The Best Of Joe Frazier
00Rooster4Life00 presents a Tribute to the one and only, the first man to beat Muhammad Ali, Mr Smokin Joe Frazier. Joseph William Frazier, known as “Smokin’ Joe”, (born January 12, 1944 in Beaufort, South Carolina) is a former Olympic (1964) and World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, active mostly in the later 1960s and early 1970s. Frazier was a popular champion reprising himself in cameo roles in several Hollywood films and professionally is perhaps most famous for his trilogy of Heavy Weight Championship fights with Muhammad Ali wherein one or the other challenged the current title holder resulting in dramatic memorable battles. While Ali’s characteristic taunts of his opponent began typically enough, after regaining his title, his taunts of Smokin’ Joe eventually turned mean-spirited and racist. Joe was painted by Ali as the white man’s hope and as an “Uncle Tom” interjecting an element of racism into an already contentious and controversial series of great bouts. (The early controversy was whether Ali should be allowed to fight at all.) It should also be noted that Joe Frazier petitioned President Nixon to have Ali’s right to box reinstated setting up the whole series of matches, admittedly with the inspiration of weekly phone pestering by Ali[1]. Frazier also boycotted the 1967 WBA heavyweight elimination tournament to find a successor to Muhammad Ali, when the champion was stripped of the title. Frazier has a bullying fighting style, depending on bobbing and weaving …