Smokin’ Joe Frazier . . . the warrior who would not bend

He decided that Frazier must not fight the final round. The boxer protested but Futch prevailed. The Thrilla in Manila, the most memorable fight in modern history, was over.

Muhammad Ali and Frazier had hit each other so often and so hard that The Greatest later whispered: “Frazier was a fighter who made me feel he was taking me to the door of death.”

It was the third and final fight between the two great warriors. Neither was ever the same again. Frazier maintained that Ali’s Parkinson-like illness stemmed from the awful punishment inflicted on him that night. Frazier grew old in under an hour at the hands of Ali. He became an ex-boxer that night although he climbed into the ring on two further occasions.

He remained a champion to all who saw him bob and weave, hit and be hit, and win 32 of his 37 fights. He was also a partner in one of the greatest sports stories of all time. The Frazier-Ali legend is not, however, all glory, all triumph, all unreserved cheering. There is a darkness at the heart of the rivalry that perversely gives it substance.

This chilling background can tell us much about Ali. It also shouted long and hard about the very essence of Frazier. It was a match-up that defined a sport, an era and even the experience of being black in America when the civil rights revolution was tearing at the soul of a nation.

Ali, who could be casually and criminally cruel, dubbed Frazier an Uncle Tom and portrayed him as an ugly, inarticulate and uneducated member of the underclass. It was far from The Greatest’s finest hour and there is evidence he came to regret the relentless baiting.

Frazier never forgave. This intransigence tells us much about the man and his background. This was a warrior who would not bend. “I was never little or played little,” said Frazier of a childhood spent in poverty as the last of 11 children to a sharecropper in South Carolina. He moved north, first to Brooklyn and then to Philadelphia, but he never found frivolity.

There was a hardness to Frazier that was not softened by the increasingly industrial amounts of alcohol he consumed, the women he partied with or the money he earned. This inbred resilience was part of his armour in the ring.

Outside the ropes, Frazier could be generous and loving and, indeed, was wonderfully supportive to Ali when The Greatest was banned from boxing.

But he was never soft and he never forgot a slight. He took his bitterness with Ali to the grave.

This hatred infected his fights with Ali with a poisonous spice that the bouts hardly needed to lift them above the mundane. Frazier and Ali were made for each other in boxing terms. Their differing styles were almost guaranteed to produce thrilling fights.

Frazier, with his left hook cleaving into Ali, was programmed to come forward, head lowered, with a relentlessness that could not be diminished by his rival’s more measured blows. Frazier was easily undone by George Foreman and Ali found Ken Norton an awkward opponent. But both found in each other the perfect, if most demanding opponent.

They formed an axis that dominated the world of sport and beyond. The followers of liberal politics drifted towards an Ali who would not fight in the Vietnam War. Frazier found support in those who were uncomfortable with Ali’s more demeaning rhetoric and who recognised that Smokin’ Joe had simple but affecting traits.

Frazier was loyal, brave and uncomplicated. He made no excuses about his background and did not apologise for the bludgeoning directness of his approach in the ring.

It was possible, of course, to admire, even revere both men. They were great fighters, strong and unforgettable characters. Their very presence made boxing the main event not just in sport but in life.

If Ali testified to a burgeoning black awareness of injustice and a resolution to do something about it, Frazier quietly epitomised the hard man who knows he has been given a tough shift but believes he can reduce it to rubble by a strength of will or the power of his fists.

It was impossible not to be moved by Frazier in the ring. His long shorts, his bowed stance and his swinging arms gave him the aspect of the eternal underdog with a ferocious bite.

Even in inglorious defeat to Foreman, he provoked a pity he would have scorned. But it was against Ali that he will always be measured. He may have come up short in losing two of the three contests but he stood tall and strong in very other respect.

There are persistent stories that Frazier fought his entire career while legally blind in his left eye. He managed to deceive rudimentary control board examinations and fight on. Against Ali in Manila, however, his right eye was closed by a spectacular swelling.

Smokin’ Joe was sightless but continued to shuffle forward, throwing punches. The decades have passed but the memory of his bravery lives on. Faced with one of the greatest boxers ever who was fighting for his very life, Frazier put his head down and continued to believe he could prevail.

It is the sort of action that will be derided by many as pathetically stupid or wilfully self-destructive. But surely it was more profound. The dreadful trials of Manila had stripped Frazier down to his essence. He was a study in bravery, a living, barely breathing lesson in the profound depths of the human spirit.

Futch was right. I will never forget what Frazier did. And not just in Manila.