Smokin' Joe

by Mark Kram, Jr.

  Ali shouted: “Joe Frazier! Joe Frazier! Joe Frazier!”

  Frazier jerked his head over his shoulder. Pelemon told me there was fury in his eyes, adding: “Joe was sweating bullets.”

  Frazier then reached into the trunk for a tire iron and growled, “I’m gonna put an end to this sucker right now.”

  * * *

  A photograph once appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin of Yank Durham, clownishly posed in boxing trunks, with Joe Frazier and Gypsy Joe Harris on either side. The two Joes were the talk of Philadelphia in 1968, and Durham had a piece of them both. Gypsy Joe had been on the cover of Sports Illustrated the year before yet would come to harbor a sibling rivalry with Frazier that was laced with jealousy. With the capital of Cloverlay behind him and the certainty of some big paydays ahead, Frazier had the undivided attention of Durham in a way Gypsy never would. While Gypsy Joe had no one but himself to blame for his long fall, it would always seem strange to him how the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission suddenly “discovered” his blind eye later in 1968 and proceeded to take his boxing license. He told Robert Seltzer of the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Let me ask you a question: How can a man have a license to examine a person and not realize I was blind? I turned professional in ’65 and they stopped me in ’68. Were the doctors sleeping from ’65 to ’68?” Given his special appeal, had it been “fixed” so he could box, only to later have it “unfixed” so he could not? But why? Whatever factors came to bear, Gypsy Joe told my father in Sports Illustrated in March 1969: “In one second I was dead.”

  Intrigued by the scope of the talent Gypsy Joe possessed, Durham once attached a custodian to shadow Gypsy Joe for two hundred dollars a week and get him to the gym each day. The bodyguard came back and told Durham: “Save ya money, Yank. Gypsy, he leaves tracks Tonto can’t follow.” With a cap atop his shaved head and a pocketful of candy in his leather jacket, he would drop out of training on a whim and disappear for days. Once asked where Gypsy Joe could be found, middleweight Bennie Briscoe shrugged and replied, “Bendin’ over a pool table, I suppose.” Frazier took Harris under his wing, invited him to dinner, and even slipped him occasional “love” from his sock, yet Gypsy Joe could not be persuaded to curb his profligate ways. George James, his trainer, shared an apartment with Harris and remembered how, hours prior to a rematch at the Arena against Miguel Barreto, comanager Willie Reddish handed him fifty dollars and said, “You know where Joe is. Come on now, go get him for me.” James found his roommate in a bar. “I took him to the Arena drunk as hell,” said James. Gypsy Joe flopped on a cot in the dressing room and began snoring. As the bout approached, Durham glanced at James and said, “Wake that son of a bitch up, George.” James dampened a towel with cold water, jarred him awake by wiping him down with it, and told him, “Put your fucking shit on.” James remembered, “So he got into his gear and dressed that Mexican boy for ten rounds like nothing had ever happened.”

  Notwithstanding his dreadful diet, untimely boozing, and erratic gym attendance, Gypsy Joe had clicked off twenty-four consecutive victories by the summer of 1968, including a nontitle bout victory over welterweight champion Curtis Cokes. But he had become an increasing headache for local promoter Herman Taylor, an octogenarian who did the legwork for Tex Rickard in setting up the Jack Dempsey–Gene Tunney bout at Municipal Stadium in 1926. For the Barreto fiasco, Gypsy Joe had weighed in ten and a half pounds over the welterweight limit and was suspended by Pennsylvania Athletic Commission Chairman Frank Wildman for sixty days for “jeopardizing the show.” Still a believer—yet an increasingly agitated one—Taylor signed him for a March bout at the Arena against former number-one welterweight contender Manny Gonzalez, only to have that postponed once and later scrapped at considerable expense when Harris came down with “acute laryngitis and a respiratory infection.” When Gypsy Joe finally fought again, it was as a middleweight, on August 6, against savvy veteran Emile Griffith at the Spectrum. Again, Gypsy Joe showed up overweight at the noon weigh-in and was forced to shed two and a half pounds at the gym in order to come in under the 160-pound middleweight limit. Did that explain his obvious sluggishness in the later rounds of the bout? Whatever accounted for it, Griffith spirited away a unanimous twelve-round decision before a then-Pennsylvania-record indoor crowd of 13,875. The loss cost Gypsy Joe a shot at champion Nino Benvenuti.

  Gypsy Joe earned $12,500 for the Griffith bout. “I held it for him in the trunk of my car,” James told me. “A week or so would go by and he would be broke and I would go get him some.” As always, he was a free spender when he had money, stopping youngsters up and down Columbia Avenue and asking how old they were. If they said they were under twelve, James said Gypsy would slip them a fifty- or even a hundred-dollar bill. On his excursions through North Philadelphia, passersby would spot him and call out to him, “Hey, Gypsy Joe! When you fighting again?” And he would reply, “Keep an eye out for those posters.” They were always stapled to utility poles. As Taylor set the date for the Gonzalez bout—October 14—the word out of the gym was that Gypsy Joe was a new man on the heels of the Griffith setback; even Gypsy Joe said as much in the paper. But quite another report circulated back to Wildman, who had heard that Harris had not been working out. Wildman called him in for a hearing, pointed to Taylor, and said: “There is no reason why this man has to sweat and worry until October 14. You owe it to him and you owe it to the fans to come in at the specified weight.” With the bout still a week away, Gypsy Joe had to trim down by six pounds in order to come in at the 156-pound junior middleweight limit or Wildman told him that he would suspend his license again. Whatever room Gypsy Joe still had to heed that warning was foreclosed upon by a heated exchange that James said occurred in private between his fighter and Taylor.

  “Joe, you have to stop coming in overweight, you hear?” Taylor told him.

  “Leave me the fuck alone,” Gypsy Joe shot back.

  “What did you say?”

  “I told you, man. Leave me the fuck alone.” Gypsy Joe then leaned back on the bench that he and James were sitting on and closed his eyes.

  James sighed years later. “Next thing you know, the doctors came out and said to him: ‘Can we see you in here?’ And when he went back into the room, they went right for that eye. And that was the end. I begged him. I begged him, ‘Joe, go apologize.’ He said, ‘Fuck that.’ I said, ‘Joe, listen to me. You gotta hear me, son. You gotta do it.’ Sadly, he never did.”

  With Gypsy Joe suddenly jettisoned from the scene, Frazier had what appeared to be unobstructed access to the favor of the hometown fans. Nine of his twenty-one bouts had been held in Philadelphia, yet none had stirred much more than passing interest. With the exception of the surprise knockdown by Mike Bruce in 1965, he had breezed through his early undercard fights there. Given the portfolio of some of his opponents, who appeared as if they had been found nodding off on a bench at the bus depot, it had shocked no one when Abe Davis climbed into the ring with a hole in the bottom of a shoe. Others showed up well into the downside of their careers. Four years before Frazier stopped Billy Daniels in the sixth round amid a cacophony of boos, Daniels had given Clay some trouble in their 1962 bout, twice stunning him with right hands before he was stopped on cuts in the seventh. Veteran Doug Jones had far more than just a loss to Clay on his record—he had given him a handful at the Garden in 1963 in a near upset—but he was only a ghost of his former self four years later when Frazier poleaxed him with that left hook to the jaw in the sixth round. Even the tall tale that Tony Doyle had whipped Joe as an amateur was not enough to draw a crowd for the opening of the Spectrum; the seventeen-thousand-seat building was only half full. Observed former Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reporter J Russell Peltz, who was only then beginning his career as a boxing promoter: “They ruined Frazier in Philly by putting him in terrible fights.”

  That did not stop Lou Lucchese from stepping up to the plate. Lucchese owned a toy store in Reading, Pennsylvania, and had a hand in helping to launch Frazie
r by promoting some of his early appearances. Durham had a fondness for him and once vowed that he would reward his loyalty by keeping him involved as his exclusive promoter. Apparently—or so the tale is told—they were driving back from Pittsburgh after Frazier had beaten Don “Toro” Smith and Durham had been drinking. The promise was quickly forgotten when Brenner later showed up on behalf of the Garden with a bag full of loot. Lucchese was a small operator and was in no position to go big time, yet he had been told by Durham in a more sober moment that he would agree to a defense against Oscar Bonavena at the Spectrum if Lucchese could work out the particulars. Lucchese hopped a plane to Buenos Aires, where Bonavena owned twenty-three apartment houses, two haberdashery shops, a fifty-foot yacht, and a twin-engine plane. When it came down to talking dollars and cents, Lucchese offered him sixty thousand dollars. Bonavena countered at a hundred thousand. They settled at seventy-five thousand, with Lucchese picking up any U.S. taxes Oscar owed. Frazier was guaranteed one hundred thousand dollars, with a percentage of the gate and television receipts.

  Like the first encounter between Joe and Oscar, their second one should have been held in a barroom instead of a boxing ring. There was a referee—Joe Sweeney—yet he seemed to be in what an annoyed Durham later called “a fog.” Sweeney was unable to hear the bell at the end of each round and permitted the action to continue unpoliced. Early on, Frazier pummeled Bonavena with a fierce body attack, hammering him with slashing uppercuts and hooks. Bonavena covered up in the peekaboo defense then favored by Floyd Patterson as he leaned on the ropes. Red Smith quipped in the New York Times that “the unbarbered Argentinian . . . hung there like something in the hall closet.” While Frazier was unable to knock Oscar off his feet—including in the fourth round, when he tagged Oscar with twelve consecutive unanswered body blows—he disfigured Bonavena round by round until his eyes appeared as if they were caked with black and blue candle wax. Sweeney took away the eighth round from Bonavena for hitting below the belt, but Durham would later say that “he should have taken away at least three or four more.” Correctly, the frazzled referee pointed out that Bonavena and Frazier were both guilty of throwing low blows and asked, “How would it have been possible [to disqualify either] with both fouling?” Frazier won easily on points.

  In the crowded corridor outside the dressing rooms, Ali declared that he was unimpressed by what he had seen of the two brawlers. He dismissed it as nothing more than a “slugging match.” As he attempted to slip inside to visit Joe, a security guard blocked him and asked to see his press pass. Ali shrugged and said, “All right. I just wanted to wish Frazier luck and tell him I’m going to whup up on him.” Ali turned away and announced into a microphone that a reporter held up: “I’m giving Joe Frazier until high noon tomorrow!”

  On a table inside his dressing room, Frazier was stretched out in his robe. Someone shouted over the noisy crowd, “Give me a towel! Let me wipe him down!” Nearby was ten-year-old Joe Hand Jr., who had sat with Marvis during the bout and found himself shuttled back into the dressing room. Craning his head above a row of the wagging pens in search of an unobstructed view, he looked on as Frazier was rubbed down by two of his seconds. One worked on his thighs and calves. The other worked on his ears. As Joe Jr. quietly wondered why such careful attention was being paid to his ears, someone called out: “Here comes Bonavena! Give him room.” And in walked Oscar, his robe draped upon his shoulders. Both of his eyes were swollen to the size of coin slots. The Argentinian congratulated Frazier and apologized for the low blows.

  “Joe stood up when Oscar came in,” said Hand. “And when he did, the big jock protector he was wearing fell to the floor. Someone had loosened it so he could breathe better, I guess. But what I remember is how all of this water and blood spilled to the floor. I thought, ‘Good God, is he peeing blood?’ Bonavena could not see out of either eye. Someone had to hold up his arm so Joe could shake his hand.”

  Hand paused and added, “I asked Dad on the drive home why they were rubbing his ears. He said they did that to prevent them from becoming cauliflowered.”

  It was not a good night for Lucchese. Going in, he had predicted a sellout crowd, which would have come to $450,000 in box office. He had scaled his ticket prices accordingly, with ringside fixed at fifty dollars. By fight night, reality had set in. As he scanned the half-vacant building, it became clear he would be hard-pressed to break even on his $250,000 outlay. To do even that, the crowd count would have to come in north of eighty-five hundred. But Lucchese fell short of that figure by two thousand seats, which placed the gate at just over $115,000—less than the $118,000 in box office that the Griffith-Harris bout generated. Crestfallen, Lucchese conceded that he was “disappointed in the Philadelphia fans.” But he had an even deeper problem with which to contend. According to Joe Hand Sr., Lucchese did not bring in enough to cover his financial obligations to Cloverlay. “Joe got what he was supposed to get but Lou was still short,” said Hand Sr. Cloverlay held a board meeting to assess their options. One was to sue Lucchese and pursue his assets. Hand stood up and asked the board, “Do we want to be known as an organization that shuts down toy stores?” Years later, he observed, “It wouldn’t have been in the spirit of what we were trying to do with Cloverlay. So we just dropped it.”

  But the poor attendance and the lack of support that it signaled weighed on Frazier. By the following May it had become a topic of conversation as he prepared for his bout in Houston against Dave Zyglewicz, whom Frazier pulverized at 1:36 of the first round. In a story by Tom Cushman in the Philadelphia Daily News two days before the bout, he said he planned to move from Philadelphia. “You fight in New York, you look down at ringside and see Ed Sullivan, the mayor maybe, big people everywhere,” Frazier said. “In Philadelphia, nothing.” As an example of the lack of appreciation Philadelphia had for its top athletes—he did not say “black athletes,” but that appeared to be the insinuation—he pointed to the vilifications endured by Phillies counterculture star Dick Allen, a would-be singer himself who recorded the single “Echoes of November.” As Frazier had done, Allen had played the local clubs with Blavat, who once received an aggravated phone call from Phillies manager Gene Mauch: “What are you doing keeping my ballplayer up all night?” Frazier conceded that he was not yet certain where he was going—only that he was going. And soon. “That you can be sure of,” he said, “and the sooner the better.” He quipped that he would be treated better in Mississippi.

  * * *

  Three weeks before he was scheduled to face Jerry Quarry at Madison Square Garden on June 23, 1969, Joe revealed a piece of himself to the public that had remained hidden. In the lobby of the Concord Hotel, once again the site of training headquarters, he slammed “Clay” in a conversation with Durham and John F. X. Condon, then in charge of publicity at the Garden. Curtly, Frazier assailed “Clay” as a “big-mouth phony” and a “disgrace.” Upon receiving permission from Frazier and Durham, Condon sent a release to the Associated Press. When a reporter followed up, Frazier not only confirmed his comments but also expanded upon them. “What kind of man is this who don’t want to fight for his country?” Frazier said. “If he was in Russia, or someplace else, they’d put him up against the wall.” On and on, he vented that the public was “fed up” with “Clay” and his “fussin’ and fumin’” and that he looked forward to the day when he could “button his big mouth once and for all, knock him out and get rid of him.” Frazier added, “I just hope they turn him loose so I can get at him.”

  It all seemed so unlike genial Joe. Particularly odd was his vociferous condemnation of “Clay” for his refusal to enter the army. Frazier himself had been issued a head-of-household deferment and had stood by Ali not just in word but in deed, using his influence in whatever way he could to help him get his license back. Close observers wondered if there was not some contrived piece of press agentry behind his unexpected outburst, which Condon denied. He swore that Joe actually said what he did, that Durham had spoken of “Clay�
� in passing and that “Joe just started to take off on him.” When Condon told Frazier he would like to use it in a press release, Joe replied, “Go ahead, tell everybody.” Cloverlay publicity man Joey Goldstein also disavowed any complicity. But perhaps no one would have questioned the authenticity of his out-of-the-blue comments had it been widely known that less than a year before Joe had come close to wielding a tire iron at Ali. “Unless I had stopped him, the Fight of the Century would have happened right there on the pavement,” said Joe Hand Sr. The aborted assault gave a glimpse into the effect Ali had on Frazier, how he not only irritated and distracted him but drove him to the very edge.

  Swept up in the whirlwind created by his public attack on “Clay,” Frazier remained in a sour mood in the weeks leading up to his encounter with Quarry. The press converged on his camp and found him strangely inhospitable. The Philadelphia Inquirer carried a piece with the headline, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OLD JOE? He bitched at a crew from CBS. Those lights are too hot. Move ’em back. Even reporters who had followed him from the very beginning were denied interviews. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. When he did talk, there was a sharp edge to his voice, as if he could not get the ordeal over soon enough. The “old Joe” had set aside his disappointment over his loss to Mathis at the 1964 Olympic boxing trials and had the courtesy to stop reporter Jack Fried of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, shake his hand, and thank him for his help. Five years later, he had a piece of the heavyweight championship; he had flashy threads and wheels and plenty of “love” in the bank (and in his sock); and yet he wore the frown of someone who had just had his whitewalls slashed. Was it the “boredom” of yet another training camp (which was another way of saying he had not had sex for six weeks)? Or had he been spoiled by the success he had experienced so far? Durham blamed the hot weather.