Never once would Futch second-guess himself. Whenever word got back to him that Joe was displeased with him, he reminded himself that he knew what he knew: Had he allowed Joe to come out for the fifteenth, there was a chance that with one more shot to the head, Florence would be seeing to funeral arrangements. Although he had no way of knowing then if Joe was ahead or behind, it would not have factored into his decision either way, the same as it had not been a consideration when he was chief second for welterweight Hedgemon Lewis in his 1969 bout against Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez. “There were only thirty seconds to go in the last round,” Futch told Anderson for his New York Times column, “and I was sure Hedge was ahead. But I had to stop it.” In his conversations with Frazier, Futch told him, “Joe, you are still a young man. You have a wife and beautiful children who love you dearly. You have your whole life still ahead of you. Did you want to throw all that away for just a fight?” On a certain level, Frazier could appreciate the place in the heart from which these words had come, yet on a deeper level, where ego collided with good sense, he only knew what he knew: It had not been “just a fight.” It had never been that. Yank would have understood that. He would have pushed Joe out of the corner for the fifteenth and told him, “Go get him, cocksucker!” Even as Joe clung to this belief, Futch always knew better. He had given Yank his word and he had kept it: He had taken care of his boy.
Chapter Ten
Boogie, Boogie, Boogie
Joe on stage, 1971. Getty Images
Eddie Futch once told Yank Durham they would have to keep a close eye on Joe as he grew older. “Guys like Joe, when they go out, they go out quickly,” Futch had said. Given the walk-in style Frazier had adopted, he had absorbed thousands of head shots through the years, which had accumulated in ways he could not begin to calculate. With an eye toward sparing him any more wear and tear than necessary, Durham arranged for him to get into his own training facility to steer him away from the brain-rattling warfare that played itself out in the call-to-manhood battles at other Philadelphia gyms. To further protect him, Durham and later Futch saw to it that he had no more than two bouts per year beginning in 1969, even though Joe would become edgy and hector them for more. “Get me a fight,” Joe would plead. “If not a big one, then get me a small one.” Had Durham lived beyond 1973, it seems possible that he could have coaxed Frazier into the safe harbor of retirement with perhaps more persuasiveness than Futch. Chances are that when Frazier came back from Manila, there would have been no talk of stepping into the ring again with George Foreman, who had beaten Joe three years before as if he were a three-egg omelet. Sagely, future heavyweight champion Larry Holmes told me years later: “You can’t keep taking those punches upside your fucking head.”
Even as George Benton said he would be happy if he never earned another dime off him, Frazier had no intention of packing it in. Beating Foreman would enable him to clean up some old business he had with Big George and perhaps pave the way for a fourth shot at Ali, who quickly withdrew his Manila “retirement” announcement and went on to inconsequential wins in 1976, over Jean-Pierre Coopman, Jimmy Young, and Richard Dunn. Though Frazier would not agree with Futch that he had come in “half prepared” when he faced Foreman in Jamaica, he got upset whenever he brooded upon the shellacking he’d received. Frazier understood why Benton and others would have preferred he retire, but as he told a United Press International reporter: “What am I going to do, sit around and watch old films and wait for a heart attack?” Only he would know when he’d had enough. As he told Dave Anderson in the New York Times, “In the morning, nobody has to touch me with an electric pole to get me up to do roadwork.” Still, by the end of January 1976, it was not yet clear if Futch would sign off on a Foreman rematch. “I want to check him out against a fair sparring partner,” said Futch. “I want to check his legs, his reflexes, see how he compares with the Joe Frazier I’ve known for the last ten years.” Futch gave his approval, yet knew the end was near.
Eleven years had passed since Joe turned pro. Faces had come and gone: Joe Hand Sr. had stepped away from Cloverlay prior to the first Foreman bout due to some political infighting in the organization and launched what would become a highly lucrative closed-circuit enterprise; Lester Pelemon grew weary of the “party life” that surrounded Joe and headed back to Syracuse for a job at Kodak. Cloverlay itself ended its agreement with Frazier on the eve of the Thrilla in Manila, which enabled him to take home the full portion of his purse without splitting off 25 percent to its nine-hundred-plus shareholders. For the forty charter investors who purchased eighty shares at $250 apiece and saw their shares split, a venture that began as an act of civic-mindedness became a financial windfall upon liquidation.
Even with the percentages that he doled out to Cloverlay, Frazier had done far better financially than he could ever have dreamed. “The love” had poured in. Of the more than ten million dollars he earned in purses, he ended up with net earnings, less expenses and taxes, of $3.1 million (just under $25 million in 2018 dollars). He owned a parcel of land in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for which he had been offered $2 million, the $350,000 plantation in Beaufort County, South Carolina, and a $150,000 home outside of Philadelphia in Whitemarsh Township. Additionally, he had a pension fund at Provident Bank that contained $500,000 and a portfolio of stocks and bonds valued at $300,000. According to attorney Bruce Wright, there were “another couple of hundred thousand in cars, clothes, and miscellaneous properties.” Cloverlay also sold Frazier the gym on North Broad Street for $75,000. At the still-young age of thirty-three, Frazier appeared to be set for life. Unlike Joe Louis and an array of other champions through the years, Frazier did not have to fight. But he and Foreman were offered $1 million each for their rematch, which was no small piece of “love” given what he conceded were his “expensive tastes.”
Worsening eye problems remained an obstacle to moving forward with his career. Upon arriving back in Philadelphia from Manila, Frazier scheduled an immediate appointment with Dr. Yanoff for an examination. Records indicate the vision in his “good” right eye was only 20/50. His left eye was “legally blind.” Said Yanoff: “I told him he would have to have the cataract removed from his left eye.” For the November 1975 surgery, Yanoff accompanied Joe to New York to see Dr. Charles Kelman, who had developed the small-incision phacoemulsification (“laser”) technique to perform the cataract procedure. Concerned that word of his appointment would get out, Joe shaved his head and wore sunglasses as he and Yanoff strolled on Fifth Avenue. Yanoff remembered, “Almost immediately, people started yelling, ‘Hey, Joe, what’s happening?’” Although the surgery was successful, Kelman did not equip Frazier with the still somewhat experimental lens implant. Consequently, he was forced to wear a contact lens in order to see out of his left eye. Aware that he would be prohibited from boxing if his impairment were discovered, Frazier employed some clever chicanery to beat the eye exam in his prefight physical. According to Yanoff, Frazier “would read the eye chart with his good right eye, memorize it, and pretend to read with his left eye, which was practically blind without a contact lens.”
To what extent was Futch aware of that? Futch said years later, “If Joe had been blind, I would have retired him. I would not want any fighter to risk his life because of a physical abnormality.” Given that Futch had halted the Manila bout and had saved Joe not just from Ali but from himself, it would be illogical to think he would send him in with one eye against Foreman, who was one of the hardest punchers in history and who had proved it in their first fight. Had Futch been aware of Joe’s handicap, there would not have been a second Foreman fight or perhaps not even the Thrilla in Manila. But with his career on the line and at enhanced peril, Joe concealed the scope of his optical impairment from Futch, just as he would hide a variety of private matters from others through the years. According to Denise Menz, Futch had no knowledge of the surgery that Kelman had performed, nor was he aware that Frazier was wearing a contact lens during his sparring sessio
ns. “Other than Florence, no one knew but the two of us as far as I understood it,” she said. “He used to carry them around in his shaving kit with his solution. He sparred with them and kept thinking he could keep them in. But even with headgear on, they popped out whenever he was hit and ended up on the floor.” Menz remembered that Joe would go through boxes of them. “There were a dozen in each box and they were expensive. They cost something like a hundred dollars for each lens.” Frazier acknowledged in his autobiography that he wore a contact lens in his left eye during the Foreman rematch.
Jerry Perenchio joined with Caesars Palace to promote the scheduled twelve-round bout. Madison Square Garden had already been booked for the Democratic National Convention. Perenchio hoped to stage the fight in the refurbished Yankee Stadium, but Yankees owner George Steinbrenner balked in fear that the event would destroy the playing field. Perenchio settled for Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. Leading up to the June 15 date, advertisements displayed Frazier and Foreman in Roman gladiatorial garb, circa third century B.C., accessorized with laurel wreaths, gauntlets, greaves, and bucklers. In a corny salute to the bicentennial, the two also appeared in television commercials dressed as historical figures from American history, including one in which Foreman was done up as George Washington and Frazier as Betsy Ross. A public sparring session was held eleven days before the bout off Forty-Fourth Street in Shubert Alley, where chorus girls from the show Very Good Eddie peered out of windows as Frazier, according to Stan Hochman in the Philadelphia Daily News, “did the clumsiest 45 minutes on Broadway since Marlene Dietrich toppled into the orchestra pit.” Hochman continued: “If boxing is a jungle, George Foreman is Dr. Livingston. He was due in New York on Tuesday. He was supposed to do the sparring in Shubert Alley. Frazier subbed and got hit with everything but an overtime parking ticket.”
Contrary to the avuncular persona he would engage years later as the pitchman for the wildly successful George Foreman Grill, Foreman emerged from his undoing at the hands of Ali in Zaire as a sullen and altogether confused man, his vast potential undermined by self-doubt and suspicion. Held in a promotional headlock by Don King, he embarrassed himself by taking on five opponents in separate three-round bouts in April 1975 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The so-called Fainting Five included journeymen Alonzo Johnson, Jerry Judge, Terry Daniels, Charley Polite, and Boone Kirkman. Howard Cosell called it a “carnival” on ABC-TV. Polite had even harsher words, correctly stating that Foreman had “really degraded himself.” He added, “An ex-heavyweight champion should act with dignity and not like a clown.” The following January, Foreman scored a fifth-round knockout over Ron Lyle, but not before Lyle floored him twice in the fourth.
Seeing Big George fall to his knees and later flat on his face was a revelation to Frazier. Close to two years had passed since Ali had revealed Foreman’s shortcomings in Africa, and it was clear to Joe that Foreman still had them. Though dangerous when he connected, he “pushed” his punches instead of snapping them off. Moreover, he wore down over a period of rounds and became vulnerable. Futch and Benton devised a strategy whereby Frazier would stay away from Foreman in the early rounds, not too far but on the outer edge of his range of power, and then go get him. Hochman observed: “It seems as if Frazier is training for two different fights. Caution for four or five rounds and then switch gears, out of reserve and into high as soon as Foreman starts to unravel.” Benton tapped a finger on his temple. “The Foreman fight is the kind you win with your fists but you lose up here,” he said. “If Foreman gets all of Joe early, we could wind up back in Jamaica.” Benton said that he and Futch believed Frazier still had enough ability and heart to win but added: “His body has to give him the real answer. And the only way to ask the question is to climb through them ropes.”
Cheers from the 10,341 fans in attendance swelled within Nassau County Veterans Memorial Coliseum as Frazier entered the ring in a yellow robe, accompanied by Futch, Benton, and son Marvis. Once inside the rope, Marvis flipped back the hood of the robe to reveal that Joe had shaved his head, which caused Cosell to gasp at ringside: “The beard is gone! The hair on the top of his head is gone!” At 2241/2 pounds, Frazier tipped the scales ten pounds heavier than he had been for Foreman in 1973 and 81/2 pounds more than he had ever weighed for a fight. Foreman was also 2241/2 yet towered over Joe during the prefight stare-down at ring center, their eyes locked on one another with cold hostility. Once an appealing young man who had won over the American public by waving the Stars and Stripes at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Foreman was booed when he was announced to the crowd that evening on Long Island. Las Vegas made him a 7–5 favorite.
At the opening bell, Frazier advanced in a crouch, his shaven head bobbing up and down. Circling Foreman, Frazier stayed just outside his punching range, too far away to connect with any punches. Big, strong, lumbering George tracked him, throwing heavy jabs, right uppercuts, left hooks, and straight rights as Frazier covered up and blocked them with his arms. Foreman had pummeled Frazier with right uppercuts in their first fight, but now Joe held his right hand under his chin in order to catch them. Curiously—yet perhaps not so, given that he was wearing a contact lens in his left eye and hoped to keep it from jarring free—Frazier very rarely engaged Foreman. Instead, he stood with his head turned at a forty-five-degree angle, so that his good right eye was in front of Foreman. Through the early rounds, Frazier followed the strategy that Futch and Benton laid out for him by attempting to stay off the ropes and out of the corners. As Foreman piled up points in the first three rounds, the question remained: How far could he go before his stamina gave way?
Some of the sharpest exchanges in the bout happened in the fourth round. Foreman now trapped Frazier on the ropes repeatedly and caught him with left jabs and left hooks. Though Joe ramped up his offense, scoring with exploratory jabs, left hooks, and an occasional right hand, none of his punches appeared to hurt George. Near the end of the round, Foreman unloaded a series of heavy blows, which Frazer followed with two solid left hooks to the head that drew cheers from the partisan crowd. The officials evenly split the round, with one scoring it for Foreman, another for Frazier, and the third calling it even. As Frazier sat on his stool between rounds, he had swelling above both eyes. Meanwhile, Foreman was breathing normally and showed no signs of wear, as he had at the same juncture against Ali in Zaire.
Midway into round 5, Foreman trapped Frazier on the ropes and once again began to unload, leaving Joe clearly shaken by two hooks to the head. Two more hooks and a big right hand to the chin stunned Frazier, whose left eye was now swollen. In his autobiography, Frazier would remember: “George was targeting it. One of his punches knocked the contact lens off the pupil and troubled my vision.” A left-right-left combination by Foreman dislodged the mouthpiece from Frazier, who stood his ground and returned fire. Foreman then scored with a potent right uppercut, which straightened up Joe, followed with a left hook to the jaw that caused Frazier to stumble to the canvas on all fours. Frazier rose almost immediately as referee Harold Valan gave him the mandatory eight-count. Foreman looked on impassively from a neutral corner.
As Valan waved the men back together, Foreman moved in again quickly. On wobbly legs, Frazier sent out a couple of wild left hooks, which Foreman avoided. Foreman drove Frazier back toward his corner with head and body shots, once again straightened out of his crouch with a left hook to the head, and followed immediately with a sweeping uppercut to the chin. The blow elevated Frazier off his feet and dumped him in his corner, his back propped against the padded ring post as he sat on the canvas. With his gloves on the top strands of the ropes, Foreman stood over his fallen opponent and stared out at the crowd until Valan escorted him to a neutral corner. Bleeding from a cut over his swollen right eye, Frazier woozily grabbed the bottom strand of both ropes and dragged himself up at the count of seven. As Valan continued the mandatory eight-count, Futch hopped up on the ring apron and hurried along the ropes.
Valan caught his
eye and asked, “What about it?”
“That’s it,” Futch said.
Valan waved his arms over Frazier at 2:26 of the fifth round. Young Marvis Frazier leaped into the ring and rushed to his fallen father. Tears welled in his eyes as he asked him, “Are you okay?” Joe nodded yes, his eyes vague. As Marvis helped him back to his corner, blood splattered onto his cheek and dripped onto his yellow shirt.
As the crowd filed from the arena, George Benton summed up what happened: “Foreman was too much of a mountain . . . too damn big.” Foreman himself would say that it had come down to styles, observing: “I could fight Ali a hundred times, he would beat me a hundred times. I could fight Joe a hundred times, I would knock him out a hundred times. And yet Ali and Frazier could fight each other a hundred times and it would be life and death every single time.” In his own autopsy of the bout, Futch said, “Joe fought as well as he could until the last thirty seconds of the fight. I told him to stay away for four rounds, and then get in tight when George slowed down. George started getting sloppy in the fourth.” But Futch added, to his dismay, that Joe got pinned on the ropes in the fifth round and that was it. In the dressing room immediately afterward, Futch told Frazier in no uncertain terms: “Announce your retirement tonight.”
Smokin' Joe Page 27
