Come Out Smokin'

by Phil Pepe

  In those final days of preparation, interest continued to soar, and Jet magazine referred to Frazier as “the unheralded, white-created champion for the primary enrichment of two white businessmen: Jack Kent Cooke and Jerry Perenchio.” And Joe Frazier kept getting surlier. In those final days, he did nothing but work and read his Bible.

  “Close to a fight,” he said, “I always read the same thing. Judges, chapter seven, second verse. It’s about fighting. Gideon has to fight a battle, but God tells him, ‘Most of your men can’t be counted on. Fight with just three hundred.’ And Gideon wins. It shows how there’s a danger in a crowd. That’s why you never see me travelin’ with a lot of guys. Somebody will shirk his responsibility. The best way to fight a war is alone.”

  Now Joe Frazier was very much alone with his thoughts because in just a few days he would be ultimately alone in the ring with only Muhammad Ali in front of him and the thing he wanted more than anything—the heavyweight championship of the world. Before the match was ever made, back when it was just a promoter’s dream, Frazier said, “I don’t care if I never fight Clay. He needs me ‘cause I’m the champ. I don’t need him. I got what I want.”

  That was just typical prefight bravado. It was good for publicity and not bad for maintaining the upper hand in negotiations. Joe Frazier did care if he “fought Clay.” He did not have what he wanted. Not everything. Now what he wanted more than anything was to beat Loudmouth, to shut him up once and for all.

  “This fight means more to me than just the money,” Frazier emphasized. “When I started out it was for the money. That’s why a man turns pro. It ain’t enough to be good, he wants to get paid for it. Now I got enough put away so my kids can go to college.

  “From the beginning, Clay was the man. The one I wanted to beat. You’re never sure you’ll get to the big one, but I have. All the goals have been met and there’s just one left. From the beginning, this is the fight I wanted. That’s all I heard when I was coming up—‘Clay this’ and ‘Clay that.’ When I came out of the Olympics, he told me, ‘Come on up, work hard and I’ll make you rich.’ You know what? I came up, I got rich and he got poor. Now I’m making him rich. Ain’t that something? He ought to kiss me. I got him back in the fight game and I got him two and a half million dollars besides.”

  Joe Frazier was lying on a bed at his training quarters in a motel on the outskirts of Philadelphia. He was in a rare talkative mood, a philosophical mood. And the irony of things did not escape him.

  “It’s funny how life turns,” he said. “If anybody asks me, I have nothing but good to say about Clay. I tell them his religion is his belief, that’s his right. Still, I say he’s a loudmouth. He makes a bunch of noise. He says I’m a Tom, that I don’t stand up for the black man. Sure, I stand up for the black man, but first I stand up for Joe Frazier. That’s where it begins, each man standing up for himself and looking out for his family.

  “What does he know about hard times? He had it easy in boxing. A white man in his corner, those rich plantation owners to back him and a white lawyer to keep him out of jail and he’s going to Uncle Tom me. I have a black man in my corner, my manager and both black and white people backing me.”

  While Muhammad Ali seemed preoccupied with the importance of The Fight, the greatness of it, the attendance and the attention paid it—“It will be the greatest commercial event in the history of the planet earth,” he often said—Joe Frazier was concerned only with the match itself. He was no showman, he was only a fighter.

  “I think about The Fight,” he said, “but I try not to think about it all the time. Man, I want to go into that ring with a clean mind, a peaceful mind. Yeah, it’s great to be a part of a big event. An honor. I would love to look back and say, ‘I was in that.’ Still, I view it as a job. The bread is good and I concentrate on my work.”

  “Conditioning will win for me,” Frazier predicted. “There’s no way he’ll be in better shape than me and he has to be in better shape to win because he has to do two things—move backward and fight. Me, all I have to do is fight.”

  Joe Frazier was not what Muhammad Ali said he was. Joe Frazier was not a street fighter. A street fighter throws punches unthinkingly, from any angle. Joe Frazier was a professional. For every plan Muhammad Ali had, Joe Frazier had a counterplan.

  . . . I’m going to use the ring to make him look silly . . . , Muhammad had said.

  “The ring is only so big,” Frazier pointed out. “First I’m going to cut the ring in half. Then I keep slicing it until there’s no room to run. And then there ain’t nothin’ to do but fight. I don’t chase, I cut a man off. I’m going to keep cutting the ring on Clay. I’m going to make him fight.”

  . . . I will dance all night, he’ll never catch me . . .

  “If he moves, it won’t be because he wants to, but because I’m making him. I don’t see how he’s going to survive unless he runs. And if he does, there’s only so long before he gives out. But that’s his problem.”

  . . . I’m going to whup him like a little baby . . .

  “He’s going to find out that Joe Frazier don’t hurt easy and don’t discourage quick.”

  . . . I’m too quick, my hands are too quick. I will hit him so many times he will think he’s fighting three men . . .

  “He’s talking about jabbing me silly. That’s just jive. I’ll take a couple of them, but I’m not going to let him punch me around like a punching bag. It’s not going to be that easy.”

  . . . he must fall in six . . .

  “From the fourth round on, it’s just a matter of time until that clown falls . . . forever.”

  . . . If I lose, I will crawl across the ring on my hands and knees and tell him, Joe Frazier, you are the greatest . . .

  “I don’t like to think about losing because it ain’t gonna happen, but if, and I said if, I lose, I’ll just walk away and it won’t bother me because I’ll know I’ve done my best. I could do nothing more. That’s all a man can do. As a fighter, I’m together. I’ve been to the bad wars. I’ve proved I can take a punch. But what about Clay? Is he together or will he come apart?”

  . . . he’s too ugly to be champion. I’m pretty. I will show him who the real champ is . . .

  “He calls me ugly. Now what does that have to do with anything? We didn’t make ourselves. God made us. I’m going to let him keep that pretty head of his. I don’t want it. I’m going to be where he lives—in the body. He loudmouthed so long, he wants to be pretty as a woman, as big as the President. He put himself in a box. Now he has to do or die. I think he’s going to die. I just want to be the best at boxing. He’s good and I’m good and that’s what fights are about. Me and him.”

  Before the Bell

  A reporter for the New York Daily News was conducting a poll of one hundred celebrities for their prefight predictions. After many futile attempts, he finally located the last of the one hundred, Erich Segal, author of the alltime best-selling novel, Love Story, which had also been a multimillion-dollar success as a movie. Segal was making a speech in Montreal. His prediction: Ali by a knockout.

  “Tell me,” Segal then added, “do you know where I can get a ticket to The Fight?”

  According to the contracts on file in the offices of the New York State Athletic Commission, both fighters were to leave their training camps—Ali in Miami, Frazier in Philadelphia—and arrive in New York on February 22, two weeks before The Fight, so they would be available for promotional appearances. Both fighters objected and New York State Athletic Commission chairman Edwin B. Dooley permissively waived the clause in the contract.

  “It’s fair to the boxers to have their own training camps,” Dooley announced. “We have to consider the boxers first.”

  Both were scheduled to make their first appearance on the Wednesday before The Fight, at the Garden, where they would undergo the usual, routine, prefight physi
cal examination.

  Jerry Perenchio had requested that both fighters remain in New York for the final five days, but Frazier refused. He planned to return to Philadelphia by car following his physical and stay there until Friday when he would be driven to New York and check into the City Squire Motor Inn to await the big night.

  Upon hearing of Frazier’s plans, Angelo Dundee decided to take Ali back to Miami. “If he can go back, we can too,” said Dundee, who was less than happy about exposing Ali to the hordes of newsmen, idolators, and hangers-on that always seem to flock around him. When Ali’s car pulled up outside the Garden, it was mobbed by well-wishers and Muhammad was jostled, clutched at and practically mauled as he walked the twenty-five feet from his car to the arena’s boxing department.

  That demonstration convinced Dundee that it would be best to return to Miami and fly back to New York on Saturday and check into the Hotel New Yorker. “I’m afraid my guy’s going to be driven out of his mind,” Dundee explained. “It’s not fair.”

  After his examination was completed, Ali sat in a chair placed in a ring set up in the Felt Forum and answered the questions of the almost three hundred newsmen present. He seemed to be enjoying himself as he repeated his boasts to “settle this thing” and to “show the world who the real champ is.”

  When asked what his plans were for the next few days, Ali explained he would be returning to Miami that night. Then suddenly, impetuously, he had an idea.

  “Do you want me to train here or go back to Miami?” he asked the newsmen.

  “Stay here, stay here,” they chorused.

  “Then that’s what I’ll do,” Ali decided. “But first I want a couple of promises.”

  He requested that reporters only, not fans, be permitted to witness his final workouts. And he asked that a bed be placed in his dressing room so that he might nap after his workouts.

  To both requests, John F. X. Condon, the gifted publicist for Garden boxing, agreed.

  “I’m stayin’,” Muhammad declared. “Joe Frazier’s going back to Philadelphia, but I’ll stay. I’ll show who the real champ is.”

  Then it was settled, Ali would stay in New York. Or would he?

  Perhaps on orders from on high, from his manager Herbert Muhammad, Ali was told to return to Miami and that night he was on the five o’clock plane back to his training quarters, leaving in the lurch (1) reporters who were content in the knowledge that with Ali on hand there would be no dearth of fresh copy, and (2) Johnny Carson, the late-night television talk-show host, with whom Muhammad had agreed to appear that evening.

  The physicals had been scheduled two hours apart so there would be no confrontation. But each had statements to make, last-minute predictions and promises.

  “I’ll beat him,” Frazier said, “between rounds one and ten.” His plan, Frazier said, was to work to the body in the early rounds. “If you kill the body,” he reasoned, “the head will die.”

  At his physical, Ali displayed the red, white, and blue championship belt that he had won in 1964 and showed it to reporters for their inspection.

  “Joe Frazier doesn’t have a championship belt,” Ali shouted. “I’ve got a belt and I’ll bring it into the ring Monday night and when he whups me, I’ll hand him the belt.”

  When? Not if?

  Asked to make his customary prediction, Ali declined.

  “I have a prediction,” he stated. “I wrote it last week and sealed it up in an envelope and I will bring it into the ring on Monday night and I will open it up just before the fight and read my prediction so the whole world looking in on television and on Telstar shall know what it is.”

  On the Friday before The Fight, Joe Frazier drove down from Philadelphia and checked into the City Squire Motor Inn. Muhammad Ali would arrive the following day by plane. And on Sunday, the day before The Fight, there was trouble. Frazier was sullen and fitful, not uncommon so close to a fight—but this was worse than usual.

  Several days before, Frazier had received an unsigned letter warning him to “lose or else.” He dismissed it as just another of the many crank letters a man in his position receives. But a few days later, an anonymous telephone caller repeated the threat and another anonymous call to the City Squire Motor Inn warned that a bomb had been placed somewhere in the motel.

  Eight detectives were called in to guard the champion, who moved out of the City Squire into another midtown hotel and secluded himself in his room. Frazier seemed unconcerned with the threats.

  “Joe’s laughing about all the detectives around him,” a friend said. “He’s not worried about it.”

  Monday, March 8, 1971, came up gray and bleak in New York. Winter’s chill was still in the air and flecks of snow descended on the city’s streets, lay there for a moment, then vanished.

  Joe Frazier woke up early on the morning of the night he was to risk his claim to the title, heavyweight champion of the world. He went for a walk in the park, then returned to his hotel and napped until it was time to get into a limousine for the short ride to Madison Square Garden where, at 11:30 a.m., both fighters would go through the traditional official weigh-in ceremonies.

  Through all the years of heavyweight championship fights, weigh-ins have been rather humdrum and meaningless exercises, designed to squeeze the last bit of publicity out of the big event. They are primarily for the reporters on the morning papers who need stories to fill the early editions of the following day’s newspapers and for radio and television reporters to fill their evening sports segments. The principals in the fight studiously ignore each other and the announcement of how much each fighter weighs is hardly a surprise and of little consequence, particularly in the heavyweight division.

  But Muhammad Ali changed all that in Miami Beach on the morning of February 25, 1964, the day he won the title from Sonny Liston. Arriving for the customary ceremony, Ali shocked veteran weigh-in observers. He ranted and raved, threatened and taunted, shaking his finger in Liston’s face, and promising to take the title away from “that big, ugly bear.”

  When he was finally dragged away, Muhammad was bathed in his own perspiration. Was this an act?

  Dr. Alexander Robbins of the Miami Athletic Commission concluded it was not. He found Ali’s pulse rate to be 120, double its normal beat.

  “I think he’s scared to death,” Dr. Robbins diagnosed. “He has the fear of death in him. I’m going to examine him again before the fight. If he doesn’t seem normal, we’ll have to see about calling the fight off. There could be something radically wrong with him.”

  From that day on, the traditional weigh-in would never be humdrum again. Muhammad Ali’s weigh-ins were more exciting than some of his fights.

  Because of that, there were hundreds of reporters and boxing personalities milling around the Garden ring for this weigh-in, waiting to see what Ali would do this time. And Muhammad didn’t disappoint them. He entered talking and he never stopped, having been set off when he was introduced as “the former heavyweight champion.”

  “I’m sick and tired of all this ‘former champion’ business,” he shrieked. “I’m gonna straighten this mess out tonight.”

  Through all his opponent’s raving, Joe Frazier stood quietly, maintaining his usual stoicism.

  Commissioner Edwin B. Dooley weighed each fighter in turn and announced the weights to the waiting press.

  “Joe Frazier weighs two hundred five and a half pounds,” Dooley revealed.

  Yes, Yank Durham said, he was satisfied. He had planned to bring his man in at two hundred and five and he had hit it, practically on the button.

  “Muhammad Ali weighs two hundred and fifteen,” Dooley announced as reporters buzzed. Ali was three pounds over his predicted weight.

  No, Angelo Dundee said, he wasn’t concerned. “He can carry the extra three pounds,” Dundee said.

  That
order of business dispensed with, the fighters left to while away the final eleven hours before The Fight, the longest eleven hours in their lives.

  Joe Frazier returned to his hotel to rest.

  Muhammad Ali went to the makeshift apartment that had been arranged for him in the Garden building, arranged so that he might avoid the crowds that would certainly hound him if he attempted to walk the two blocks between his hotel and Madison Square Garden.

  At 3 p.m., Frazier ate his usual prefight meal—broiled steak, rare, green vegetable and hot tea. Then he lay down to rest, but he couldn’t sleep—until it was time “to go to war.”

  Muhammad ate at two thirty—steak, potato, salad, and hot tea. Then he decided to take a walk. He wandered into the arena, where workers were making final preparations for the evening’s activity. Ali chatted with them, then climbed into the ring and shadowboxed for several minutes.

  They began arriving shortly before nine on the evening of March 8, 1971, long, sleek, black limousines with chauffeurs at the wheel, discharging their passengers on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance to Madison Square Garden, on Seventh Avenue between Thirty-third Street and Thirty-first Street.

  There were ladies, pretty ladies, elegant ladies with the look of affluence and luxury, well-groomed ladies who looked like they had just stepped out of a beauty salon or the pages of Vogue, many of them dressed in long, flowing, full-length evening gowns and wearing fur coats and fur stoles, hanging on the arms of well-tailored men, who looked as if they were going to an inaugural ball or a coronation, not a prizefight.

  Outside on Seventh Avenue, on the steps that led to the entrance of a Madison Square Garden that looked especially resplendent this night, crowds of people milled around, hoping to see somebody famous, wanting to be part of the scene, just wanting to be there with no hope and no chance of getting inside, and among them the scalpers hustling the few remaining tickets, squeezing the last scandalous dollar out of last-minute shoppers who were now, suddenly, so desperate to see The Fight that they would pay any price.