Comments Thread For: The making of Smokin' Joe Frazier, 81 years on

[BoxingUpdates]

Eighty-one years ago today, on January 12, 1944, Joe Frazier was born in South Carolina as the twelfth child to a sharecropper named Rubin and his wife Dolly, writes Kieran Mulvaney
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[Ini]

Good pieces, Mr. Mulvaney. I like your topic selection. I have a naive question, is the boxing scene style for to not include a picture of Frazier or his family home?
I feel it would help paint the picture of the segregated south.

[MatteoAlderson]

Great article! A mythical match up between Evander Holyfield Versus Joe Frazier would be the greatest heavyweight war in history! Who do you guys like in that fight?

[thack]

Good piece about a great fighter and decent man . Joe was small for a heavyweight at just over 200lbs when he won the title but would have levelled most of these big muscle bound fools of today . Can't mention Ali when talking Joe or vice versa , todays boys don't come close.

[ShoulderRoll]

Good article.

[1Eriugenus]

The way I heard the story was the irate farmer was doubling his belt to beat the young lad when Joe shook his head and said’oh no, Mr Bellamy, you want to keep that belt for holding up your pants sir’. Joe was a big hard man by this time even if only 14 or 15 and Bellamy thought better of it. Soon after that Joe thought it best to move North! Great fighter. In my top 10 HWs of all time

[BrankoB]

With most of the articles, I read the title, first couple of paragraphs and perhaps the last paragraph. This time, I could not stop reading as I found the whole story fascinating. Well done, Kieran Mulvaney.

[1Eriugenus]

Thack, as we’ve seen with Usyk 200-210lb is enough. You can’t get by with any less. I love and admire Rocky, Ezzard, Floyd Patterson and Bob Fitzsimmons but they were just too small to be competitive. Frazier was just about big enough to be competitive and Frazier v Holyfield would be a fight for the ages. I got smoking Joe, once he got into his rythym and his left hook was firing he was a hard dog to shake off.

[1Eriugenus]

Frazier said he started to work young, drive young and fight young. He was one bad MoFo

[1Eriugenus]

The strange thing is, when people talk about really talented boxers like SRL, Pernell, RJJ or Mayweather no-one talks about Evander but Evander had ridiculously next-level skills. He always ignored them to have a war. I remember when Evander fought Ridd1ck who was far bigger and stronger than him. He lost. In the rematch he had Emmanuel in his corner who made him move and jab and he gave him a boxing lesson. Third fight, he got rid of Emmanuel and stood in front of the bigger man. Evander probably had the skills to beat Frazier but he wouldn’t use them. He would stand and have a fight and that wouldn’t end well for Evander.