One of my personal heroes, former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier, passed away recently. I consider him a hero not because of his skill, which was considerable, but rather because of his character.
Soft-spoken, generous, yet purposeful and focused with deadly intensity on his craft, Joe Frazier was a gentleman athlete of a kind all but extinct. He came up from poverty as the son of a sharecropper in a time and place extremely unfair for blacks, but he carried no chip on his shoulder and managed to win universal admiration as a man -- not a black man or a white man, but just a man.
His generosity extended even to his nemesis and polar opposite, Muhammad Ali, whom Frazier gave money and moral support when the chips were down. Ali was vain, brash, crude, and generally merciless when trashing Frazier in public. Ali enjoyed an upper middle-class childhood yet portrayed himself as somehow more "authentic" than Frazier, accusing him of being an Uncle Tom for his reticent pose. Frazier bore most of it stoically, losing his cool only once or twice (which provoked far more outrage than Ali's ceaseless obnoxiousness).
Frazier had become champion when Ali was stripped of the title for refusing to serve in Vietnam. As a gentleman, Frazier gave Ali a shot to prove himself the "real" champion, something Ali never tired of proclaiming. But Frazier had other plans. He knelt in prayer before that fight and asked for strength because he knew in his heart that Ali was not righteous. In the fifteenth round, Frazier unleashed his ferocious left hook and knocked Ali on his ass, a scene that I never tire of watching.
The world has precious few real men left. With Frazier's departure it has even fewer. So long, Smokin' Joe.
Soft-spoken, generous, yet purposeful and focused with deadly intensity on his craft, Joe Frazier was a gentleman athlete of a kind all but extinct. He came up from poverty as the son of a sharecropper in a time and place extremely unfair for blacks, but he carried no chip on his shoulder and managed to win universal admiration as a man -- not a black man or a white man, but just a man.
His generosity extended even to his nemesis and polar opposite, Muhammad Ali, whom Frazier gave money and moral support when the chips were down. Ali was vain, brash, crude, and generally merciless when trashing Frazier in public. Ali enjoyed an upper middle-class childhood yet portrayed himself as somehow more "authentic" than Frazier, accusing him of being an Uncle Tom for his reticent pose. Frazier bore most of it stoically, losing his cool only once or twice (which provoked far more outrage than Ali's ceaseless obnoxiousness).
Frazier had become champion when Ali was stripped of the title for refusing to serve in Vietnam. As a gentleman, Frazier gave Ali a shot to prove himself the "real" champion, something Ali never tired of proclaiming. But Frazier had other plans. He knelt in prayer before that fight and asked for strength because he knew in his heart that Ali was not righteous. In the fifteenth round, Frazier unleashed his ferocious left hook and knocked Ali on his ass, a scene that I never tire of watching.
The world has precious few real men left. With Frazier's departure it has even fewer. So long, Smokin' Joe.
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