Phil Pepe - Come Out Smokin: Joe Frazier, the Champ Nobody Knew

No World Series, no Super Bowl, no Olympic Games, no Kentucky Derby, no golf championship, no tennis tournament can match the drama, the electricity, the anxiety, the suspense, the spectacle of a fight for the heavyweight championship of the world.

And of all the fights for the heavyweight championship, none can compare with the one on the night of March 8, 1971, in New Yorks Madison Square Garden. Never before had two men, both unbeaten, both with a legitimate and recognized claim to the title Worlds Heavyweight Champion, met in the same ring. The events that led up to their meeting were as much the story of the fight as the fight itself.

This book is dedicated to the men who made the night of March 8, 1971, the greatest night in the history of sports. It is for Jerry Perenchio, Jack Kent Cooke, Harry Markson, Teddy Brenner, John F. X. Condon, Duke Stefano, Tommy Kenville, Mushky McGee, Yank Durham, Eddie Futch, Gil Clancy, the members of Cloverlay Inc., Joey Goldstein, Angelo Dundee, Chickie Ferrara, Drew Bundini Brown, the hundreds of newsmen the world over who poured out millions of words from their typewriters, and, above all, the fighters themselves, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

And it is for a man named Rubin Frazier, who never lived to see his greatest dream come true.

Its cold in New York on this Tuesday afternoon in December. Its bitter cold. Icy blasts of wind whip through the asphalt caverns that nestle between mountains of steel and stone. Its lunch hour and office workers hurry through the streets, coat collars turned up against the wind. In twenty-four hours, they will be getting ready for the New Years Eve parties.

Its shortly after noon on Tuesday, December 30, 1970, and on Fifty-second Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, in front of the restaurant known as Toots Shor, people are gathering outside in the cold.

Inside, the crowd has already assembled, television cameras ready, still cameras poised, reporters, boxing personalities and celebrity-watchers waiting, many of them since 11 a.m., in anticipation of the press conference that has been called for 1 p.m.

The reason for the conference is no secret. It has already been in the newspapers. Only one thing could draw such a crowd. It is to announce the signing of the long-awaited boxing match, unbeaten former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali vs. unbeaten present heavyweight champion Joe Frazier. The Fight. It is to announce the date, the terms and the other particulars of what will be the biggest, the richest, most dramatic sporting event in history.

Now its three minutes before one and a long, sleek, black Cadillac limousine pulls up at the curb. There are more than one hundred people milling around outside Toots Shors, most of them young, most of them black. Several policemen are on duty there to keep order, to keep a path open on the sidewalk so that passersby can move freely. Its an orderly crowd, but now there is no way to control it. The doors of the Cadillac swing open and out they tumble, the familiar impassive black faces of the well-dressed young men who are always with Muhammad Ali, always with him, looking around, but never talking. Angelo Dundee, the little trainer, emerges from the Cadillac, the only white man among a dozen blacks. And then, the one they have come to see, the familiar coffee-colored skin, the smooth, handsome face with high cheekbones and flashing eyes. The one they used to know as Cassius Clay.

There he is, theres the champ, someone shouts. They clutch at his clothes, but the well-dressed young men with the impassive black faces thrust their bodies between him and his idolaters and wedge their way through the crowd, many pushing pieces of paper at him to sign.

Ah-lee, Ah-lee, Ah-lee, they shout.

Im the real champ, he says. I will show them who is the real champ. I will show them.

Ah-lee, Ah-lee, Ah-lee. And Right on, brother.

Somebody holds the door of the restaurant open for him and he ducks inside, escaping the cold, diving into a mass of reporters, his face bathed by the lights from the cameras.

Five minutes later, another black limousine pulls up and another young black man steps out into the winters chill, pushes his way through the same throng, is escorted through the same door, toward the same waiting reporters, blinking in the same harsh lights. But it is not the same for Joe Frazier, heavyweight champion of the world. Not at all.

There is mild applause and one voice is heard. Kill the bum, says the voice. It comes from an older man, a white older man.

Now they are sitting three seats apart on a long dais set up in the huge dining room, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, two heavyweight champions of the world representing two eras, two styles in the ring, two lifestyles. Both of them are black, but thats where the similarity ends. Muhammad Ali is the antihero, a rebel, defiant, antiestablishment, loud and brash, a hero to the young people, white and black, young people who are in turmoil with a war they dont want, young people who cannot understand the adults for their inability to understand the young people; young people who are starved for leaders who are concerned for them, who are aware of them, who are trying to do something for them. Once there was John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King and they are gone and there are not many left to whom they can relate. There is Ralph Nader and Julian Bond and Ramsey Clark and, for some, there is Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown and Eldridge Cleaver and Abbie Hoffman. And Muhammad Ali. And they turn out in droves when he appears on campus to make a speech.

Joe Frazier is the establishments champion, the poor boy who made a million dollars with his fists, who became heavyweight champion of the world and proved a black boy from South Carolina can make a million dollars... if he can fight. He is quiet, a father of five. He does not speak out against his country. He does not preach hate or separatism. He goes to the Baptist church; he used to sing in church.

Joe Frazier. Thats a boy we can point to with pride. Joe Frazier. The white mans champion, many say. And, soon, the white hope of boxing.

They are sitting there, three seats apart, and in the middle of the dais, on his feet and talking is a man named Jerry Perenchio. The announcement has been made, the details spelled out. The Fight would be held in Madison Square Garden on Monday night, March 8, 1971. Contracts have been signed less than an hour before, in a room in Madison Square Garden. Both fighters to get a flat guarantee, $2,500,000 each, no percentage of the gate, just $5,000,000 payable within twenty-four hours after they fight, the largest individual payoff for a single performance in sports or entertainment.

Now Jerry Perenchio is on his feet, explaining how he got involved in this promotion and how he put the deal together in just two weeks. He is the moneyman and looks it. The suit is expensively tailored and the handsome face and brown wavy hair belie his forty years. He has the well-groomed look of a man who has never had to work very hard, a man who has spent a good deal of time in a gym and in the hands of a hair stylist.