Smokin' Joe: A bull of a man who always gave as good as he got

Frazier and Ali were to fight again two more times, both ending in defeat for Frazier. The last one, the “Thrilla in Manila”, was held in the capital of the Philippines in 1975. It was the most brutal Ali-Frazier battle. They both went at each other for every second of every round, neither willing to concede. And it was Frazier’s left hook that landed with regularity on Ali, which prompted the latter, in his victory, to describe the experience that night as the “closest thing to dying I know of”.

The fight took a heavy toll on both fighters. Neither was ever as formidable in the ring again after that day. Some boxing aficionados would pronounce that both “left every bit of talent they had in the ring that day”.

Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali are the Van Gogh and Gauguin of the boxing world, living off each other’s talent and being, never quite severing the psychological ties dominated by a love-hate relationship, respect and contempt and bitterness. People may say that one fight that Joe Frazier could never win in his life was the burden of being Ali’s foil; in the same vein, they could say Ali would never have been Ali, “the Greatest”, unless he was linked to Frazier.

In death, Smokin’ Joe Frazier has been called one of the world’s ten greatest boxers. They unrelentingly talk about his potent left hook, and its near mystical power. However, very few people were paying attention to the fact that Frazier’s left arm was badly damaged in a childhood accident, and he was never able to fully keep it straight again. His left arm was crooked and lacked a full range of motion. Ironically, it was cocked, permanently, for the left hook. Frazier used it well, turning a crippled physical apparatus into his devastating winning weapon.

That brings home the very essence of this sport. Pugilism has long been considered a brutal and violent activity. Boxers who are real fighters rarely escape physical disability at the end of their life.  Frazier was slow in his later years, his speech slurred by the punches he took in the ring. Ali now suffers from Parkinson’s disease that limits his movement and speech. 

In 1999 in St. Louis, a 23-year-old boxer, Fernando Ibarra, was knocked out in the sixth round. He was able to stand to hear the result of the fight, but his brain haemorrhaged and he lapsed into coma.

These tragic, sometimes fatal incidents have long fuelled philosophical questions over the ethical character of this combat sport that some may ascribe as a bruising art that at times yields no pleasant way to watch. It does not matter which style or strategic approach fighters take during a bout – be they out-and-out fighters (Ali), box-punchers (Joe Louis), brawlers/sluggers (George Foreman), swarmers/in-fighters (Mike Tyson), or counter-punchers (Evander Holyfield) – the generally perceived “purpose” of boxing is to inflict harm on the other man, get the points by delivering punishing blows and knocking the opponent senseless.

But is the bruising art of boxing as violent, vicious and immoral as it seems? Will there be any willingness to make a fine distinction similar to that made of spanking a child as an act of “discipline” or of “abuse”? Are boxing matches always fights?

Sages since Plato, who himself was a wrestler, teach us that our arms and legs are nothing but a carriage for the mind. Descartes espoused an influential case of mind-body dualism. In Eastern philosophy, the body is considered inseparable from the mind, a vehicle, rather than an impediment. Given those notions, it then follows that that different physical practices may open us to different truths about ourselves.

“Know thyself” was the Socratic dictum, but as a protagonist in the movie “Fight Club” asked, “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” There are some philosophers who contend that a trip to the canvas can be a lesson in moral virtue.

Like it or not, life is about hurting and getting hurt, and many would say that there are few courses in life that prepare you for the whirling blades outside your door like boxing. Boxers are there to establish an experience of the outer limit of their being; they will know what physical and psychic power they possess; of how much, or little, they are capable. Boxing’s trial by battle can afford the possibilities of freedom and selfhood, and most important of all, courage, defined by Aristotle as a mean between rashness and cowardliness. Without the guts or mettle, we cannot abide by our moral judgements. And if violence is defined as purposely hurting another person, then we have seen enough of that in every arena to last many lifetimes.

Joe Frazier left home when he was 15 because he got onto the bad side of the white folks in his neighbourhood. He had nothing with him, except his four limbs, one of which was damaged. If anything, he was a portrait of courage, resilience, patience, temperance and pride. He learned the lessons in spacing, leveraging, and how to reckon with another boxer/person, shown in the bobbing, weaving, grunting, snorting that would wear down his opponents when he delivered his left hook with impunity. He was taunted (by Ali) as an “Uncle Tom”, a black man favoured by the white establishment because he voiced no political views. It is the worst kind of insult for any black. He was called ignorant, a gorilla, and many bad names. But throughout the years of ups and downs, he kept his decency, dignity and pride. He even found a place in his heart to forgive his arch nemesis Ali, because the latter, as Frazier put it, was “in a bad way”.

Physically, Frazier was not built perfectly to become a champion, but he became one. He gave the sport everything; he gave as good as he got. In the end, Frazier was proof that boxing carries with it moral virtues that the likes of Nelson Mandela and John McCain and others have claimed to have found. That was Frazier’s real contribution.  

Rest in peace.