Word: fraziers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Since 1968, when the New York State Boxing Commission awarded him its version of the heavyweight title after he defeated Buster Mathis. Frazier had won three facsimilies of the heavyweight title without earning the professional championship of the world. Surely, neither his New York State title nor the World Boxing Association championship belt he took from Jimmy Ellis five years later made Joe Frazier the heavyweight champion in the eyes of the world...
AFTER A SERIES of wholly unmemorable fights, the keepers of the boxer's temple proclaimed Joe Frazier the new emperor of Fat City, but the emperor had no clothes...
...Frazier used to work as a meatcutter in Philadelphia. From the way he boxes you can tell he was a good one. In the ring, Frazier attacks things. He plants his feet, leads with his head and explodes his fists at objects. His punch is a left hook and he will take punches in order to unleash it. Imagine a gas-driven, left-handed meatcleaver and you will get a sense of what dropped Muhammad Ali in the 15th round of his fight with Frazier twenty months...
That fight, so-called "The Fight of the Century," was supposed to settle the issue once and for all. Joe Frazier saw it as a chance to prove in the ring that the title was his. For three years, he had held the heavyweight crown without being able to echo John L. Sullivan's famous champion's boast: "My name is John L. Sullivan and I can beat any bastard alive...
...even after he beat Ali, Joe Frazier had not won the world championship he wanted. His victory in the ring had been decisive. He had boxed Ali to a stand-off and then out-punched him. Yet, it was precisely at that moment when Ali hit the canvas that the emptiness of Frazier's triumph became apparent: the crowd was silent, totally void of enthusiasm. When the decision was announced and Frazier stood arm-raised at center ring, he smiled alone, with difficulty and deep fatigue, in the roped summit of the crowd's ambivalence. From there, he was taken...