AIR DATE:
EPISODE: Episode 50
Watch The Scoop from Monday to Friday featuring Canadian heavyweight champ Bola Ray, who lends his vast experience in the sport and provides his comments and analysis on boxing, on YouTube and TalkinFight.com/live. #boxinghistory @archiemoore #archiemoore
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Transcribed:
Hello there, boxing fans around the world, welcome once again to another episode of the scoop featuring the champ bowl array and uh here on talking fight, we’ve been doing an exploration of a great many number of uh, really iconic fighters, really iconic legendary uh fighters uh throughout The history of boxing, in particular the so-called modern era, and tonight i understand you’ve, got another one of my favorites uh, who certainly went toe-to-toe with another of my favorites uh and you’re gon na bring that to light right about now.
Something like that.
Something like that.
Um there’s a great many attributes that a fighter are that makes a boxer great, and one of them is who do they fight now.
There’S a term in boxing called a paper champion which genuinely means a champion that has fought: nobody’s, fought people of little caliber of low caliber and yet acquired a ch uh, a title of some sort prior to tyson, fury, fighting vladimir klitschko the king of the big Boys for over a decade um, he was revered as pretty much that a paper champion, even though he wasn’t a champion, but he was, he was not overly overwhelmingly respected.
Um that’s different.
Today he is more than revered, taking out two of the big boys in history.
So um this is this week is going to be another week in my ongoing series on who made the greatest muhammad ali, the greatest who did he be with that being said, um.
My name is bola raymond [, Music ], and this is a scoop so born january 12, 1944 uh, the 12th child, of course, right um in a laurel bay family, which is just a real part of beaufort south carolina um, was none other than smoking, joe frasier Growing up in the backwoods of south carolina um was was um his beginning with nothing shy of modest again being the 12th child.
I don’t know.
Was there no such thing as contraceptives back in the day, like wow, um, yeah being the 12th child of a sharecropper? So um in the early 50s, joe frazier’s, father reuben fraser bought a black and white tv and in the they ended up having fight night before fight night, even existed in their home.
They’D call local people over and uh they’d watch the fights where they would go off and uh sell beverages and stuff like that and make a couple extra bucks help out the family um they neighbors from far and wide would come to watch this and in doing So they watch the likes of joe lewis, rocky marciano, uh, sugary, robinson um, even willie pepper, just to name a few right um, and it was during one of these soirees.
If you will um that joe’s uncle israel fraser took notice of the boy and said yeah that looks like the next joe lewis right there, a spark widow, joel hung up a heavy bag, pretty much the next day out in the backyard and a makeshift heavy bag Of that wasn’t anything real um and uh legend has it that he’d go and hit that heavy bag for almost an hour a day for years consistently.
This is long before he ever had anything called boxing official boxing training, so yeah good for him.
Um now legend also has that, shortly after joe started working for some reason, joe decided to poke the family hog, which was 300 pound hog, he was poking.
It teasing it until the hog chased him attempting to run free.
The hog knocked him down and he suffered an injury uh to his left arm and when it hit a brick now due to the family’s lack of money, they never got it fixed.
It was um yeah.
It ended up healing improperly, which led to his crook arm.
Sore scenario, he was never able to straighten his arm again.
Now.
Life had shown young joe on how to live out in the in the backwoods, and with that in the back was the lord beat at the age of 15.
.
But when it’s happening is he leaving home to the big city of philadelphia again at age 15.
um shortly thereafter in the big city, he ends up walking into a boxing gym and history has begun now joel managed to win golden globe championships in three consecutive years.
62-63 and 64.
um by this point in his career he’d only suffered one loss and that was to buster matheson buster mathis, and i’m going to be doing an episode on later on this week.
An attempt to go to the olympics in 64 um rome olympics no tokyo, olympics um, leading up to it, went to the nationals and he sustained his second amateur loss, which was again to none other than buster matheson.
Now, as jordan calls it, the fight was a complete robbery where buster ran and packed and could and couldn’t spell fight, let alone do it.
He also wore his trunks really high, so uh yeah um when joel hit him to the body.
It was frowned upon to the point where they actually ended up taking two points off in a three-round fight, which pretty much means you lost that fight, um buster won again and he was america’s heavyweight representative, legitimate heavyweight representative to go to the uh, the roman games, Fires away the tokyo gate now joe went also.
He was beyond frustrated afterwards, but he had some mentorship.
That actually explained to him.
Just go as the alternate just go and he went and fortunately wouldn’t have it that joe ended up getting the opportunity to compete because buster ended up getting injured while in camp while in tokyo and history would have it.
Joe starts it off his uh olympic campaign.
With two quick knockouts um only to meet up against the soviet, now remember that joe was infamous for his left hook.
So the corner uh, what you call it.
He starts the fight off and this was a tougher fight, but partly through the second round, he realized it.
May he may have just hurt his left hand, um yeah grinding beared.
It next thing you know, luckily, for him they threw in the towel in the second round, so he goes on to the gold medal fight and he fights uncharacteristically favoring his right hand um.
He end up winning the third fight.
The gold medal match three to three to two decision, but all because he already hurt his left hand in the fight before um.
He goes home with the gold medal.
1965 began with joe turning pro with the help of ian c yank durham, as his head coach and team businessman included in his in his entourage per se, because, again remember in these days, you needed financial backing to actually turn pro, so what they did is they Put together a conglomeration of businessmen and one of those businessmen was none other than legendary boxing host larry merchant.
Now he also assisted in the management of joe to ensure that he was able to just train and fight.
Now, the following year, after his successful first year of professional boxing, durham reached out to the now legendary trainer eddie fudge to come on board as joe’s assistant trainer.
What she eventually did as joe’s assistant trainer flush, was responsible for a few things, including strategy and matchmaking.
But notably, it was fudge that told joe to exclude himself from the wba, the 1967 wba elimination, uh tournament heavyweight tournament um after muhammad ali had been denied the right to box for three years three and a half years as a collective.
They determined that to show support for ali in an endeavor to not be forced to fight in vietnam.
Noble now, frazier went on to win like no notable fights like over oscar bonovina had a 10-round decision, but then later ko after ko against the likes of eddie machin, jeff davis, doug jones then came his fight against none other than canadian legend george cevallo.
This was a telling fight in that joe didn’t just beat the bigger george, but he stopped in the fourth round.
Um yeah few people actually realize that yeah george chavello actually got stopped a few times.
He didn’t touch canvas, but he got beat and stopped joe came and joe can make our sorry chevelle can make the claim that he never was off his feet and his boxing anybody.
It was the first time he was actually ever stopped now.
Some eight months later, joe faced off again against uh common foe and none other than uh buster, matheson and uh having never beaten him in the amateurs.
This was a fight to watch, see how both were undefeated joe ended up stopping uh buster in the 10th round.
Now, in the heavyweight elimination tournament, jimmy ellis won the tournament and it looks like nothing could stop.
The young prospect, but february of 67 ali meets joe for the first time and says pretty much that there’s no way that this this guy’s gon na ever beat me.
So, but looked at the opposition that he didn’t just beat, but stops tells a totally different story after the fourth stoppage of fourth round stoppage of ellis.
The next fight for joe was none other than bob foster.
Another person i’ll be doing an episode on this week.
Coming to this contest was an impressive record of 41 wins and four losses.
Bob was a noteworthy opponent that happened to last.
Only two rounds may 8th 1971, the fight of the century.
It was actually two weeks ago today, sorry 50 years ago, two weeks ago, today, um the fight of the century, it’s joe frazier versus muhammad ali and boy.
This fight did not disappoint fans as long as muhammad ali losing didn’t bring you to tears.
Yeah.
The anticipation for this fight was out of this world.
Both fighters earned 2.
5 million dollars in the contest, which was the most any athlete or engineer had made before a single event.
To date, the fight was televised in over 50 cities or 50 countries sort and was estimated to have been seen by 300 million people.
Fighting the numbers surpassed the amount of people that watched the moon landing two years prior well yeah.
It was also estimated that the event grows between 18 to 20 million dollars, which equates to just around anywhere from 117 million to 130 million dollars today.
So with that, the fight starts off pretty much in all his favor, with him laid on his feet and just peppering with the jab.
The first three rounds look pretty much the same with joe, not finding too much success in getting ali up against the ropes.
Fourth round was the first round that joe clearly clearly won.
It was his.
He came to life on that one um, forgive me um.
He put some pressure on him and all he starts a tire.
At least it looked like that and allowed joe to the opportunity to bang his body and uh cut him with a few of those hooks that joe is renowned for now.
The contest was back and forth until the 11th round late in this 11th round, joe caught ali, with a hook that he was famous for, in which today’s rules, what account is a knockdown, because ali fell into the ropes and the ropes actually held him up.
The fight continues and joel pushes ali for the next three rounds and going into the 15th and final round joe, was up on all three scorecards.
It was here joe gets ali to touch cameras and survives around for the first time in aldi’s career he’s dealt a loss and oh, what a fight now um this win, solidified that joe could be in the conversation to this date as one of the greatest of All time right there by that point in time in his career, undefeated he’s destroyed everybody and everybody being decent, solid fighters.
Joe went on to fight george foreman and lost via stoppage twice first time losing his heavy heavyweight title.
Joe went on to dance with ali.
Two more times which were equally epic contests, um that he stood the top that stood the test of time, but some of the most revered battles in boxing history ali won both these contests uh stopping joe in the 14th round.
The second time it was a war against greats like this, that made oddly, in my opinion, the greatest it’s fights like this.
That show exactly what you’re made of at the end of the day, joe’s still is revered as having one of the most ferocious left hooks in the game.
Um not just left hooks, but he decimated guys way bigger than him.
Joe was not a big guy.
That was not big heavyweight standing at a monstrous 511 fighting 204 pounds in the day and age of gorillas like foreman, foreign, 220 plus 6-3, and doing very well joe finished off his career with four losses to twali george foreman.
That’S it that’s all! He will forever, in my day in my eyes, be seen as nothing shy of a warrior champion.
He was truly great and ali was that much or the argument is made that ali is the greatest because he beat a great like joe.
That’S my episode now with that being said: if you liked this episode, please smash the like button and subscribe and don’t forget to hit the notification bell.
It’S your boy baller and that’s the scoop.
What memories, what memories i’ll tell you? In 1971, i was at 11 year old newspaper boy and uh.
Those guys filled the pages, mostly like great pictures, that every paper would love to dream of these days.
You know the kind with the shots like this with the sweat.
You know yeah just great pictures, great stories, these guys really filled every young boy’s imagination like this wow, how great these guys went at it and uh how they talked and how they carried themselves – and i don’t really know if they were really truly bitter enemies.
So to speak, but they carried it off.
Well, i have to say, like they had you thinking these guys, they hated each other and what a battle every night that they fought each other.
Those three fights were absolutely epic, epic, epic battles, those uh.
What’S your god? Paul lee didn’t necessarily hate joe frazier.
He was just the showman, that’s what he did.
He got in your head.
He he verbally abused you and took you out at your game because of the rage that you’d have for gays again um, but frazier genuinely hated ollie till decades after they had long long stepped in the ring, as combatants he still hated the men.
He was convinced that um well, he was a world champion at one time and even as a world champion, he didn’t think he got the respect that he deserved, because there was always ali and he felt that uh part of it was that all lee turned the World against him, he actually said that those words that, while he turned the words against him the world against him all they used to do so well hallelujah.
When he used to call him um, he used to call him an uncle tom.
He used to call a lot of people uncle tom.
It is a derogatory term for black people, but he called him uncle tom poor, joe, didn’t know where uncle tom was.
He knew what a peeping tom was.
Oh man, he was.
He was angry beyond angry um.
There was another time when he was on.
There was an episode, i can’t remember.
The talk show uh joe was on the talk, show and ali decides that he’s gon na show up and it turned into a wrestling match on the talk show with two world champions.
I can’t see that happy today, um you just, i don’t know taser them today.
I guess but yeah there was absolutely positively unequivocally no love lost for joe frazier um.
I fell for the man um.
I fell for the man for a number of reasons, one because, yes, all they did steal is thunder and it’s all lead, but that’s also all they did um.
Another thing that actually irked me about frasier – and i had made mention of it before with uh, joel um, joe lewis, nacho louis sorry, um sonny, listen is that um they were both from the city of philadelphia and yeah.
That city sonny liston was the world heavyweight champion.
He was the first heavyweight champion to reside in philadelphia.
Joel frazier was the second heavyweight champion of the world suicide in philadelphia, philadelphia erected, a boxing statue of a boxer.
Do you know which boxer that they erected? Yes, you’ve got to be kidding me.
You’Ve got to be kidding me right, yeah, that’s just another.
Tidbit of that is funny yeah.
So that’s my show right on thanks very much paul, appreciate it and we’ll see you tomorrow, night, fantastic cheers.
Thank you.
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