FanPost

Down Goes Frazier

The Hurt Business

………….

It seemed that every time he stepped through the ropes and onto the canvas, history was being made, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad, on occasion, sometimes for the worse.

After his first fight against the still undefeated Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in March of ‘71, Joe Frazier made history by knocking Ali down in the 15th around in winning a majority decision and in doing so, becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

And luckily for both fighters, the final bell rang...Signaling that the fight was over.

Both men had left part of themselves in the ring that night.

Ali would leave the ring with a puffiness in his face that spoke of a broken jaw beneath his swollen cheek. Frazier had so many lumps and bumps on his face he looked as if he were the loser. And for precautions he was taken to the hospital for what was rumored to be possible kidney damage.

They don't call it hurt business for no reason.

Those bumps and bruises don't simply go away. To the contrary, they add to themselves cumulatively; the wear and tear on even the greatest to have gloved up ultimately begins its insidious rot; robbing them of the speed, skills, and finally, the power they once had.

They are trained for and can endure more than can humanly be fathomed but as apparently invincible as they once were, no one can beat Father Time. Hold him off maybe, but in the end, he always wins.

That is why it is extremely unusual to see even the best fight their equals consecutively one after the other. Without rest. And the rest usually comes in the form of fighters who are tough but predictively beatable.

Such was the case with both Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. After their first war in New York, both men took either between three and five fights before they were to face off with the next serious and dangerous challengers.

One of them was Ken Norton. The other, the unbeaten, frightening George Foreman.

And it was Joe Frazier who opted to take his title to Kingston Jamaica and face the US gold medal Olympian and undefeated professional, George Foreman

………

And that was it like that I was going to miss. Nor my friends.

A group of us had decided to go to the fight but the closest theater was 200 miles away in Pittsburgh. At a theater called the Syrian Mosque. To get there we would have to leave from the dad center of the state and drive west, away from State College, and into the mountains and the curves on a dark snowy night.

All of us piled into our friend Eric's white Ford Mustang

No sooner had we piled into the car or what would be about a four hour drive in those conditions, we all collectively lit up a joint, leaving the car inside as foggy as the roads were outside.

We were all from Philadelphia and everybody was there to see their local hero Joe Frazier fight a man who had been demolishing his opposition. But that was not our greatest concern, Our first priority was to get there on time.

As we meandered through the hills and valleys of western Pennsylvania ( Deer Hunter country) and the fog in the patches of black ice, Eric stepped on the excelerator at the wrong time. And the car started to hydroplane over the frozen road…. right in the direction of the river that ran some thirty feet below it.

Fortunately, the tires gripped just in time. And instead of becoming statistics, we continued toward the fight.

And we arrived literally just in time.

But there was a problem. The closed circuit in the theater was dark and the fight was scheduled to start at any moment. We were each thinking the same thing. How we had dodged death and yet it appeared as we were going to have driven all that distance for naught.

Then suddenly there was a pop. The kind of sound that sounded more like a short circuit and a closed circuit.

And before our eyes, on the screen, was the towering figure of George Foreman staring a death stare into the seemingly nonplussed Joe Frazier.

Joe might not have been worried but we were. Foreman was like a giant at 6 feet four inches while Frazier was an overachiever at 5 feet ten inches. While Foreman looked down on Frazier, Joe had to look up

………

All sports fans will have to endure seeing their tip favorite players and favorite teams lose once in a while. And it's always painful if they are serious fans. Fortunately, most of the time a loss is a loss and they live to play another day

In boxing you can never be sure

………

The opening bell rang. The famed announcer Howard Cosell was doing the play-by-play. And before he could probably even get comfortable in his seat and we were ready to see how the first round played out, Foreman hit Fraser with a punch that practically lifted him off the ground. And in the famous words of Cosell; :

"Down goes Frazier! "

That was to be the first of three times in the first round that Foreman attacked and seemed to be fighting as though he was going to decapitate the champion.

In a word, it was frightening.

Round two started the way round one started but in an even shorter amount of time, Foreman knocked Frazier down over and over until the referee mercifully stopped him from getting killed.

A four hour drive awaited our return.

Only this time there was no celebration. There may even have been a slight degree of relief that we hadn't witnessed a live murder in the ring but we were fans of the loser. And it hurt.

Losing always does.

…………

But it is in losing when we find out what we are actually made of. And occasionally it is great to watch athletes who we admire pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and prepare themselves for the next battle.

When they do so graciously, our admiration for them intensifies. When they refuse to admit defeat, they begin to lose more than the battles won and lost. They lose most if not everything they had once gained.

They lose us.

Conversely, if we fail to admit when we have lost, no matter how bitter or close, we lose a part of ourselves.

We lose our character

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