Come Out Smokin' (5 page)

“I'm not sure I want to go on beating my brains out,” he says. “Who wants to be away from home so much? Who wants to have no private life? When does it become time for a man to live his own life?”

In the future Yank would like to do something in radio. He talks wistfully about a career in announcing. One thing Yank Durham likes almost as much as boxing is talking. “But,” he emphasizes, “none of that play-a-record, talk-a-little for me. I want to be a regular announcer.”

It would be easy for Yank to keep riding the gravy train, one fight a year for a big purse for, say, five, six more years. But he wants out as much for his fighter as for himself.

“It's in writing,” he says. “When I tell Joe to quit, he quits. No one will ever say I let him stay around and become a shot fighter. You'll see.”

When retirement is mentioned to Frazier, he replies as he does to all questions concerning his boxing future. “It's up to Yank.”

Yank Durham is a hulk of a man who is perpetually on a diet and perpetually looking as if he needed to go on one. He has a full head of snow-white hair and a trim little mustache, but easily the most impressive thing about him is his voice. It's a deep, resonant voice that comes from deep in his bowels and inspired famed sports columnist Red Smith to dub him “the black Everett Dirksen.”

It's his smooth purr of a voice that embellishes Yank's reputation as a slick operator. Boxing promoters have found him to be a stubborn, hardheaded business man . . . stubborn and hardheaded, but fair. When the biggest money of all was about to come in, it was Yank who made the catch, serving in the unique position of negotiator for both fighters, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.

It had been agreed by both sides that Frazier and Ali would get equal shares when they fought. Durham had a pretty good idea how much it would take to make the match. He sat back and let the offers come in, screening them to find the valid ones. There were dozens. But when it came time to put up the money, only Jerry Perenchio came through. The price was right, the money was certified by a bank and only then did Durham decide the Perenchio group was the one to get the promotion. He made his recommendation to Ali's people; they approved; and the fight was made, owing to the groundwork done by Yank Durham.

When it comes to business, Yank Durham has no friends. Money talks. “If somebody came with an offer,” Yank says, “I'd tell them to let me see the money. When this man [Perenchio] came up with the money, he got the fight.”

The turning point in Frazier's career came on November 21, 1966, and it came because of a chance Yank Durham was willing to take. He sensed that Frazier was ready for a veteran pro like Eddie Machen and his hunch paid off.

Now, Yank Durham was about to take his second gamble. He thumbed his nose at the World Boxing Association.

The suspension of Muhammad Ali and the accompanying stripping of his title and three-and-a-half-year exile were a black mark on the face of boxing. Many praised the action on political grounds, but even Ali's staunchest critics deplored it as bad for the sport. For all his mouthing off, for all his controversial political and religious views, Muhammad Ali was good for boxing. He fought often, putting his title on the line nine times in three years, creating interest in the game and keeping his division active. Without him, there would be a huge void. Undoubtedly, his successor, whoever he might be, would suffer by comparison, would be deemed unworthy of wearing the crown that had been yanked from Ali's head.

Only in retrospect can it be said that Muhammad's absence proved a boon. It created opportunity. It developed new faces. Ali had slowly depleted the heavyweight ranks of its best talent, knocking challengers off in rapid succession and creating the legend that Muhammad was unbeatable. At the time of his suspension, there were no legitimate challengers ready to take a meaningful crack at the title.

What Ali's absence meant to Joe Frazier is incalculable. It is almost a certainty that Joe would have been led to the slaughter and tossed in against Ali long before he was ready. Eventually, ready or not, the public would have demanded that Frazier take his turn at trying to shut up “Big Mouth.” And Joe would have taken that shot prematurely. The result might have been disastrous.

The WBA tournament was on—without its No. 1 contender, Joe Frazier. Yank Durham stuck to his guns. It didn't mean that Frazier had to rust from inactivity, though. Not for long, anyway. He signed to fight in Madison Square Garden on March 4, 1968, against his old opponent from amateur days, Buster Mathis.

The match had been made as part of a doubleheader card that would inaugurate the newest Madison Square Garden, the fourth Garden. It was to be a gala evening. Construction of the new Garden had been completed just weeks before and this would be the first boxing event in the new building, which would carry on its tradition as the world's boxing mecca. The Garden name and boxing had long been synonymous. In fact, John L. Sullivan, the first heavyweight champion in boxing's modern era, fought in the first Garden on July 17, 1882.

The new building was a beautiful structure, designed in the modern cantilever fashion. Unlike its three predecessors, the fourth Garden was round, permitting it to be constructed without pillars or posts. Befitting the gala occasion, the Garden signed Emile Griffith to defend his middleweight championship against Nino Benvenuti in the third of their interesting series of title fights. Their bout would be followed by Mathis-Frazier. But something was missing, and somebody got the idea to turn the Mathis-Frazier contest into a championship fight. The proposal was submitted to the New York State Athletic Commission. On the theory that everybody must have a heavyweight champion, New York State, not governed by the World Boxing Association, decided to sanction the fight as a title bout, the winner to be recognized in New York as heavyweight champion of the world. Durham had scored again. Instead of getting Frazier involved in a long-drawn-out and crowded elimination tournament, he could snatch a share of the vacant championship with a single fight.

It was a logical match. Joe Frazier was the No. 1 heavyweight in the world, even in the judgment of the WBA. Mathis was a colorful and popular fighter, not ranked quite so high, but easily a salable heavyweight.

Frazier was a favorite in New York. He had scored two of his most important victories there, beating Oscar Bonavena and stopping the unstoppable George Chuvalo. Mathis was unbeaten in twenty-three fights as a pro and had scored three of his victories in the Garden. Admittedly, Buster's competition wasn't the best, but he was a good draw in New York and he had those two decisions over Frazier in the amateurs.

Joe and Buster were friends. They had spent a great deal of time together during the Olympics and had gotten to know each other, but they remained fierce ring rivals. Frazier, in particular, felt the spur. He could not forget the two defeats he suffered to Mathis in the amateurs, defeats he believed were completely unwarranted. He felt he had won those fights. He still believed it, and he watched them on film over and over as if to remind himself that he had a score to settle. In fifty-nine fights as an amateur and pro, those two defeats to Mathis were the only marks on an otherwise perfect record—it rankled.

In the customary prefight bravado, Mathis confidently stated that he had beaten Frazier twice before and would do it again.

“That was a long time ago,” Frazier insisted. “Fighting in the amateurs compared to the pros is like two different worlds.” Frazier had little respect for Mathis' record as a professional and the odds makers concurred, tabbing Joe a 2 to 1 favorite. “Mathis?” Frazier would say. “Oh, yeah, he's the one who fights those guys that get carried in on crutches.”

The patter continued throughout their training periods. As a gimmick, Frazier sent Mathis a wooden figurine in the shape of a devil and added a tiny placard that told Mathis where he could go.

“Joe, he have a simple sense of humor,” Mathis countered. “Imagine him giving me this thing. He's liable to get me mad. But you can tell him this for me. I got a nice gift for him.” Mathis raised his right hand and balled it into a clenched fist.

“Buster say that?” Frazier said. “Shoot. He don't know no better. All this talk, you can be sure of only one thing. Once the bell ring, he gonna run like a thief.”

When Mathis announced that he would be married a month after his fight with Frazier, Joe sent the following telegram: “
Congratulations, Buster. Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow, but suggest you advance the wedding to March 5 because you'll sure need a nurse after I get through with you on the night before
.”

All the talk helped the Garden do brisk business at the box office. Five other states—Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maine, Texas, and Massachusetts—threw in with New York and announced they would recognize the Mathis-Frazier winner as champion. But the British Boxing Board of Control, while it could not sanction the winner of the WBA's tournament, turned thumbs down on the Garden fight. It recognized Muhammad Ali as champion and would continue to do so unless he should be committed to prison. “We are behind the claims of Frazier as number one contender,” said board secretary Teddy Waltham, “but we do not consider Mathis a suitable contender for the title.”

Meanwhile, militant black groups planned to picket the fight, to protest the deposing of Ali as champion. Black poet LeRoi Jones said, “Even though Buster Mathis and Joe Frazier might tell white people that they are the heavyweight champion after this fight, they will never come in the black community claiming they are the heavyweight champion. They know that little kids would laugh them out of the streets.”

As he wound up his training at the Concord Hotel in Lake Kiamesha, New York, Joe Frazier was getting irritable. It was a good sign, a sign he was ready to rumble. The pattern is always the same in Frazier's training camp. His stays there usually last about seven weeks. In the first five weeks, the atmosphere is serene, relaxed. He wakes up each morning at five, runs two or three miles, returns to his room and naps until noon. Then he has breakfast, takes a walk and relaxes until it's time to go into the gym in the early afternoon.

He works out for about an hour, doing calisthenics, hitting the light and heavy bags, boxing with his sparring partners, Ray Anderson, Billy “Moleman” Williams, Don Warner. After dinner, at five, Joe takes it easy, watching television or joining the crap games that always seem to be in progress in Frazier's camp.

Unlike many fighters, Frazier does not live apart from his sparring partners. He works and plays with them—spends most of his time with them—although he is the star and they are the hired hands and the difference in their bank balances is several hundreds of thousand dollars. When he is away, Joe calls home several times a day. He always phones in the early evening to be sure to talk to the kids before they go to bed.

In the final ten days, Joe starts snapping at people, particularly reporters who ask the same questions he has already answered several dozen times.

“That's good,” says Yank Durham. “It means he's ready. When he gets mean like that, I keep away from him.”

The crowd that filed into the new Madison Square Garden on March 4, 1968, was not unlike the crowd that opened the third Madison Square Garden on December 11, 1925, when Paul Berlenbach met Jack Delaney for the light-heavyweight championship of the world. Instead of arriving in trolleys, carriages and on foot, they came by subway and limousine. But it was a celebrity-studded crowd, the kind always found at heavyweight championship fights. The new Garden was filled almost to capacity, with 18,096 patrons, who paid $658,503, a record indoor gate.

In the early going, Mathis was in control. Surprisingly agile at two hundred and forty-three and a half pounds, giving him a weight advantage of thirty-nine pounds, Buster was boxing superbly and piling up an early lead as he scored with quick left jabs and solid combinations. After four rounds, Mathis was ahead on two of the three official scorecards. Referee Arthur Mercante scored it a shutout for Buster, judge Jack Gordon had Mathis ahead, three rounds to one, while judge Tony Castellano had Frazier in front, three rounds to one.

Both of their amateur fights, won by Mathis, had been over the four-round distance and now, as professionals, the pattern was exactly the same—Buster bouncing, moving, jabbing; Frazier in inexorable pursuit, banging to the body in hopes of slowing his opponent so that he could nail him with crushing hooks. But this fight was for more than four rounds. It was scheduled for fifteen and Mathis had never in his career gone past the seventh round.

All three officials gave Frazier the fifth, but in the sixth Mathis opened up with his best flurry of the fight. He stung Frazier three different times with combination punches. One, in particular, was a beauty. Buster drove a left to the body, a right to the jaw, another left to the belly and then brought up a right uppercut to the jaw.

Frazier flicked the punches off and kept coming. He seemed indestructible. In the seventh, the fight began to turn and Mathis was not to win another round. Buster slowed perceptibly and now Frazier's body punches, wild in the early rounds, began to drive home into Mathis' huge carcass—a most inviting target.

As Frazier drove hook after explosive hook into Mathis' midsection with sickening thuds audible throughout the vast, new arena, Buster's guard slowly began to drop, exposing his head. It was the opening Frazier was looking for and he altered his attack, moving forward relentlessly and firing smashing left hooks to his opponent's head. A series of lefts split Mathis' nose, sending blood gushing, splattering the canvas and Buster's white nylon trunks until it seemed he was wearing red trunks.

In the early rounds, Buster had been on his feet in his corner, ready to come out before he had used up the full sixty seconds of his rest period. Now, he remained on his stool until the bell sounded and Frazier was standing, waiting to go back to war. Mathis was fading and Joe knew it and he could hardly wait to get on with the carnage. More and more, Mathis was holding Frazier and referee Arthur Mercante pulled him apart and shouted, “Let go.”

“Work, Buster, work,” Frazier chided as he slammed the big fellow with body punches. By the end of the tenth round Frazier had pushed into the lead and it seemed only a matter of time before he would punish Mathis into quitting.

As the eleventh round started, Mathis was a beaten fighter. The bounce had vanished from his legs and he was practically powerless to stop the wave after wave of punches that a tireless Frazier fired from a slight crouch, punches that derived their power all the way from the squat legs, anchored solidly on the canvas. If Buster picked off one punch or slipped another, there were two, three, four, five more that came behind the first one and found their mark.

Late in the eleventh round Frazier moved in for the kill. He shot a short, savage right hand that landed flush on Buster's chin and then almost instantaneously a left was on its way to Mathis' right temple and Buster went down. His legs slipped out from under him as if someone had yanked a rug away, and he flopped backward, his head hitting the bottom of the ropes, head and shoulders slithering outside onto the apron of the ring, blood streaming from his battered nose.

Mathis lay there for several seconds, his eyes rolling around in his head, his chest heaving. At the count of four, he began to move. At six, he struggled to get to his feet, but his legs were unwilling and he stumbled into a corner, on his knees as the count reached eight. He stared vacantly at ringside and he tried, once again, to get to his feet. He was up, but swaying, at nine and just as the count reached ten, referee Mercante waved his arms over his head calling a halt and went to Mathis and threw a solicitous arm around the big man's shoulder.

“The man said ‘Nine, ten,' and I said, ‘Eleven, twelve . . .,' ” Frazier quipped later. Officially, it was a TKO in 2:33 of the eleventh round, but there was no doubt as to the outcome. Joe Frazier was heavyweight champion of the world . . . at least he was the heavyweight champion in the states of New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maine, Texas, and Massachusetts.

Later, in the dressing room, they asked Frazier if he felt like the champ. Joe bristled. He'd been annoyed that certain members of the press, particularly those in his hometown of Philadelphia, were reluctant to give him the credit Joe believed he deserved. “Just what did that look like to you out there?” he shot back, his words a Joe Frazier hook to the jaw.

While Joe exulted in his new role, even if his title was recognized in only six states, the WBA's tournament labored along to its conclusion. On April 27, 1968, fifty-four days after Frazier won his crown and thirteen months after it started, the tournament came to an end with Jimmy Ellis winning the title in a fifteen-round decision over Jerry Quarry in Oakland, California.