by Mark Kram
“I know a secret,” Gypsy confided soon after. “Ol’ Frazier got a big physical problem. Nobody know, and I ain’t sayin’ either. He a friend, and I ain’t no squealer. But it hurt bad to see how I have to pay.”
A couple of years later, 1969, Gypsy recalled the triggering event that caused the bitter rip between Ali and Joe. They were on the way to see the unsuspecting Ali at his home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, outside of Philly. Frazier was so angry that Gypsy offered to drive, futilely. Joe seemed tired, tight, until he, forever the gospeler, turned toward Gypsy and said, “Trouble with you, Gyp…you just never learned to behave. Street ain’t givin’ you nothin’ back.” A few years earlier he would never have been so critical of Gypsy. Frazier had once been just a heavy, wide kid whom Gyp would leave lunging for a trace of presence like a hunting dog with a bad nose. Even well into being polished, it still took Frazier three rounds or so to find enough of Gypsy to graze with a glove. Gypsy was vital to the development of Joe, helped him grasp the concept of economical footwork. With Cubist moves that always dazzled the eye, Gypsy taunted Joe into quick punching angles until it became dangerous for anyone to speculate that Frazier could be boxed into confusion. After being banished, Gypsy said: “I weren’t his light bag. He act like it sometime. He forget I was a star, too.”
So they rode on, and Gypsy said, “Yank sold me out. Just like that, they find my eye. They find nothin’ in physicals before.”
“You sold yourself out,” Frazier said.
“Oh yeah?” Gyp said. “Well don’t be worryin’ ’bout me. Best you be worryin’ ’bout the big man. He be comin’ for you down the road. ’Member we go all those rounds. I too fast for you. Big man, he gonna be too fast, too.” He added sharply, “And a one-eyed man know a one-eyed man when he see him.”
Frazier, caught off balance, slammed the car to a stop and said, “What kinda shit you talkin’? What you signifyin’?”
“I’m just talkin’, Joe,” Gypsy said. “Why you upset? So, where we goin’, Joe?”
Frazier sat behind the wheel in thought for several minutes. “You oughta watch things ya say, Gyp,” he said, adding, “We gonna see your big man. See how big he is.”
“You gotta be kiddin’, right?” Gypsy asked.
“I ain’t no joker like you.”
Gypsy was wary and excited. Joe could be positively scary in a mood like this. Generally, his pal was a man of small temper and could trade insults with the best in the gym if it was all in the right spirit, but Frazier was not someone who ever tolerated being shown up or embarrassed. Once when Joe was young and shadow boxing, another fighter the same size stood by laughing at his poor coordination. He let him have his fun, then walked over to him, saying, “You finished?” The fighter said, “I’ll let you know.” Joe grabbed him, lifted him in the air, and sent him bouncing across the floor into a wall. “I think you finished now,” Joe said as he stood over the guy, who was clutching a broken arm. Gypsy remembered that encounter as he looked across at Joe from the passenger seat. Gypsy had thought Joe and Ali got along, but it was clear to him that something decidedly nasty was “comin’ down.” Way too personal. To Gypsy, professionals were impersonal, they moved across nightscapes into big arenas like revenants, gave what they had, left as little blood behind as possible, and picked up the money. But Gypsy was game for any ride, often to areas where coroner vans glided silently through the night.
Yank Durham believed Frazier had an unhealthy respect for Ali. “Don’t tell me what the man can’t do,” Joe was telling Gypsy one day in the gym. “The man does what he want in a ring. He a wonder.” Gyp called him Smoke because of the heat of his ring pace, and the name began to stick. Yank heard the talk and grumbled, “You betta get that shit outta your head, Smoke. Ali goes to the bank with that kinda thinkin’. He’s just a man.” Frazier met Ali the night following the Zora Folley bout in the Garden, his last before he exiled for evading the draft. Durham recalled, “Somebody takes Joe over, `Champ, this is Joe Frazier,’ and I’m sayin’ I don’t want this happening. I want Ali remaining a face, a name, nobody important now. I’m training a dog, you see, to eat a dog.” Ali sized Frazier up and said, “I know who he is. Stay healthy, Joe. I’ll be back. We gonna do some business.” He then snapped Joe’s suspenders, saying, “These won’t keep you standin’. You not big enough for me. But we’ll make some money anyway.” Joe gave him a big smile and said, “Could be.” Sensing too much softness in Joe, Durham broke in, saying, “Clay, you ever need some money, we’ll always have some sparring work for you.” Ali just looked at Yank, then turned away, with his aide saying to him, “Can you believe that country nigger?” Yank pulled Joe aside and said, “You best get some sense in your head, boy. You too impressed by him. You’re somebody. Got a big future. Get them stars outta your eyes, else he’ll pick the gold right outta your pocket.”
Unknown to Durham—and not much was—Frazier and Ali remained close during the early days of the exile. Ali was a lonesome king, as all kings soon are without treasure to dispense. It had come down, so the inside word was, that the champ was even short on grocery money, and that certain members of his entourage often turned up with bags of food at his door. To his annoyed wife, Belinda, a proud and resourceful woman, that inside word was merely a line floated to extract sympathy for Ali. Joe gave him a couple of hundred here and there, but denied a report that he personally took $2,000 to Ali so he could pay his hotel bill in New York. “Wasn’t much I give him,” Frazier told me, quelling rumors Ali over time was into Joe for anywhere between $20,000 and $200,000. Even with the entire Milky Way filling his eyes when it came to Ali, Frazier was so attentive to money that those sums are ludicrous. But Joe was willing to do almost anything else, and always said: “Not right to take a man’s pick and shovel.” While he did not approve of Ali’s military position, he disagreed with his license being lifted.
Until Ali went on the college lecture circuit he was cut off from making money but also from what he most needed, the energy source of a constant audience. According to Belinda, he feared that he was shrinking, that he would become smaller by the day until there would be nothing left. Frazier tried to allay his dread, “You’ll be back. Better than ever.” Ali said, “Joe, you the big man now. You gotta keep my name out there. Don’t let ’em forget.” To that end, Frazier lobbied the press, Commission people, and rallied some old champs like Joe Louis, who was unsympathetic to Ali, largely because of his black nationalism, his loud presentation of self, and his evasion of the military. Infuriated by how agreeable Joe was when it came to Ali, Yank Durham exploded one day, “You better start keeping your mouth shut about him. We don’t need him. He needs us! Don’t you understand anything, boy? He using you. Wake up, for chrissake!” Durham would not hear of the philanthropic bargain Joe would strike with Ali. Gypsy told me of a day he once drove to New York with Joe and Ali, how the two worked up plans for one day meeting for the title.
“An even split, okay, Joe?” Ali asked. “Right down the middle. I don’t have much. I gotta come back big. I’d do the same for you.”
“No trouble there,” Joe said.
“Your people, they ain’t gonna like it.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you well.”
“Promise.”
“I promise,” said Frazier, whose character would never permit him to retreat from his word.
“I’ll give you a return,” Ali said.
“A return!” Frazier shouted. “What make you think I gonna need a return?”
“Joe, you a good fighter,” Ali said. “But no disrespect, you not big enough for me, not fast enough. I’ll tell you what. You beat me, I’ll crawl across the ring and kiss your feet.”
“You promise,” Joe said.
“You got my word.”
“Maybe I’m gonna knock you so cold you can’t crawl.”
They both laughed, and Ali said, “What you gonna do when I whup you?”
“If,” Joe said. “There ain’t no when in a
ring. Not with me. Besides, I already give you an even split.”
“Yeah,” Ali said, “and I thank you. But I’ll be puttin’ them asses in the seats.”
Joe shook his head and said, “You’re somethin’. I got the name too. You ain’t gonna be much without me. Maybe I be givin’ the return. I ain’t studyin’ on losin’ a bit, and damn sure I never crawl across a ring to you.”
“Well, I will,” Ali said. “That’s how sure I am.”
“I’ll be waitin’,” Joe said.
Frazier never forgot that exchange. “Yank was right the whole time,” he said now, with regret as he took another small pull on the brandy jug. Nor would he ever forget what took place some time later, in 1969 in Philly, the abrupt severing of what Joe thought to be a bond between them. The pair arranged a meeting, designed to attract press attention and heat up the perception of them as inseparable rivals. Ali was on WHAT-Radio, and Joe and Gypsy had the interview on in the gym. “He somethin’, ain’t he?” Joe said to Gyp with a laugh. Ali was into his usual government rant, then suddenly shifted targets and began calling Joe clumsy, a fighter without class, an Uncle Tom. Ali called Frazier a coward, and said if he wasn’t, he should show up at the PAL gym in an hour and they’d settle the matter. Gypsy recalled: “Joe crush the radio with his foot. He say, `He makin’ a fool of me in my backyard.’” When Joe reached the gym, it was packed, the ring posts bent by the surge of people inside. With Ali screaming, Joe hurriedly stripped off his shirt. A police sergeant, Vince Furlong, jumped between them, saying: “None of that here. Take it to the park.” Ali said to Joe, “You follow, or you a coward.”
Joe declined as Ali led a big crowd through the black ghetto to Fairmount Park. But Durham hopped into his car and joined in the parade behind Ali. Durham got up, raced up to Ali, and jabbed a finger in his face. “I’ll fight you when you get a license,” Yank said, using the personal pronoun that always bemused Frazier. “What the hell you tryin’ to do here? You want work, come to our gym, and you can work with my kids. I’ll pay you good. Joe’s no chump.” By not joining Ali in the park, Joe felt silly, used, an object of ridicule and diminished in stature. After Joe and Ali appeared on The Mike Douglas Show the next day, Ali waited for him outside across the street. He then ran across to Frazier, and threw a punch, a soft right, that caught Joe on the shoulder. They grappled. Ali sent out another right, missing Joe and zinging Durham, who held his eye. “You crazy mothafucka,” Durham shouted. He then motioned to some in the crowd to help pull Joe away. On the way home, Frazier kept saying over and over to Gypsy, “I can’t believe I trusted him.”
And so that same evening they drove over to see Ali at his Cherry Hill house. Gypsy was saying, “Smoke, this ain’t right. Let it pass. He wanna see you like this. He ain’t right in the head. You playin’ his game.” Joe said: “It ain’t no game to me.” He then said, “You tell Yank about this, and you be no friend of mine. Ever.” Two Muslims with shoulder arms answered the door. One went back to fetch Ali, and he came to the door with a big smile. He looked down at little Gypsy. According to Gypsy years later, here is what took place.
“Who’s the shrimp?” Ali asked.
Gypsy shot back, “Yeah, gimme five inches, and I whup your faggot ass good.”
Ali ignored him, saying to Joe, “Come on in. My, my, we have some fun today.”
“Right here’ll do,” Joe said. “And it weren’t no fun for me. Showin’ me up like that. Right here in my hometown. Callin’ me names.”
The Muslims drew in closer to Ali. Joe said to them: “Them guns don’t mean shit to me.”
Ali said: “Just fun, Joe. That’s all. Gotta keep my name out there. Don’t mean nuthin’ by it.”
“Coward? Uncle Tom? Only one I’ve been Tommin’ for is you! Names like that ain’t just fun. Those sorry-ass Muslims leadin’ you on me. It gonna stop right here.”
“Don’t talk about my religion,” Ali said. “I can’t let ya do that. Go home and cool down.”
“Ain’t ever gonna be coolin’ down now. Fuck your religion. We’re talkin’ about me. Who I am.” Joe extended his hand, saying, “This is black. You can’t take who I am. You turn on a friend for what? So you impress them Muslim fools, so you be the big man.”
Ali said, “We finished talkin’.” He turned back into the house.
Frazier snapped, “That’s it, get the fuck outta here. Hide behind your shooters. You and me, it’s comin’. But I’ll die before ya get an even split.”
On the way back to the car, Gypsy asked, “You feelin’ better?”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “For now.”
True contempt is seldom visible in sports. While greed, envy, and smallness run through games like congealed blood, they are commonly concealed, if for no other reason than they are disruptive to the supposedly idyllic code of sportsmanship that athletics promotes; such contempt is far too personal. Although true contempt is viewed by and large bad for business, Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis always has been a lone exception as a career-long sustainer of uncomely passions.
Of the various levels of contempt, two are of interest in relation to Ali-Frazier. The contempt that Ali held for Frazier during the final third of his career and in retirement was at the level of “Hobbesian indifference,” which William Ian Miller, author of The Anatomy of Disgust, points out, is designed to render the target invisible or nonexistent. But Ali was not always Hobbesian. Early on, as Cassius Clay, he had an insolent contempt, a promiscuous spray of disrespect that indicates someone trying to secure rank by mere display; a rather mean fool. When he became champ, he accelerated the contempt that shames and humiliates, especially against those he saw as threats to his superiority and rank among blacks, particularly the much-loved Floyd Patterson and later the implacable challenge of Frazier. Joe’s contempt, ceaseless and unsparing, was a different sort from the outset. His was that of the “blood-feuder,” and remains so today. Besides responding to the pain and humiliation Ali caused him, he wanted and wants to reduce his rank, to show him that he failed, that he never measured up, that he claimed much more for himself than he was. Ali has sat in Frazier’s gut like a broken bottle.
That psychic unrest erupted when Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, when a sentimentality so often seen in sports poured down on him. Frazier could barely control his rage, saying, “I hope he falls in the flame.” In the low church theocracy of sports, this was seen as poor form. Contrary to opinion, the sports press likes to fling incense, be part of the show, create stars, and to that end prints and televises a fraction of what it knows. Heroes fuel circulation and ratings: ride the star, retain access. Unless, of course, his image is corrupted by too many trips to the police blotter; he is caught in a sexual fumble, or he beats his wife. Prime examples are Dennis Rodman and the overrated Mike Tyson, both of whose talent has been overshadowed by their determination to be behavorial retards. While he did not have the tattoos or the dyed hair that Rodman adopted, Ali was easily in his league when it came to brainless exhibitionism.
By the time Frazier wished for Ali’s incineration, it had long been fashionable to beatify Ali. How could Frazier nurse such a grudge for so long, dispense such violent talk and personal malice? Give it up, Joe, it’s embarrassing went the general view. Joe later was even more inflammatory in his autobiography: “If we were twins in the belly of our mama, I’d reach over and strangle him.” To Frazier, a justifiable attitude considering how Ali stomped on his identity, turned him into a point of race scorn that he contends still follows him today; Ali gets a boulevard named after him, Frazier is passed over as an inaugural inductee for the Wall of Fame in Philly.
Didn’t Joe once say while recuperating on a bed after Manila, “Lawdy, lawdy he’s great”? He replied that he had said no such thing, and if he had he must have been out of his head with dehydration, or saying what he was taught. “Like bein’ a good sport,” he said. “For the public, that’s why I say that. I never felt them words inside.” He suddenly wanted to know
who I thought were the top five heavyweights in history; I did not have enough insensitivity to tell him that his old trainer, Eddie Futch, had left him off his list. I told him: Ali, Joe Louis, Marciano, Jersey Joe Walcott, and Frazier—with Sonny Liston a very close sixth. “Well,” Joe said, “right from the top you got that all wrong.” Where would he place Ali? “Not in the top five, for certain. I beat him three times.” He waved away the public record, saying, “I don’t care about that. I know in my heart! He do, too.” Of the latter, it is a lock bet that such an admission by Ali would never be forthcoming—even in a delirium.
Having dismissed Ali as a man and a fighter, indeed tossed him into a pile of subalterns, Frazier did not seem to have any place farther to go with him—yet held on to him as if he was there and would disappear in a second, and in doing so would take him along. “When a man gets in your blood like that,” Frazier said, “you can’t never let go. No matter. Yesterday is today for me. He never die for me.” Ali in mist, Frazier in shadow walled in by heavier shadow. So unmoored from what they were and did, the ghosts of Manila.
PASSAGES
On March 22, 1967, Sugar Ray Robinson drove to Loew’s Midtown Motor Inn, across from the old Madison Square Garden. It was 2 A. M., cold with piles of dirty snow on the street, and nothing could have got him out of bed, not even the throaty summons of a woman. Those days were behind him as well as his career, twenty years of casting the longest shadow it was possible to do then in a sport. Because he always needed money to sustain a glamorous social life, he fought frequently against names that still bring a shudder: LaMotta, Turpin, Fullmer, and so on. There were few breathers, even the journeymen were tough then and required serious intent. The middleweight division of this period, postwar on through some of the sixties, was the preeminent in all of boxing history, and with aristocratic bearing and the style of Fred Astaire and Duke Ellington, Sugar was its master. No one admired Robinson more than Clay-Ali, who set out to be just like him.
