Word: frazier
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...that Frazier will meet in the ring is a different kind of fighter from the man who took Liston's heavyweight title away in 1964. Then he was still calling himself Cassius Clay, and the jaunty slogan of his training camp was "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." Now at his headquarters in Miami Beach's Fifth Street Gym. the byword is "He moves like silk, hits like a ton"?and for good reason. Yon Cassius no longer has that lean and hungry look. After 3½ years of exile, he returned to the ring four months...
...just fightin' one man,"; he preaches. "I'm fightin' a lot of men, showin' a lot of 'em here is one man they couldn't conquer. My mission is to bring freedom to 30 million black people. I'll win this fight because I've got a cause. Frazier has no cause. He's in it for the money alone." Caught in the crossfire, Frazier usually backs off. "I don't want to be no more than no more than what I am." he says. As a friend puts it, "Joe is just Joe." His feelings on the black movement...
...contrast between the two champions does not end with ideology. Ali is the black Adonis on parade?quick of wit, mercurial, explosive, forever turned on. Frazier is awkward and introspective, given to sullen moods that he calls "the slouchies." At home or in the ring, Ali is a klieg-lighted one-man happening. Frazier, who has the sullen glare of the late Sonny Liston (but none of the deep-rooted malice), courts neither the public nor the press. "I'm just me, see." he says. "If some people don't notice me, that's good. I got enough people pestering...
...strong, but so is Frazier. No amount of bluster is likely to deter Smokin' Joe, a raging, bobbing, weaving, rolling swarmer who moves in one basic direction?right at his opponent's gut. A kind of motorized Marciano, he works his short arms like pistons, pumping away with such mechanical precision that he consistently throws between 54 and 58 punches each round. He works almost exclusively inside, crouching and always moving in to slam the body. When the pummeling begins to slow his opponent, when the guard drops to protect the stomach, Frazier tosses a murderous left hook...
...something! I wouldn't even spar with a man that size. But the press and the bookies are shoutin' 'Who-e-e-e! Joe Frazah knocked him out, knocked him dead!' What they should have done is look what I did to Oscar and what Oscar did to Joe Frazier. All Oscar did was to knock Joe Frazier down twice in their first fight and then whip his face so bad that his eyes were swollen closed. And when it was all over, Joe Frazier fainted in his dressing room. Exhausted. Dead tired. Unable to move...