Come Out Smokin'

by Phil Pepe

  When it came time to fight, Joe knew he would have to do it with a broken left thumb. The pain hadn’t subsided, but he endured it. He told the team doctor that his hand was sore, but when the doctor suggested X rays, Frazier insisted it wasn’t that bad. He remembered what had happened to Mathis because of a broken finger, so he kept his injury a secret. He wanted the championship too much to forfeit it because of an injury. “Besides,” he explained, “I’d gone all that way. I couldn’t let one hand pull me back. I simply had to come home with the title. Too many people were counting on me, I couldn’t let them down. If I didn’t take that medal, I made up my mind, I’d go back to the butcher shop and forget about professional fighting.”

  Deprived of his best weapon, the left hook, Frazier battled the German as a virtually one-armed fighter. He threw pawing jabs with his left and followed them with powerful right hands, more rights than usual. Occasionally, when the opportunity presented itself, he would fire the left, disregarding the pain that burned through his body whenever it landed.

  Going on sheer courage and determination, Frazier threw enough punches and scored often enough to earn the narrowest of victories. Under Olympic rules, five judges vote to decide the verdict. Three gave it to Frazier, two voted for Huber. Joe Frazier, who almost missed the plane to Tokyo and who made the Olympic team through the back door by the wildest of chances, was the 1964 Olympic heavyweight champion—the first American Olympic heavyweight champion.

  And it wasn’t until after his gold medal was assured that Frazier told United States Olympic officials of the pain. His suspicions were confirmed. He had fought the entire four-round championship match—fought it and won—with a broken thumb.

  Under normal conditions, the Olympic heavyweight championship is as good as money in the bank. Just four years before, young Cassius Clay had won the Olympic light-heavyweight title and returned home amid fanfare and publicity to choose from several offers to turn professional. He signed a contract under the management of a group of wealthy Louisville businessmen, a contract that secured his future. Just four years after he won his Olympic championship, early in 1964, the year Joe Frazier won his title, Cassius Clay scored a stunning and controversial upset victory over Sonny Liston in Miami Beach to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

  Joe Frazier’s future was not quite so bright. He returned with an Olympic gold medal and with his left hand in a cast. He couldn’t fight and he couldn’t work. He couldn’t even afford to buy Christmas presents for his kids.

  A Philadelphia sportswriter, deciding that the children of the Olympic heavyweight champion should not be deprived of a happy Christmas because their father injured himself while representing his country, began a drive to raise enough money to make Christmas, 1964, a happy one in the Frazier home. Gifts, money, job offers, even a call from the mayor poured into the Frazier home. One Philadelphia radio station called the Associated Press and asked for Frazier’s address. It wanted to send a basket of fruit and gifts for the kids. A disc jockey on an early morning radio show announced on the air that a man had come in off the street and handed him $20 for Frazier. The disc jockey said he would add another $20 and send it to Joe. The meat packing firm he worked for sent $100. Joe used the money to buy gifts for his wife and kids. “It wasn’t very much,” he said, “but I wanted to let the kids know that Daddy was still around.”

  But it would be almost a year before the broken thumb would heal, almost a year before Joe Frazier could convert the years of hard work and training and his Olympic gold medal into dollars and cents.

  The Reverend William H. Gray hired Joe to work as a janitor for the Bright Hope Baptist Church. It didn’t pay much, but it was a job, and with what little Florence made at Sears, it would help put food on the table and buy clothes for the three Frazier kids. What it would not do, what it could not do, was satisfy the hunger inside Joe Frazier, the hunger to fight, to prevail.

  The Professional

  Duke Dugent was out of the picture, omitted by a police department rule that officers could not manage professional fighters. Yank Durham was alone now, aided by a huge, soft-bellied man named Willie Reddish, who had fought as a professional heavyweight and trained Sonny Liston for his two fights with Cassius Clay. But Yank Durham was in command. There had been many managerial bids for Joe Frazier to turn professional when he came home to Philadelphia carrying his Olympic gold medal. But Yank and Joe decided to wait until the offers, as inevitably they would, grew bigger and better.

  The winter passed painfully for Frazier. He couldn’t train because of his thumb, and even with his janitor’s job, the situation was precarious. Frazier was anxious to get started on his professional boxing career, anxious to begin making the money all his friends said would just “roll in” after the Olympics.

  Finally, in the spring of 1965, his thumb healed, Frazier went to the gym to began training for his professional debut, a four-round fight in Philadelphia’s Convention Hall on August 16, 1965. Joe was to be paid $500 to fight someone named Don Hobson. Later, Hobson, whoever he was, pulled out and it was announced he would be replaced by an equally unknown heavyweight named Roy Johnson.

  By a quirk of fate, on the afternoon of August 16, 1965, in New York City’s posh 21 Club, another heavyweight was turning pro. A group of wealthy young men, banding together as Peers Management, announced it was entering the boxing business with a one-man stable that consisted of Frazier’s old adversary of the amateurs, Buster Mathis.

  The contrast was striking. Mathis turned pro midway between the steak and pie a la mode at one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants and before the No. 1 city’s press corps. Several hours later and less than 100 miles away, Joe Frazier was in a dingy dressing room in Convention Hall, preparing to make his professional boxing debut before a not-so-ample gathering of Philadelphia boxing fans.

  Whatever had happened to disappearing Don Hobson had also happened to Roy Johnson, because when Joe Frazier entered the ring, the guy in the other corner was somebody named Elwood Goss—“The Rose.” It said so clearly on the back of his blue terry cloth robe.

  “I know the guy,” said a ringside cynic. “He’s a steam-fitter. He came to the fights and they pulled him out of his seat. They needed an opponent for Frazier and this guy has had a few fights, so he was picked.”

  “I’ve seen him fight before,” said another ringsider, “but his name wasn’t Elwood Goss.”

  When they asked Goss if he would be willing to fight Joe Frazier, he said, “Sure, who knows, I might get lucky.”

  Elwood Goss got lucky. He was lucky he came out alive. Frazier hit him a left hook in the first round and The Rose went down in sections. He got up at eight and for the rest of the round there was little more than pushing and shoving and Elwood Goss lying all over Joe Frazier, trying to stay on his feet. Finally, referee Zach Clayton decided he had gone along with the gag long enough. He stopped the fight after 1:42 of the first round.

  “If they want a fight,” Clayton said, “let them get somebody who can fight. This guy can’t fight at all. One punch will kill him.”

  It was hardly what could be called an auspicious debut for an Olympic champion. Only Joe Frazier was really pleased with what went on in the ring. “He’s a good fighter,” Frazier said. “Isn’t he, Willie?”

  “He’s a good fighter, Joe,” said Willie Reddish, willingly going along with the charade.

  “Sure he’s a good fighter,” Frazier continued, as if to convince himself. “He was fighting pro when I was an amateur. Who do you guys think I’m ready for now?”

  “How about Buster Mathis?” someone asked. “He beat you twice in the amateurs.”

  “He got two decisions over me,” Frazier corrected, “but he didn’t beat me. I don’t consider I got beat when I lost by one point and he had his trunks up to his chest.”

  Now Frazier was ready for managerial offers.
All it would take to represent him, Joe said, was $25,000 placed in a trust fund and a salary of $150 a week. Buster Mathis, he was told, was getting $90 a week. “Buster Mathis has only one mouth to feed,” Frazier argued. “I have four.”

  After Frazier’s debut, Yank Durham had some doubts, but he kept them secret. “I said to myself, ‘This guy needs a lot of work. You got to guide him the right route, because if you don’t, with this idea of his that he can lick Clay . . . he can lick Patterson and all those guys, he’s headed for trouble.’

  “I told him, ‘In due time, you’ll be able to beat all these guys and no doubt you’ll be fighting for the championship of the world inside of two years. But you’ve got to listen.’ ”

  Back to the gym they went. There was work to be done and they wasted no time getting to it. Many boxing experts were of the opinion that Frazier would never be a great fighter. He had those short, tree-stump legs and short arms that gave him a reach of only 71 inches, which did not compare favorably with other heavyweights. Muhammad Ali had an 82-inch reach, Sonny Liston’s was 94 inches, Joe Louis’ 76 inches. Even Ezzard Charles, small by heavyweight standards, had a 74-inch reach.

  But there was power there, and if this was what Durham had to work with, he would have to make the best of it. He designed a style of fighting tailored to Frazier’s unique physique. Obviously, Frazier was not going to dance and jab like Ali. He was going to have to get inside his man where his short arms could reach his opponent and where his strength could do the most good.

  Frazier thought he could get by as a boxer. Durham knew it was foolhardy, that Joe wasn’t built for boxing.

  “Forget it,” Yank said. “Quite naturally, the boy seen other fellers doing it and he thought it was for him. I told him, ‘Listen, you’re too short for a boxer, you’re a fighter. You got the power and this is what you got to do with it—you got to keep applying pressure on them other guys. With your power, you can do your thing only one way. That’s to keep within hand distance of your opponent all the time. You don’t do it no other way . . . in, forward . . . forward . . . punch . . . punch . . . punch all the time. No one will stand up to you. No one.’ ”

  Telling a fighter what to do is one thing, getting him to do it is another. That was Yank Durham’s job and Yank Durham was very good at it. “All we have to do,” he told Joe, “is keep fighting, keep training, keep banging heads and we’ll get there.” And Joe Frazier did as Yank advised because “there” is where he wanted to get.

  Durham waited a month and four days before sending Joe into the ring again and in that second professional fight, Yank learned something about his fighter, something invaluable. He learned that Joe Frazier could take a punch. He learned that while the arms and legs were small, the heart was mammoth.

  In his second pro fight, Frazier got hit on the chin by Mike Bruce and went down, and Yank could see a great career and a lot of money flying right out the window. Now Joe was to undergo his sternest test. Instead of quitting right there on the floor as many young fighters have, Joe climbed off the canvas and flattened Bruce in three rounds.

  Eight days later, Frazier bombed out Ray Staples in two, and thirteen days after that he kayoed Abe Davis in one. Four knockouts in four professional fights as 1965 came to an end. Now Durham was ready to make a run at the big money. First, he needed backers. He wanted a group like the one that backed Muhammad Ali and sent him on his way toward the heavyweight championship of the world.

  “No Philadelphia sharpies,” Durham warned. “I want respectable businessmen.”

  At that very moment, a group was already being put together, a group that would change Joe Frazier’s life, that would put him on solid financial footing and on the path to the heavyweight championship of the world.

  Clover for Luck

  The twelfth fight of Joe Frazier’s professional career was scarcely twelve minutes old when the lights almost went out. Oscar Bonavena, burly and bullish heavyweight from Argentina, blood gushing from an angry cut above his left eye, charged Frazier, fired a smashing right cross to the jaw and deposited Joe on the Madison Square Garden canvas.

  There was a gasp around ringside and ashen faces on a group of men whose interest was more than just sporting. And there was the discouraging sound of hearts dropping and Joe Frazier stock plummeting. The group of angels, sought by Yank Durham, had been put together eight months before. It was called Cloverlay, Inc., the name coming from a wedding of words—“cloverleaf” for luck, “overlay” from a betting term that means good odds.

  Yank Durham had dictated. The group that backed Joe Frazier would have to be aboveboard. Only respectable businessmen need apply. And that’s what he got.

  It was Yank himself, who had introduced Joe to the Reverend William H. Gray, pastor of Philadelphia’s Bright Hope Baptist Church, and the Reverend Mr. Gray who had given Joe a job as a janitor in his church when Frazier returned injured from Tokyo. The Reverend Mr. Gray knew a man, Dr. F. Bruce Baldwin, who easily fit the Durham-imposed respectability quotient and who had been looking to get involved in some sports project. Dr. Baldwin had been the president of a dairy and had earned his doctorate for the thesis “The Chemistry of Frozen Milk and Cream.” Since leaving the dairy, he had become president of a well-known baking company.

  The Reverend Mr. Gray told Dr. Baldwin about Frazier and it was Baldwin who got the ball rolling. He was intrigued by the idea of backing a professional fighter, interested in putting together the kind of group Durham had in mind. Baldwin sought out bankers, industrialists, contractors, lawyers, clergymen, doctors and journalists and soon he had a group of forty interested in backing a fighter and able to withstand the loss, if any. The only restriction was that all members of the group had to be residents of the state of Pennsylvania, which was testimony to the civic-minded nature of the people involved.

  Among those in the group, in addition to Dr. Baldwin and the Reverend Mr. Gray, were Bruce R. Wright, an attorney; Thacker Longstreth, president of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and onetime Republican candidate for mayor of Philadelphia; Arthur Kaufman, a department store executive; Harold Wessel, partner in the accounting firm of Ernst & Ernst; Milton Clark, president of a building maintenance firm; Jack Kelly, contractor, former Olympic sculler and brother of Princess Grace of Monaco.

  Clearly, these men were not in this for the money that might be made by Frazier. They were in it for the sport, for the fun of it, for the chance to be part of an exciting and glamorous business. If it was necessary, the Reverend Mr. Gray was there to act as Joe’s spiritual adviser, to make certain that Frazier was in the hands of people “who weren’t hungry and wouldn’t exploit him.”

  Capitalization of Cloverlay started with $22,000 on eighty-eight shares of stock selling for $250 per share. By the time Joe Frazier fought Muhammad Ali six years after Cloverlay was incorporated late in 1965, each share of stock would be valued at $14,000. By then the corporation had expanded to include ownership of several other Philadelphia-based fighters, several apartment houses and the Cloverlay Gym on Broad Street. But in 1965, all Cloverlay had was a piece of property named Joe Frazier, who signed a three-year contract, with the syndicate holding options for two additional three-year periods.

  Under the original agreement, Frazier would receive a salary of $100 a week (later it was increased to $173 per week, then to $1,000 per week). He also got 50 percent of his ring earnings, half to be paid in cash in deferred compensations, the other half to be invested. The stockholders got 35 percent, out of which they paid all expenses, and the other 15 percent went to Yank Durham, serving in the capacity of manager-trainer-adviser and calling all the shots without Cloverlay interference.

  Given a free hand, Durham showed amazing business acumen as well as a tremendous knowledge of his sport. Serving as manager-adviser, he sensitively guided Frazier’s career, bringing him along slowly, carefully selecting opponents so as not to ov
ermatch his fighter while, at the same time, helping him gain improvement in the ring and prestige among his peers.

  Under Cloverlay aegis, Joe Frazier’s career picked up impetus. He fought seven times for the group in the first seven months of 1966, all with excellent results. With each bout, Frazier took another step up the ladder in the heavyweight division. Durham had Joe do most of his fighting in his hometown of Philadelphia, but Yank also gave him exposure in New York and in Los Angeles. His record for the first half of 1966 was an impressive one:

  January 17—Mel Turnbow . . . Philadelphia . . . KO-1

  March 4—Dick Wipperman . . . New York . . . KO-5

  April 4—Charley Polite . . . Philadelphia . . . KO-2

  April 28—Don Toro Smith . . . Philadelphia . . . KO-3

  May 19—Chuck Leslie . . . Los Angeles . . . KO-3

  May 26—Al Jones . . . Los Angeles . . . KO-1

  July 25—Billy Daniels . . . Philadelphia . . . KO-6

  With the Billy Daniels fight, Frazier concluded his first year of professional fighting, a year in which he had had eleven fights, an average of almost one a month. And his record showed 11 wins and 11 knockouts, in a total of 27 rounds. Only once had an opponent gone past the fifth; only twice had opponents gone past the third. It was an impressive record, but most important, in those twelve months Joe had shown improvements in the ring and had moved up in the ratings thanks to Yank Durham’s able handling.

  Now Durham was ready to move his young fighter into the big time. Madison Square Garden offered him a fight and drew up a list of possible opponents. Durham scanned it carefully. This was going to be the biggest step in Frazier’s career so far, and Yank wanted to be sure Joe was in against the right man.