.
00:54:45Don't do my job. I said, all right. Go and do it.
00:54:49It's all over.
00:54:54One can't stand up. One can't see.
00:54:57I heard that Muhammad wasn't gonna get him off the stool.
00:55:01But that's not my corner.
00:55:04And I wasn't over there to see that.
00:55:10Oh, my God.
00:55:12That's a supremely human moment, man.
00:55:15We can see the child in Joe.
00:55:20We can see the lover in Joe.
00:55:23The beast in Joe.
00:55:25And we can see the human-hurt animal in Joe.
00:55:33Eddie Fudge called a fight
00:55:35because he just couldn't see Joe Frazier continuing on
00:55:39while it wasn't popular with Joe Frazier.
00:55:41And Joe had difficulty with it.
00:55:43Eddie Fudge, he never felt regret
00:55:45because he knew it was the right decision.
00:55:47I'm not mad about it
00:55:48because I can see, I can walk, I can talk, and have a good time.
00:55:53That night, Marvis was in Manila.
00:55:56Muhammad called Marvis into his dressing room.
00:55:58And when Marvis got the apology from Muhammad,
00:56:02tell your dad is a great champion, a great man,
00:56:04and I said everything I said just to promote these incredible fights.
00:56:08Marvis came running back into his dad's dressing room to tell him,
00:56:11and Joe lost it, and said,
00:56:13you ain't Joe Frazier, son.
00:56:15Well, I ain't apologized to me.
00:56:17But he is great.
00:56:19I don't know other fighter today
00:56:22besides myself who could be Joe Frazier.
00:56:26Going beyond the result, which says KO 14 in the record book,
00:56:31you could almost look at that fight
00:56:33on some very primal level as a draw.
00:56:36I don't think there were any winners.
00:56:41It was the bull and the matador.
00:56:43It was everything anybody could ever want in combat.
00:56:48These guys were made for each other.
00:56:51You look at Manila and it's an advertisement
00:56:53for everything that's best about boxing
00:56:57and also for everything that's worst about boxing.
00:57:00They both left everything in that 20-foot ring.
00:57:06Going forward, life for Ali,
00:57:09life for Joe Frazier will never be the same.
00:57:11They're beyond their prime.
00:57:14It's not going to be glamorous and celebratory and spectacular.
00:57:20They're in that fight as two old men.
00:57:30Joe fought Foreman again.
00:57:32They didn't even sell all the tickets there.
00:57:35Look what he's done!
00:57:37He shaved his head!
00:57:39Champ, what happened the second fight?
00:57:42He says, the second fight, I trained to kill him.
00:57:45I said, Smoke, I'm telling you,
00:57:47when I watched you fight him, your midsection was thicker.
00:57:50Oh, Bo, my weight was right.
00:57:52I said, Smoke, listen.
00:57:53Joe Frazier weighed in at a surprising 224 and a half pounds.
00:57:59Eight and a half, four pounds than he's ever carried.
00:58:03My working is always forward.
00:58:07I don't know how to back up
00:58:08because that's the only way I know how to fight.
00:58:10Then when I stepped in the ring,
00:58:12I looked at him and I backed up.
00:58:15Joe Frazier never backs up in a fight.
00:58:17He said, on that particular night,
00:58:19I was backing up waiting
00:58:20because I didn't want to get hit with them punches.
00:58:22Frazier against the ropes.
00:58:24Foreman was absolutely devastating
00:58:29when he fought a smaller guy.
00:58:32I was blind as I am.
00:58:35I wear two contact lenses on him.
00:58:37I tried to move for a while.
00:58:39Frazier, trying to fight back.
00:58:41But then he knocked the lens out.
00:58:43I knew what Joe was going through
00:58:45when he was fighting with one eye,
00:58:47why he stayed so close to you.
00:58:49And now I know how Joe Frazier passed his eye test, too.
00:58:52He's going to tell me how to pass it.
00:58:54One right.
00:58:55Where's Frazier?
00:58:56Frazier!
00:58:57Frazier's down!
00:59:00Frazier is down from the right!
00:59:03He said, we don't switch eyes, we switch hands.
00:59:05I would cover with this hand.
00:59:08Then when he said, switch eyes, I would switch hands.
00:59:11And the doctor would never say nothing.
00:59:14Frazier taking it from George Foreman.
00:59:16Foreman!
00:59:17Foreman again with the light!
00:59:19Second knockdown in the round.
00:59:21The only thing I did wrong was signing that contract too, Tom.
00:59:26That was the wrong thing I did, okay?
00:59:30Arrow Valen says the fight is over!
00:59:33Frazier, as game as ever.
00:59:36But now, inevitably, the boxing career over for Joe Frazier.
00:59:42Joe Frazier would want to be remembered as a great world champion.
00:59:47The people's champion.
00:59:48He loved people.
00:59:49His heart was as big as the Empire State Building.
00:59:53I'm pleased with Joe Frazier, and I'm pleased with the public, and pleased with the fan, and I think for the consideration that you have for me, I think that it's time for me to put it on the wall and go ahead and just boogie, boogie, boogie.
01:00:27In 1978, I would've been a junior in college in a small school in northeastern Pennsylvania, and Joe was singing at a lounge in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
01:00:35Joe was singing at a lounge in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
01:00:39So, of course, all my friends were like, are you kidding me?
01:00:41Yes, we're coming.
01:00:42And that commercial had just come out, the Miller Lite commercial.
01:00:45When you order a beer, do like smoking Joe.
01:00:48Order live, dear Miller, and say no more.
01:00:51Joe starts singing a couple songs, and I guess during a break, somebody yells out,
01:00:56do the Miller Lite commercial.
01:00:58And the others, all right.
01:00:59Lights, let's feel it.
01:01:00Hey, that really knocks me out.
01:01:03Before the end of the night, he probably sang that Miller Lite commercial, right?
01:01:06Fifteen times.
01:01:09And then sat down with all my college buddies and drank beer with us the rest of the night.
01:01:13We go, Joe, sing that commercial again.
01:01:16And he'd sing the commercial.
01:01:17And he made my friends that night, you know, feel that if they were friends of mine,
01:01:21they were friends with Joe Frazier's.
01:01:23And that's why I loved him.
01:01:24In the early 1980s, I got to work with Smoking Joe Frazier as a knockout singer, and it was
01:01:36a real thrill.
01:01:37I'm still riding on a cloud.
01:01:38I know a lot of people used to say, oh, Joe can't sing.
01:01:43But when you went to the show and saw that this man was really singing, and he was really
01:01:49expressing himself through his lyrics, you could feel his expression.
01:01:54That he was taking you from the gym, taking you from when he was growing up, taking you
01:02:01from now performing the song.
01:02:04He was like telling you a story of what he did throughout his life.
01:02:09You could see that it's just something that touched his soul, and he wanted others to feel
01:02:14the same way.
01:02:16Touched the soul of you, and you, and you.
01:02:19That meant so much to him.
01:02:22White America always thought Joe Frazier was this blue-collar working man, but man, he
01:02:26was the king of swag.
01:02:27He was way more swag than all he ever was.
01:02:30When he comes in, the room shines up.
01:02:32Electricity's just starting spreading everywhere.
01:02:35It was always about the best suits, and the colors that popped, and the gold chain, and
01:02:39the gold rings, and that hat that nobody could sport like Smoking Joe, and a big wad of cash
01:02:44always down in his sock.
01:02:46Sometimes both his socks.
01:02:47And he took a lot of pride in that.
01:02:50If you are a star, you shine everywhere.
01:02:54There was a benefit in Atlantic City.
01:02:56Joe Frazier and the knockouts were going to come on right after my wife and her sister,
01:03:01the Rocco sisters.
01:03:02And Connie was coming down some stairs, and she had one of those combs that had like a tip
01:03:07on the end that you would tease your hair with, so it was very sharp.
01:03:11And her heel caught on one of the stairs.
01:03:13She lunged forward and stabbed Joe Frazier in the stomach.
01:03:21He went down to one knee and uttered this immortal line.
01:03:26The bitch stabbed me.
01:03:27And so security rushed in, and of course she was horrified, and everyone was horrified,
01:03:36but they had to run out on stage.
01:03:37So she ran out on stage after the incident.
01:03:42You can't make that up.
01:03:43It's 4.30 in the morning, and former heavyweight champion Smokin' Joe Frazier is running through
01:03:49the frigid streets of Chicago on what he hopes will be his comeback trail.
01:03:52Not bad.
01:03:53I don't know where, huh?
01:03:55When fighters well past the prime continue fighting, like Ali did with Burbank, what Joe
01:04:01did with Cummings.
01:04:03They can say whatever they want.
01:04:05It's pride.
01:04:05They still have it.
01:04:06They want to feel young.
01:04:08There's only one word why it happened, and that word is money.
01:04:13He's coming out of retirement after five years to fight Jumbo Cummings, a relatively unknown
01:04:1730-year-old who spent 12 of those years in prison for murder.
01:04:21Joe with Jumbo Cummings and Muhammad with Jumbo Burbank.
01:04:25They were fights that should not have been sanctioned, but in boxing, that's allowed.
01:04:31Why is that?
01:04:33But, you know, I get it.
01:04:34I get it.
01:04:35But I, uh, I don't get it.
01:04:43Removed from Manila by six years, it just demonstrated how much that fight took out of
01:04:48each of them as well.
01:04:50Happy ending.
01:04:51He knew that wasn't going to happen.
01:04:52The decision, a draw!
01:04:55It's hard for an athlete to leave the game when they're on top.
01:05:05I've got a chance to go down as the greatest athlete and I've thought so in history.
01:05:10I can make so many people wrong.
01:05:12Obviously, it didn't work out well.
01:05:14It just was not a good evening on every level.
01:05:18Oh, no!
01:05:20Oh, no!
01:05:21Ali Frazier, in terms of their career, their life as professional boxers is over, and there's
01:05:30nothing spectacular or glamorous about it.
01:05:33Life sometimes is not kind, but it's always real.
01:05:36Joe definitely lived his life on North Broad Street at that gym, and, you know, people could walk in there every day and say hello.
01:05:59Joe bought the gym after the foreman fight.
01:06:01It was $87,000.
01:06:08It looked like some of the movies I'd watched on TV.
01:06:10Street Life, it's North Philadelphia, ghetto.
01:06:12When I walked in, I just thought, this is where greatness is.
01:06:14I sit down and teach these guys.
01:06:17I'm not going to be afraid to go down the wrong way of it, because I've been there.
01:06:21Joe came up and said, hey, hey, you got to put more weight on your left leg, Tim.
01:06:25Putting the weight in between my knee and my ankle, putting it down there, and then turn, bam!
01:06:30So my left foot, he taught me how to do that, yeah.
01:06:33Take the room away from him, I'll goddamn breathe on him.
01:06:36The top of the gym was a roof, a rooftop.
01:06:39So he decided that he was going to turn that rooftop into a bachelor's loft.
01:06:45When you walked in Joe Frazier's office, he had a great big desk.
01:06:49He would call his back office the dungeon.
01:06:51He had a little refrigerator.
01:06:52We had liquor back there.
01:06:54Then he would lift his couch up like Godzilla, and just picked it up, and he had all his guns piled on top of each other.
01:07:01The second story was just a big warehouse, and at the back of that was a dormitory for fighters.
01:07:05It had no hot water.
01:07:07The opposite side of the steel door was crack addicts.
01:07:09And we put six beds in the back of the gym, a heater, and a kitchen.
01:07:14Man, it's cold water, and, you know, it was drafty, which I was fine with, because it was really, it really made you fight harder.
01:07:20When Joe comes into the gym, first thing he does is walk up them steps, go to his music, hit play, come back downstairs, and let's work.
01:07:29Joe Frazier had the fighting Frazier's, and he just put everything he could in his fighters.
01:07:36They couldn't be him, but they all wanted to be like him.
01:07:40Marvis Frazier had a good amateur record, and Marvis Frazier was a very tough fighter.
01:07:57The referee, the only man who can stop the fight.
01:08:01Round one.
01:08:03Larry Holmes is a serious fighter.
01:08:05And here's Marvis, but he's down.
01:08:08Marvis got a little cocky, and he dropped his hands.
01:08:11That could be a big mistake.
01:08:13Marvis Frazier's career probably got accelerated, maybe because of the opportunities for money fights, partially because of who he was.
01:08:22Marvis gets hit, you could see in Joe's eyes how he was hurting for his son.
01:08:31It had to be very difficult for Joe Frazier to experience that, you know, in the corner.
01:08:35I think they pushed Marvis a little too fast, because it was easy, it was fun for Laverne, Laverne just was playing, like he was playing, and to me that was embarrassing.
01:08:46Joe loved Marvis, they were so close.
01:08:49I would wait, my name is Marvis Frazier, my dad is Joe, try to build it up a little bit more, and maybe they could have gotten two million.
01:08:56But they did it, and this is the result, so...
01:08:59But that's the name of the game.
01:09:01When?
01:09:02Tyson comes out slugging.
01:09:05He comes out smoking, like Marvis' father, Joe.
01:09:09They said Marvis tried to fight like Joe Frazier, Joe's not a good trainer because he trains everybody this way.
01:09:14And Joe's answer was, you better be able to fight like Joe Frazier if you want to make it.
01:09:18Uppercut, and Marvis is hurt.
01:09:23He's hurt, he's down.
01:09:25I don't think Marvis ever disappointed Joe, even in the fights he lost.
01:09:29Joe was super proud of him.
01:09:31When you saw Marvis Frazier with his father, there was such respect and admiration and love from Marvis towards Joe.
01:09:41It was something very, very special.
01:09:44So what I know about Marvis when he had his two big fights, Larry and Mike Tyson, Joe, the way he told me was it was to kind of help the Fraisers out and get a little love, M-O-N-E-Y, in his pocket.
01:09:57He was just in the process of a divorce.
01:10:00He was in the process of moving out of the mansion that he had, you know, the house that he had with his wife, Florence.
01:10:08Joe loved his family.
01:10:09You know, you're with somebody for so long, you kind of fall out of love, you know?
01:10:13Joe had 11 kids and six different mothers.
01:10:18Joe and Marvis, you know, those guys were like this.
01:10:21Marvis is a God-fearing, righteous man that's almost a polar opposite to Joe when it comes to the party atmosphere.
01:10:26They just say, oh, Pop, man, they say, Pop, not again, Pop.
01:10:30Joe took care of his family.
01:10:32He made sure, financially, that he lived up to his obligations.
01:10:37As a father, as a man, once a month, we would sit in the office and make up envelopes.
01:10:42And I've never said this before to anyone.
01:10:44I would personally hand deliver the envelopes to different mothers because Joe wanted to take care of his children.
01:10:53You know, any time I made a bunch of money, I would always make sure the kids are good and his grandkids were good.
01:10:58If you have 11 kids, that costs a lot of money and that's going to drain you no matter how much money you're able to make.
01:11:07Life is conflicting, boxing conflicting.
01:11:10Having your father as your trainer is conflicting.
01:11:16Joe had five of his relatives in the gym, different weight classes.
01:11:20The one that he felt had the most talent was Hector.
01:11:23Oh, G-Man about to come alive.
01:11:25Joe called him G-Man and he fought under Joe Frazier Jr. professionally.
01:11:3021-year-old, smoking Joe Frazier Jr.
01:11:33No fear at all. He'd grown up on the streets of New York. Hector was the real deal.
01:11:37Hands up, big left hook.
01:11:38And a straight line of force on another left hook.
01:11:41Joe Frazier is on the bottom strand of the rope.
01:11:44Good, he goes down.
01:11:45He was messing with the wrong people.
01:11:47He got involved with substance abuse and his life went down the wrong road.
01:11:51And Joe did not approve at all.
01:11:52He would tell him, you know, I worked my whole life to make this Frazier name something special and you're fucking it up.
01:12:00I might go to bed saying to myself, what if you do lose? You know?
01:12:06When he got arrested, that hurt Joe. So he ended up going to jail for a long time.
01:12:11That's a setback for you. You don't want no setback.
01:12:15Joe, I think, was way more sensitive than people realize.
01:12:19It hurt Joe so bad.
01:12:21Joe used to always say when he was hurt, he was like, I just swallowed a razor blade.
01:12:24Hector would call when he got busted.
01:12:26He said, I'm fighting three and four times a day, man.
01:12:29He said, they're challenging me.
01:12:31They're challenging me because I'm Joe Frazier Jr. Tired.
01:12:35And he wanted to talk to his dad.
01:12:38Joe, we wouldn't talk to him for a long time.
01:12:40He didn't take the phone calls and that's because he was swallowing razor blades.
01:12:44In the beginning, he would visit him and then he stopped.
01:12:47It really took a toll on Joe and it broke him as a father.
01:12:54Hector was his own man, I guess, and he made decisions.
01:12:57Oh, I had a disease or whatever it was, calling for that kind of life.
01:13:02His downfall was something that was the toughest thing that I saw him go through during my time.
01:13:10During my time with him.
01:13:11And their relationship never got to where it should have been, between a father and a son.
01:13:17Muhammad Ali apologized to Joe in the New York Times and said, if God called me into a holy war, I'd want Joe Frazier there right beside me.
01:13:36That's what he said about you.
01:13:39Yeah, well, you know, I'm going to back down.
01:13:41Yeah, that's for sure.
01:13:43I got so excited.
01:13:44I called him Joe.
01:13:45Champ, I think it's time.
01:13:46Let's make this happen.
01:13:47Because, you know what, Prince?
01:13:50You tell that son of a bitch, why's he got to speak to the goddamn reporter?
01:13:53Why can't he do that to my face?
01:13:55And I was like, oh, my God.
01:13:57There were times when they'd get together and Joe would be civil.
01:14:01But for the most part, the hatred was there and it remained.
01:14:05I put an agent spin on it.
01:14:06Joe said it's not a sincere apology.
01:14:08He'd like it to be to his face.
01:14:10And then Ali, of course, came back with, when you see Joe Frazier, you tell him he's still a gorilla.
01:14:14I'm going to keep this gorilla with me every day until the fight.
01:14:18His way of saying who won the fights, he would compare his physical abilities to Muhammad.
01:14:24Joe Frazier would turn around and go, yo, Bo, look at him.
01:14:27He's telling people he's got Parkinson's.
01:14:29He don't have Parkinson's.
01:14:30He's got left hook-itis.
01:14:32I got a call from Howard Bingham.
01:14:40Hey, I'm with Lonnie.
01:14:41And we want to know if you and Joe and Marvis will come to Muhammad's suite tonight and have dinner with us.
01:14:48I got to catch up with Joe.
01:14:50And I'm nervous as hell, man.
01:14:51My palms are sweating.
01:14:52He looks at me and goes, all right, boss, man, let's do it.
01:14:54What time?
01:14:55As simple as it could be.
01:14:56I chilled right now since I'm saying it.
01:14:58I'm not going to start fighting.
01:15:01I was going to say hello, man.
01:15:03Yeah.
01:15:04Seven years of nonstop trying and pushing and near misses.
01:15:08So we meet and head over to Ali's hotel.
01:15:10And Joling's down at one point to kind of fix his sock.
01:15:14He's got a holster with a gun in it.
01:15:17Like, what the heck is going on?
01:15:19We get in the hallway.
01:15:20We're literally three doors down from Ali's suite.
01:15:22And Marvis starts laughing like a little kid.
01:15:25He goes, you really thought he could come here and shoot Ali?
01:15:28And we knock on the door.
01:15:30And what a moment Joe just kind of trots over to him.
01:15:33Muhammad's smiling.
01:15:35Joe puts his hand on Ali's leg.
01:15:37Ali puts his hand on Joe's hand.
01:15:39And Joe goes, come on, man.
01:15:40Let me help you up.
01:15:41And Muhammad's shoulder is just laying on Joe's shoulder.
01:15:45With both of them and tears in their eyes.
01:15:47And Lonnie looks at me and says, hey, Joe.
01:15:53She looks over and says, thank you.
01:15:56Because Muhammad just found peace.
01:15:58He's a handicapped.
01:16:00I like him across the street.
01:16:01I'll stop the drugs.
01:16:03I want a guy to enjoy life like me.
01:16:05Enjoy some of the things that he missed.
01:16:08Joe had a period in his life where I think maybe he was drinking a little too much.
01:16:12And there was a little surliness to him.
01:16:16That wasn't really the real Joe Frazier.
01:16:18I've learned to put a cup over my mouth by saying things that I shouldn't say.
01:16:25If you ever slip out.
01:16:27The real Joe Frazier was the Joe Frazier that took care of everybody in his neighborhood.
01:16:34And took care of the people around him.
01:16:37There's not too many celebrities out here that can be down to earth like Joe Frazier was.
01:16:42He cared.
01:16:44If he saw you stranded and your car was pulled over.
01:16:47He got out of his car and got up under the car to see if he could find out what was wrong.
01:16:51And I was 16 years old when he took me under his wing.
01:16:53It's just in his DNA to help.
01:16:55You knew you had somebody covering your back.
01:16:57And I don't know any other people really like that to that degree.
01:16:59I mean, what he did for me is unbelievable.
01:17:01When Nelson Mandela got out of prison, the two people he wanted to meet was Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.
01:17:07So I'm sitting in a room with Joe.
01:17:09He's thinking, I gotta give him something.
01:17:11And on the top of the dresser was his WBC belt.
01:17:14You know, to have a championship belt, that's everything to a boxer.
01:17:18And Joe gave him what was left of him.
01:17:21But Nelson Mandela was tripping that he got to meet Joe Frazier.
01:17:26Every time you go into the ring, you lose a piece of yourself.
01:17:33You can never get back.
01:17:35The question is, how much?
01:17:37I was worried about Joe.
01:17:39As he started to get older, his speech was a little slurred.
01:17:42His balance was off.
01:17:44There's no way, you know, he didn't have some damage from boxing.
01:17:47At the end of the day, the human body wasn't meant to be beaten like that.
01:17:52They won't pay a price.
01:17:54Joe is no exception to the rule.
01:17:56I don't think it was fully intact, but I guess it was worth the price of admission, man.
01:18:00He's a legend.
01:18:02I'm here talking to you.
01:18:04My mind's all together.
01:18:06My eyes all together.
01:18:08My brain's all together.
01:18:10The fight game, nothing but the best.
01:18:14I couldn't get him for like three, four days.
01:18:17So I'm starting to get worried.
01:18:19And I knew he wasn't feeling good, but I didn't know how serious it was.
01:18:23So I ended up getting Denise on the phone, and she was taking care of him.
01:18:27She goes, he's really sick.
01:18:29He's got cancer.
01:18:30Lonnie called me on November 5th.
01:18:32I was at Joe's high rise, and he was already in hospice.
01:18:34And Lonnie said, I just saw the news.
01:18:37This is as bad as I've seen Mohammed since his mother passed.
01:18:40The covers were all the way pulled up on him.
01:18:42I take my phone out, and I got a picture of a woman on there.
01:18:46So I clicked on it, and I put it to him.
01:18:48And I noticed that eye focusing in on him.
01:18:51And I guess, again, oof.
01:18:53He goes, Bo, that's an 18-wheeler.
01:18:55Put that away.
01:18:56So I put it away.
01:18:57He said, when you take your last breath, Lord forgive me.
01:19:04He said, you'll get right in heaven.
01:19:06That's what he told me.
01:19:08That was it.
01:19:09I held his hand, and then I left.
01:19:12And then like two days later, he was gone.
01:19:22I was a pallbearer that day, along with Sonny Everone,
01:19:26and Willie the Worm Monroe, Michael Spinks,
01:19:29and some of the Frazier family, Mark Frazier.
01:19:32And I don't know who was in charge of being the pallbearer stuff,
01:19:36but my hand was the last hand that pushed it in.
01:19:38You know, I got your back, man, because I know you'd have my back.
01:19:42Muhammad Ali, he wasn't in great shape himself,
01:19:44but he stood basically the whole time
01:19:46and clapped the whole time with an action and a speed
01:19:49that I hadn't seen Muhammad use in a long time.
01:19:52They had a special bond, and you could see it there.
01:19:55I wish Joe could have seen it, or maybe he did.
01:20:02Joe Frazier is one of the greatest fighters of all time.
01:20:04There's only a few guys you can even put in that category.
01:20:07Go down, he get back up.
01:20:09Joe Frazier had nothing but fighting.
01:20:12To this day, it's still like, man, this great man passed away.
01:20:16I'm not putting the words right, but he just seemed like a Superman to me.
01:20:21The heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Frazier!
01:20:38Round one.
01:20:41Superstar Olympic gold medalist winning a heavyweight championship back then.
01:20:46He's an icon.
01:20:47He's an icon.
01:20:48Absolute icon.
01:20:49There were no frills about Joe Frazier.
01:20:52He didn't try to hide who he was.
01:20:55I'm Joe Frazier, and I'm gonna be me.
01:20:57One of the most unfortunate things in sports history is that Joe Frazier ended up having to live under the shadow of Muhammad Ali.
01:21:08Because the Joe Frazier story on its own is so extraordinary that it serves as a beacon to people who face long odds.
01:21:18The crowd is chanting Ali, and Joe says, come on out and fight!
01:21:23I love Joe.
01:21:24He knew how to get into your soul.
01:21:26He taught me how to appreciate life.
01:21:28We got dinner with Denzel Washington.
01:21:30I saw Lionel Richie chasing after him.
01:21:33Pacino.
01:21:34You know, Danilo Stallone.
01:21:36Spielberg came over to us with tears in his eyes.
01:21:38Asked if he could get some time.
01:21:40I thought that always made my heart full.
01:21:42Because the funny thing was, Joe really didn't know who any of these people were.
01:21:46It's hard to explain what Joe Frazier has done from me.
01:21:51He's maybe a better father, maybe a better citizen, maybe a better person.
01:21:56I owe a lot to him.
01:21:57I'll never forget it.
01:21:59Thank you very much, Joe Frazier.
01:22:01What I do, and who I know, and where I've been, is all thanks to Joe Frazier.
01:22:05For me, what better life could you have?
01:22:08For him to give me the chance that he did.
01:22:11The people that I met working with Joe Frazier, the places that I got to see,
01:22:15the person that I got to know who is Joe Frazier,
01:22:18to be sitting here because of Joe Frazier, unbelievable.
01:22:23I love Joe Frazier because of what he did.
01:22:26From a fighter to a fighter, he will always have my respect.
01:22:30Joe Frazier was a cornerstone of boxing.
01:22:35The fight came good to me.
01:22:37I met a lot of people.
01:22:39I met a lot of places.
01:22:41I've done a lot of things.
01:22:42What would I be if I wasn't a champion?
01:22:45Fighting is...
01:22:46I don't know anyone who gets the sheer joy of combat
01:22:49the way Joe Frazier does.
01:22:51Fighting is my love.
01:22:53in the fall.
01:22:55Music
01:22:58and gives us aΨ­Ψ― cent.
01:23:00Jennifer for l stall.
01:23:08Closer.
01:23:09In fact, he's!..
01:23:10with overrun.
01:23:11The way I can change it.
01:23:12That means I have...
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