Boxing great JOE FRAZIER who traded punches with MUHAMMAD ALI and GEORGE FOREMAN is in his biggest battle, battling stage 4 liver cancer.
Smokin’ Joe’s manager Leslie Wolff, told CNN that the 67-year-old puglits is in a Philadelphia hospice in the final stages of liver cancer that was only discovered “four or five weeks ago.”
Born in 1944, Frazier the son of a sharecropper in Beaufort, S.C., was noted for his devastating left hook which was described as “smokin’”
When the former Cassius Clay became known as Muhammad Ali and was stripped of his heavyweight title for his objection to the in Vietnam War in 1967, Frazier cleared up the cavalcade of contenders in the race of the crown.
Frazier laid some serious whoop-ass, knocking out Buster Mathis in the 11th round to first nab the title in a match sanctioned by the New York State Athletic Commission in 1968.
With a victory over Jimmy Ellis he added the WBA title making him the “undisputed champ of the world”.
Meanwhile, Joe had supported Ali during Ali’s exiled from boxing and believed they were pals. When Ali was allowed to fight in 1970, Joe agreed to fight him.
Billed as The Fight of The Century they went toe to toe at New York’s Madison Square Gardened on March 7, 1971. Frazier scored a 15-round judge’s decision to retain the title. During the hot and heavy promo for the card, Ali called Frazier “an Uncle Tom” and pictured him as a tool of the white establishment.
Smokin’ Joe was stunned and felt as if he had been stabbed in the back. The hostility between the two pugilistic powerhouses has lasted to this day.
“Joe was always a very sensitive guy,” Don King told media. “He never forgave Ali, who kept it going by saying he was going to beat the gorilla in the “Thrilla in Manila.”
A grueling personal combat waged in the tropical heat and thick humidity of the Philippines, Ali outlasted Frazier, who finished on his stool in the 14th round when his trainer Eddie Futch threw in the towel – not allowing Frazier to come out for the final round.
Ali won by TKO, later saying it was the closest he ever come to death.
Frazier fought a few more times and retired for the first time in 1976. He made an unsuccessful comeback attempt in 1981 and then retired for good with a record of 32-4-1. Frazier was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.
But NOW he is in the midst of his greatest slugfest — with the Grim Reaper — and it appears Smokin' Joe's on the ropes….
