Come Out Smokin' (6 page)

The natural match was between Frazier and Ellis to clear up the muddled heavyweight picture. But efforts to get the two champions into the same ring would be fruitless for almost two years. In that time, Ellis defended his title only once, beating Floyd Patterson in a disputed fifteen-round decision in Stockholm on September 14, 1968.

Yank Durham, on the other hand, kept his champion active. On June 24, 1968, just sixteen weeks after he won his title, Frazier kayoed Mexican champion Manuel Ramos in two rounds with a brutal attack in the Garden. Six months later, Joe handed Oscar Bonavena a terrible fifteen-round beating in Philadelphia. Bonavena's only consolation was that he had completed twenty-five rounds of boxing against Frazier and never left his feet.

On April 22, 1969, in Houston, Texas, Frazier recorded the second fastest knockout in a heavyweight championship fight when he disposed of Dave Zyglewicz faster than you can say . . . Dave Zyglewicz. The official time was 1:36 of the first round. It was no great triumph. Boxing writers mocked Frazier for the ineptness of his opponent and wondered, in print, when Joe was going to fight a heavyweight of stature. They were satisfied when Frazier was matched with tough Jerry Quarry, the WBA finalist, in Madison Square Garden on June 23,1969.

As if to prove his courage to the doubting New York press, Quarry threw logic out the window and made the mistake of trying to slug it out with a slugger. Somehow, Quarry must have known he'd come out second best in that kind of fight. But he did prove his point. Quarry had courage. Wisdom? That was open to question.

For four rounds, it was one of the most brutal battles in heavyweight history—a war—with neither fighter willing to give ground. They just stood there, toe-to-toe, and exchanged hard shots to the head as defense was abandoned. One magazine writer described it this way: “They were like two Mack trucks meeting in the street. They would smash into each other, then back up and smash into each other again.” Late in the fourth round, Quarry smashed Frazier with a left hook to the jaw, as hard as you can hit a man. But Joe never budged, never backed off. He looked his opponent in the eye and he spit the words out through his mouthpiece.

“You through?” Frazier said. “Because it's my turn now.”

And it
was
Joe's turn. Perhaps discouraged that firing his best shot was like trying to chop at Stone Mountain with a nail file, Jerry Quarry was through. He was through pitching, he wasn't through catching. Frazier teed off and Quarry proved his courage by taking everything Frazier had to give and remaining on his feet. But when the referee stopped the fight in the seventh, Quarry's face was a piece of red meat surrounding two razor slits in place of eyes.

Joe Frazier had done his bit to mop up the heavyweight division, defending his title four times in a year. For the first time, he was acclaimed by the critical press, who now were willing to acknowledge him as the best heavyweight in the world, apart from Muhammad Ali.

Now there was only one match, Joe Frazier vs. WBA champion Jimmy Ellis for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world—undisputed, that is, except for the exiled Ali. Already, the promotion was beginning. Ellis had been a witness to Frazier's destruction of Quarry and he stood in the back of the interview area while Frazier answered press questions. Finally, Jimmy could be quiet no longer. “When are you going to fight a real man?” he shouted.

“Whenever you're ready,” Frazier replied.

Jimmy Ellis' time was, coming.

It was billed, quite naturally, as a “Battle of Champions.” Two men, both claiming the heavyweight championship of the world and both with strong support to back up that claim. The World Boxing Association, the governing body in most of Europe and the United States, threw its support to Jimmy Ellis, the winner of its elimination tournament. New York and those five other states recognized Joe Frazier.

Sometime shortly before midnight on February 16, 1970, that dispute would be settled. It would be resolved in fifteen rounds or less in the Madison Square Garden ring and when it was over, there would be only one champion remaining, regarded by all authorities as boxing's heavyweight champion of the world, the most honored, prestigious, coveted, and richest title in professional sports.

In many ways, the opponents were alike. Both were children of poverty, both were devoted family men, Ellis the father of six, Frazier the father of five. Music was very much a part of both their lives; they both sang, as youngsters, in the choir of their Baptist church, Ellis in Louisville, Kentucky, Frazier in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Unlike Frazier, though, Ellis, twenty-nine, had matured as a fighter relatively late in life. He had started his professional career back in 1961 and for the first four years he was a run-of-the-mill middleweight. When his tonsils were removed, he began to gain weight and grew into a light heavyweight, then a full-fledged heavyweight. It cannot be an accident that his rise up the fistic ladder coincided with a letter written to the respected, veteran fight trainer and manager, Angelo Dundee. Ellis' career had reached its lowest ebb with three defeats in four fights in 1964. He was having managerial problems and was on the verge of giving up the game. As a last resort, he sat down and wrote a letter to Dundee, appealing to the little trainer-manager for help. At the bottom of the letter, Ellis wrote in huge letters: “H-E-L-P!”

Dundee sent for Ellis and asked him to come on down to Miami Beach to train. He put Jimmy to work as a sparring partner for Muhammad Ali. For three years, Jimmy worked in the gym with Ali, boxing more than one thousand rounds with the heavyweight champ as he helped him prepare for all his important fights. If Ellis was helping Ali, working with Muhammad helped Ellis immeasurably. He learned a lot in those sessions. He learned moves he never knew existed and he applied them to his own style. Slowly, he made the transition from reckless puncher to smooth, polished, clever boxer.

The work with Ali and the association with Dundee had an electrifying effect on Ellis' career. Under Angelo's shrewd training and management, Ellis had twelve fights and won them all, including the three that earned him the WBA's crown.

Ellis defended his title once, then an injury to his nose put him on the sidelines. Coming into the fight with Frazier, Jimmy had not been in the ring in seventeen months. For two years, Ellis' people and Frazier's backers had been steadily hurling threats, insults, and challenges at each other, each charging that the other was “ducking me, he's afraid to fight me.” But everybody knew the match was inevitable and Madison Square Garden finally put it together.

Frazier, now twenty-six, was an outstanding fighter almost from the time he put on gloves; good enough to win an Olympic championship and get financial backing from a syndicate of wealthy and experienced business men. It had taken Ellis eight years to accomplish what Frazier did in four—win a championship.

In the ring, there was absolutely no similarity between them. In fact, you couldn't find two fighters with such diametrically different styles. Ellis, adopting much of Ali's technique, was a stand-up boxer who liked to jab and move and punch in classic combinations. He possessed a good, strong, sneaky right hand, which he had used since Dundee became his manager to knock out six opponents, all in the first round. Despite his punching ability, though, Ellis' fundamental strategy was right out of the boxing book.

Frazier, on the other hand, was more of a brawler and mauler, devoid of defense and finesse. He came right at you without letup. And once he hit you, you knew you were hit. There was power in those left hooks, explosive power. In Joe's own words, he wasn't much for fancy stuff. “I just come out smokin,' ” he said frequently. And he promised to “come out smokin' ” against Ellis.

Ellis and Frazier both began their training in Miami Beach, but Joe became restless and unhappy in Florida. It was too hot there and he feared the heat would rob him of his strength. So he packed his gear and his entourage and went to his northern retreat at Lake Kiamesha. Joe was much more comfortable in New York and his training camp took on the usual air of good-fellowship. Joe boxed with his sparring partners—Charlie Polite and Ken Norton for heavy work, Ray Anderson and Moleman Williams for speed. Anderson and Williams were lighter men and they copied Ellis' style in sparring sessions.

At night, there were the inevitable crap games and during the day, the indispensable tape recorder blared the familiar hard rock music that Frazier liked to hear as he trained. Joe was a buddy to his helpers, but often he spent time alone. Frazier liked to be alone. Unlike other ring celebrities, he did not enjoy having dozens of flunkies around, catering to his every whim. He treated his sparring partners as equals, not serfs.

“I'm not a crowd-carrier,” he explained. “I like to do things myself. I like to drive my own automobile. I worked for it. Why should I get a chauffeur and let him drive around in my eleven-thousand-dollar automobile? If I can't drive it, it don't make no sense to have it.”

He is self-sufficient, a characteristic that extends to Joe Frazier the fighter, and when reporters came around to inquire how he would fight Ellis, Joe told them. “There ain't no way he can whip me,” Frazier insisted. “Jimmy Ellis is a nice guy and a good fighter,but when that bell rings, I don't care who that guy in the other corner is. Even if he's my brother, he's gonna get beat. I got something I want—the heavyweight championship of the world—and there ain't nobody gonna take that away from me. That Ellis, he ain't fought guys like me. Who'd he ever fight who would come after him right at the bell and keep coming for three minutes of every round for as long as it goes? I have to laugh when people say he has a chance because he's faster than me and he has a good sneak right. My speed is greater than his. I'll be moving in and he'll be backing up. Ain't no man alive can move faster backwards than he can forward. What's so sneaky about his right? He carries it where I can see it and when he throws it, I'm gonna be sneaking out of the way.

“If Ellis comes to fight, like Quarry did, it will be a good fight but it's going to end the same way.”

Meanwhile, Angelo Dundee was carefully planning Ellis' strategy. In the privacy of his hotel room he pored over stacks of still photographs. “There are some things you can see in photos that you can't see in movies,” Dundee explained. “Sometimes the movies are too fast. Does Frazier drop his right when he throws a left? Does he turn his body behind the hook? Little things.”

If there were weaknesses in Frazier's style, however well disguised, Angelo Dundee would find them. But the people who make their living at such things decided Dundee would not find enough flaws in Frazier to help Ellis. They made Joe a solid 6 to 1 betting favorite.

If there were any doubts as to the differences in the two men, they were dispelled once the bell rang for the first round of their fight and they met before a Garden crowd of 18,079. Ellis was leaner and taller, 6 feet 1, to Frazier's 5 feet 11, and he stood straight, creating the impression that his advantage in height was even greater because Frazier came at his man in his characteristically severe crouch.

When they had met that morning for the traditional day-of-the-fight weigh-in, Frazier had come in at two hundred and five pounds. Ellis was a surprisingly heavy two hundred and one, heavier than he'd ever been for a fight. It was obvious he was willing to sacrifice a little speed to be able to match Frazier's power.

“You look a little flabby to me,” Frazier said when they met at the scale that had been placed in the middle of the Garden ring.

“You better worry about yourself, not me,” Ellis fired back.

“I'm going to be so close to you tonight,” Joe said, “every breath you take will be right down my neck.”

Jimmy Ellis had said he knew how to handle Frazier's smoke. “My guy,” Angelo Dundee said many times, “is the best first-round banger in the heavyweight division.” That should have been the clue, the tip-off on Ellis' strategy. He was going to work early, to try to put over one of those sneak right hands in the first round, before Joe Frazier got revved up.

And that's the way it happened . . . but not with the expected results. The bell rang, they met, and Ellis fired the sneak right . . . then he ripped a left hook to the head and the right again, square on the button. Nothing happened. Joe Frazier didn't back up. He didn't budge. He didn't stop coming. He didn't even blink. Right there, Jimmy Ellis lost the fight. Joe Frazier bared his teeth at his opponent and he sneered.

“You can't hit,” Joe Frazier said. “You threw your best shot, man. I'm takin' everything you got and you ain't hurtin' me.”

Ellis had said he would use the ring as a checkerboard, trapping Frazier, backing him into squares on the board and doing his damage. “If you're gonna play checkers,” Frazier had replied, “you gotta jump.”

Jimmy Ellis never jumped. And when his best shots bounced off Frazier like bullets off a thick steel slab, Jimmy had to know, deep in his heart, that his task that night was an impossible one.

The round ended, Ellis' round according to the official scorecards. He had landed more punches, but he didn't really win anything substantial. He lost it all when he banged Frazier with his best punch and got an insult in return.

During the rest period between the first and second rounds, Yank Durham was yelling into Frazier's ear.

“Don't give him any room,” Durham commanded. “Smother everything. You're giving him too much room. You've got to crowd him.”

In the second round, Frazier began to open up, content in the knowledge that Ellis could not hurt him even with his best punch. Joe caught Ellis in close and wore him down with hooks to the body. Ellis, who had started the fight standing tall, slowly began to lower his body and cover up in a protective stance. He got lower, lower and slower, slower and closer, and, inevitably, when that happened, Joe Frazier's hooks always found their mark. And now they were right on target.

“He's changed his style,” Frazier thought as he went on the attack. “He's not as aggressive. He's not standing straight up. His body is coming down a little and that means he's fighting defensively. And he's not as fast as I thought he was. I can see every punch he throws. He's all mine.”

In the third round, Frazier drove a left hook home and Ellis pivoted on his heel, reeled and almost went down, but didn't. He looked like a kid balancing on a fence as he tottered but didn't fall. The bell sounded and Ellis was saved further damage, but that was the beginning of the end.

When the bell rang for the fourth, Jimmy Ellis did not leap off the stool to meet his man as he had done in the first three rounds. This time he got up slowly, took a few hesitant steps and waited for Frazier to come to him near his corner. Ellis grabbed Frazier's head with his left hand and brought up his right with an uppercut that clipped Frazier on the chin. The tactic seemed to anger Joe. Snorting like a bull, Joe hooked two solid lefts to the body that made Ellis grunt and then Joe brought up a left that connected with Ellis' chin.

Sensing his man was hurt, Joe moved in for the kill. He ripped another left to the head and Ellis fought back with two rights to the head, but there was no stopping Frazier now.

Two short, powerful hooks to the head by Frazier stung his man and then he doubled up on the hook, first to the belly, then to the head. The body punch almost broke Ellis in two and the left to the head sent him reeling into the ropes. Jimmy had the good sense to work his way into a corner where he could use the ropes for support. But it hardly mattered. Frazier followed up with two murderous hooks to the jaw and Ellis toppled, face first, onto the canvas. He slumped first on his knees, then the knees straightened out and he was prone, on his belly.

Ellis struggled to pull himself up. He was back on his knees at four, then he was three-quarters of the way up and then he was on his feet at the count of eight. He didn't seem to be hurt badly but his eyes were glassy. Now he was desperate. Abandoning defense, Ellis turned reckless and fired wild punches at his opponent, hoping they would hold off a raging Frazier. But Joe was an animal, pouncing on his man in the center of the ring and firing the big bomb, the vicious left hook to the head. Later, Frazier would say, “It felt like when you hit a baseball and you send it sailing out into the open field.” There were only two seconds left in the round as Ellis flopped over on his back, doubled up. Instinctively, he threw his gloves up to protect his face. He didn't seem to know he was on the floor, flat on his back.

Slowly, Jimmy Ellis stirred. At the count of five, the bell rang ending the round. But it did not save Ellis. Under New York State rules, the bell cannot save a man from a knockout except in the final round. If Jimmy did not get up before the count of ten, he would be a KO victim.

Somehow, Ellis managed to find the strength to crawl to his knees and, painfully, reeling like a drunken man, Jimmy got to his feet at the count of nine, barely avoiding a knockout. He wobbled to his corner and plopped down on his stool, and his trainers, Dundee and Chickie Ferrara, worked feverishly to revive him in those crucial sixty seconds. While Ferrara tried to clear Jimmy's head by waving smelling salts under his nose and soaking his head with cold water, Dundee was slapping the calves of Ellis' legs to get the feeling back into them and yelling into Jimmy's ears.