Joseph William Frazier or widely known as Joe Frazier is an American Heavyweight Boxing Champion during 1965 to 1981. He is also nicknamed as “Smokin Joe” by boxing enthusiasts and fans. He was born on January 12th of 1944 and is the 12th child of parents Rubin and Dolly Frazier in South Carolina.
Smokin’ Joe is an Olympic Gold Medalist and prides for being an Undisputed World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. He was recognized as one of the toughest fighters in the history of boxing whose only lost were with guys of World class boxing Champs also such as George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.
The start of Frazier’s professional boxing career was after he won the 1964 Gold Medal for the Olympic Boxing with trainer and manager Yancey Durham. His professional debut was during 1965 with a technical Knockout of his opponent in the first round. In that same year, Frazier also won 3 consecutive bouts, all by knockouts and none of those fights had ever gone past the 3rd round.
After his bouts during 1965, Frazier had many more fights which most of them were by knockouts. In March of 1971, Frazier had a match with Muhammad Ali, which was forecast as the “Fight of the Century“. It was basically one of the most anticipated boxing fights of the century where all eyes and ears were watching who of the two greatest boxing fighters in the history of boxing would win the legendary match. Frazier at that time was just 27 while Ali was 29 and was at the stage of come-back from a three-year absence. It was undeniable that Ali was a great threat to Frazier and so Frazier did his homework and together with coach Eddie Futch, they developed a strategy to counter part Ali. The strategy somehow went well and Frazier won the match with Ali.
In 1972, he defeated Terry Daniels and Ron Stander with all knockouts and thus defending his title twice.
However, in 1973, Frazier lost his unbeatable record of 29 wins to 0 loss with George Foreman in Kingston, Jamaica. Despite the fact that it was Frazier who was favoured to win that bout, Foreman took him hard to steal the title.
Frazier continued his boxing career knocking out many boxers such as Jimmy Ellis, Jerry Quarry, and Joe Bugner, but he was never able to defeat Ali and Foreman during the rematches that they had.
After his knockout with Foreman in 1976, Frazier retired from his boxing career and entered a couple of industries such as music, media, and coaching careers.
Joe Frazier died with liver cancer on November 7, 2011 at the age of 67. He was up until now remembered as one of the most remarkable boxers of fighting skills that can never be seen again.
