Twenty minutes later, after his shower, the boss returned wearing a blue Resorts International jacket over a tight T-shirt and a pair of navy slacks. He greeted me with a broad smile, as if nothing had happened, and took a seat next to Marvis on the couch under the mural. Thrown by how quickly his attitude had changed, I tried to apologize and confirm all was forgiven.
“Ain’t nothing but a party!” said Joe, cutting me off in an exuberant voice with his palms out wide for emphasis. “Yep, yep, yep, yep.”
The anger was obviously gone, and the smile seemed real enough. Yet it still took a moment for me to accept the transition. I later learned that this was Joe’s signature catchphrase for rising above anything from a petty annoyance to a shattering disappointment. It represented a necessary resilience borne from years of dealing with a fickle profession and public. It was a character trait I would come to greatly admire.
The focus soon turned toward getting ready for the gym. The initial plan was for Joe to do a brief workout downstairs while Marvis continued to loosen up in the lair. Then Joe intended to guide his son through a much more rigorous routine. In preparation for Marvis’s sparring session, Joe began greasing him up. I asked Joe to explain his usual workout and then his son’s while he applied the petroleum jelly.
“I’m trying to work into shape by doing two sets of two minutes, two [minutes], two, and two—eight rounds,” said Joe, carefully smoothing the grease over Marvis’s cheeks and forehead to prevent unnecessary tears or swelling in the ring. “Rounds are the time I put in on the light bag, heavy bag, shadow-boxing and skipping rope. I haven’t really worked out much in the gym for the past two months now. But I’ll be stepping up and working out more with Marvis when I get back [from the road] in April.”
“What about sparring?” I asked. “When you get in the ring with Marvis or some of these young guys, does it fire you up, revive the old fighting spirit?”
“Nah, nah, not worked up,” said Joe, shaking his head. “I always keep my cool when it comes to working out, especially with the young fellas in the gym. I’m out there to help them, not to take ’em apart.”
“Well, what if one of the bigger boys or Marvis here lands some solid punches?”
“Once in a while, I get hit with some shots I shouldn’t get hit with,” admitted Joe, rising up with a wry laugh and clenched fists. “Then I got to tighten up!”
Joe immediately crouched down and grunted out a pair of vicious hooks. He stayed low and hunched his shoulders for an extra few seconds to sell the effect.
“But seriously, if Marvis makes any mistake when I work with him—like we were doing before—I counter and take advantage of his mistake so he sees right away where he went wrong,” said Joe, now pumping a couple of jabs. “He won’t continue making that mistake and thinking he can get away with it. I show him he won’t!”
“Is this preparation for possibly working as a full-time trainer down the line?” I asked, trying to set Joe up for my bigger question. “Maybe after the music career and a boxing comeback?”
Joe ignored the “comeback” remark and bit on the trainer issue instead. “I think I have the mind to be one of the best trainers in the world,” he replied. “But I just don’t have the amount of free time to handle it. I can show these guys what to do. The average trainer has been out of fighting too long to get in the ring and show exactly what he wants done.”
The ex-champ talked about the tough training routine he and George Benton devised for Marvis. Joe said Marvis would begin with five minutes of bending and stretching up in the lair and then come down to the gym to shadowbox for five minutes and jump rope for 10. This would be followed by three rounds of sparring, with the last round running longer than usual. And he would be expected to work hard on the heavy bag and speed bag as well.
I thought about Marvis sparring in a gym that bore his father’s name. “Hey Marvis, are the other boxers in the gym more out to get you because you’re the boss’s son?”
“Well, I guess they’re naturally more out to get me because of my name and because I now have a reputation of my own.” Marvis’s voice was soft. “I have to go into the ring saying, ‘If they’re out to get me, I have to get them first.’ But me and the guys in the gym get along.”
“Yep, they get along,” said Joe, with a loud laugh. He tapped Marvis on the chest.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Yeah, because they know he would kick their asses,” Joe said in a hoarse voice. “A lot of guys figure Marvis is Joe Frazier’s son and if we beat him, we’ll get the big fights. At times, someone puts a kid out there who doesn’t have the ability, but thinks he has Marvis’s talent. My son is so powerful and knowledgeable for this stage of the game, I feel sorry for the other kid. I really do. Some of these guys are just in over their heads.”
“So how does Marvis get the level of work he needs?”
“Marvis works with some of the really big boys in the gym here.”
“You mean he’s sparring with some of the pros?” I asked, knowing that was frowned upon in the amateur ranks.
“Not really,” said Joe, with a little smirk. “We keep it clean. He fights the biggest, most experienced amateurs in the gym and more than holds his own.”
Before I got the chance to press the point, Joe signaled we were through for now and started for the lair door. I fell in behind him. Marvis got up and began to bend and reach from the waist. He interspersed some long reaching jabs with stretching to loosen up his shoulders and arms.
Then the lair door opened, and we were met by a wall of human energy, a slew of pressing business concerns, and everyone looking to grab some time with the boss.
The charge was led by Ken Johnson, a fortyish, stocky white man shaped like a fireplug, in a three-piece suit. Johnson, Frazier’s booking agent/road manager, grabbed Joe’s arm and motioned for him to stay put until he got off the phone. He was hard at work putting together the upcoming southern tour for Joe’s band. He had scratched the words “Chattanooga” and “Augusta” with question marks on a piece of paper. Then he blustered something undecipherable into the phone and hung up.
“Okay,” said Johnson, leaning against Joe’s oversized desk and pausing to steel his resolve. “They’ll give you five thousand for the night.”
Joe immediately got upset and started to pace. Johnson momentarily looked away.
“Giving me $5,000,” Joe repeated, in a cross between sarcasm and disgust. “Might not be enough for a big white star, but they figure it’s enough for a n----r.”
Johnson threw his hands up and released a weary groan. “Please, don’t start with that.”
The two turned to go back into the lair to hash out the club arrangements as Marvis emerged to head down to the gym. Johnson stopped to inform Marvis and me that we were scheduled to meet up with the Smokin’ Joe Frazier Revue during the tour down south. He said he’d tell us the specifics later once the bookings were set.
Marvis seemed pleased to be included, and I was ecstatic. I saw this as confirmation that Joe was truly over our confrontation and in this for the long haul. I also envisioned a chance to bond with Marvis. I hoped for some more revealing interviews with him, beyond Joe’s influence, on the way there.
Marvis hurried down the stairs to the gym on the main floor, and I started to follow. Parked on the office couch was a short, wiry junior middleweight who suddenly rose to block my path. He put two fingers firmly against my chest and introduced himself as “Youngblood.” It turned out his real name was Mike Williams.
The 23-year-old, an undefeated pro boxer with a 15–0–1 record, had been given his nickname years before by the beloved Philadelphia middleweight Bennie Briscoe. As a particularly vicious young fighter, Youngblood supposedly earned the alias by drawing rivers of blood from his opponents. His status in the gym suggested the story was probably true.
Williams was Marvis Frazier’s longtime confidant and self-proclaimed protector. He often worked and traveled with Joe and seemed quite protective of him as well. At that moment, Blood was intent on sending me a pointed message.
“Marvis Frazier is too much of a gentleman for this business,” Williams began, then mumbled something about “leeches” and jabbed a finger in my direction. “He doesn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.”
Youngblood leaned into me with an air of menace. He had a wicked scar running through his eyebrow to the edge of the left eye, and other scars below the eye. My natural reaction was to back up.
“That is where I come in,” he said, in a low, intense voice. “I’ll do it! Especially if it means saving my friend from being in agony or getting some heartache. Damn right I’ll hurt your feelings. And, if necessary, go upside your head.”
After explaining the point of my interviews, Williams decided there were no heads in need of immediate hammering. He relaxed and offered me an appraisal of his friend’s future as a boxer. He painted a picture of Marvis as a top heavyweight professional, a contender, in the not-so-distant future.
I interrupted to tell him that Marvis talked about winning Olympic gold, like Joe, but hadn’t said anything about wanting to be a pro fighter. “That doesn’t seem to be his vision of the future,” I said.
“Marvis don’t want to turn pro, but he will,” confided Blood. “He don’t need the money, but they’re going to be talking millions. He will. He will.”
Youngblood made it sound like Marvis was scheduled for fame and fortune whether he liked it or not. He went on to explain the facts of boxing life.
“In the beginning, boxing is fun for anyone,” said Youngblood. “It was fun for me too in the beginning [at age 12]. Marv’s probably a little tired of boxing, but he’s in it. It’s a job to him now. . . . It’s a business.”
Didn’t Joe worry that his son could get seriously hurt as a pro?
“How is he going to get hurt?” asked Blood, noting Joe would protect Marvis without babying him. “If anything, Marvis is going to do the hurting. The only way you get hurt in boxing is when you’re overmatched. On his level, nobody can beat him up. Even people one or two steps over him couldn’t do him real damage. And Joe’s not going to match him with somebody five steps above him—and just throw him to the dogs.”
Yet, despite Joe watching out for his son, Youngblood suggested there were no shortcuts to the top. Marvis would have to pay his dues all the way up.
“This business is just like an exclusive club,” he said. “You don’t pay your dues you get kicked out. And in this club being kicked out hurts plenty. But sooner than people think, Marvis will be on the level of the big boys—top 10 guys.”
Youngblood also warned that trainers—even concerned fathers like Joe—couldn’t be too protective either. When there was a chance to win a tough but important fight, the trainer couldn’t bypass it to try to save a young boxer’s skin.
“Boxing is all a gamble,” said Blood. “You got to take chances to make it. Marvis is being brought along right. He spars with all the best [pro] heavyweights. They come to the gym to fight him. Why? Because Marvis gives them good work. There is no other place in the country that gives you sparring like Joe’s gym. Philadelphia fighters war in the gym and war in the fights. It’s just in ’em.”
The lair door slid open, and a haggard Ken Johnson came out looking like he had just gone 10 rounds with the boss. He went straight to the office desk to resume his phone calls. Joe, also appearing grim, walked past us heading for the stairs. Youngblood fell in next to him and asked about the trip. I lagged well behind to give them some space.
It was four in the afternoon and the gym was crowded, hopping with energy. Within the ropes, two huge heavyweights, definitely pros, worked in close. Each body shot came with a loud sniff and thud as they jostled for the right leverage and opening. The big boys were surrounded by at least two dozen smaller amateurs and pros caught up in their own thoughts and exertions. And, behind the waist-high wooden gate, about 20 dollar-a-view spectators scanned the action and kept a lookout for Joe Frazier and his son.
Mixed in with the more experienced fighters were young kids and teens from the neighborhood. Joe welcomed them in the locker room after three o’clock when his schedule permitted. He usually just joked around, kept it light and friendly, and avoided bombarding them with boxing tips from the get-go. Most greeted him with a reverent “Hey, Smokin’ Joe!”
The kids ranged in age from 10 to about 18 years old. They came in all shapes and sizes. Some still had skinny arms and legs—most were black, but white and Latino kids took part too. Joe brought them in to get their first taste of the game. He barred them from skipping class to come work out.
Most of these kids, and the older fighters as well, benefited from an informal mentoring system encouraged by the boss. Boxers at every level complemented the work of the trainers in the gym by offering casual advice on a regular basis to those less experienced. Both Joe and Marvis stopped several times that afternoon to pass along a boxing tip or correct a mistake in technique.
Joe was already poking at the speed bag in short bursts when I arrived. A few feet away, Marvis faced the long mirror, pumped one straight jab after another, and slowly eased into his shadowboxing round. They didn’t speak or look at each other but soon got down to business with the same murderous scowl. The whole gym took notice, and many of the other boxers drifted in their direction.
As a rule, when Joe worked with Marvis he drew all the attention, people watched what they said, and everyone in the gym tried to pick up on his boxing instructions.
Joe eventually churned the speed bag into a steady, sustained blur that went on and on until brought to an end by a hard left-right combo. As Joe turned to his son, Marvis shifted into more of a crouch and gradually worked hooks and short uppercuts into the shadowboxing routine. His hands flowed nonstop for several minutes, from one combination to the next. He continually bobbed up and down, moved in and out, and taunted his mirror image with jerky shoulder feints. Marvis only let up when Joe yelled, “Stop!”
Joe waited a moment before slipping lightly padded gloves on his son’s hands. He told him they would work on timing now. Joe then let the heavy bag swing free. He instructed Marvis to just wait and watch until he gave the order.
“Okay, two low lefts and go high with the right,” barked Joe.
Marvis stalked the heavy bag with his eyes. He abruptly flashed a pair of line-drive lefts and connected up top with a thunderous right. The last shot echoed over the buzz in the gym. Joe seemed pleased, but he wanted to show Marvis how to get the same results without working so hard.
“Fool the son of a bitch,” said Joe, easing between his son and the heavy bag. “Fake a low jab.” Joe feinted with his shoulder while down in a squat. “Then go straight to the head with a hard right.” Gloveless, the clap! of Joe’s fist against the bag was startling.
Marvis did the combination Joe’s way once. Then, on his father’s command, did it all more fluidly the second time. From here, the pace picked up. Joe called out one combination after another. Marvis instantly performed each one, down to the last suggested detail. The more he worked, the more he looked like Joe in the ring.
All went smoothly until Joe told Marvis to double up on his right hook. “Uh, uh!” he snapped, as he moved his son away. Joe attacked the heavy bag and accentuated every movement. He crouched lower than Marvis, his legs farther apart, and struck crisper with each hook. The yells were louder too, and each punch seemed more deadly, more final.
Joe’s advice was obviously savvy but seemed to channel his own style rather than what George Benton preached to his son.
Nearby a husky 15-year-old stood entranced. He discreetly mimicked Joe Frazier’s every move. I noticed his bandaged hands making small, mincing motions. Marvis was exactly that age when his dad arranged his first test rounds in the gym.
“I stepped into the ring with my cousin Russel,” Marvis had said two months earlier in my first interview with the Fraziers. “First time I had the gloves on in the ring—we, like, sparred. Pop thought it would be a good idea. He wanted to test me out and see how I would react. He knew my cousin wouldn’t hurt me.”
I asked Marvis how it went.
“I looked pretty good,” he said, flashing a broad grin. “It was a feeling I really enjoyed—something different. It was one-on-one. It was a little bit of macho and I was in there on my own, depending only on myself. My cousin Russel had been an amateur for two years, off and on, and he was 17. I wouldn’t say I took him, but I caught him with a couple of nice shots.”
Marvis said he was at a private school at the time, Wyncote Academy, that didn’t have sports teams. Boxing became his main physical outlet. Yet when he transferred back to public school—where he had once excelled in basketball, football, and wrestling—he still opted to only pursue boxing.
“What was your dad’s reaction to you choosing to stay with fighting?”
Marvis first made a vague analogy to Joe’s attitude about his kids handling guns. Then he put it in more specific terms.
“His reaction was this is no plaything,” said Marvis, the gravity showing on his face. “This was a serious game and you had to be dedicated. You have to be earnest because these guys are in the ring to take your head off. So, if this is what you want, you better be dead serious about it.”
According to Marvis, Joe made it clear he better be damn good in the ring as well.
Joe signaled for his son to begin the speed bag round. Marvis instinctively got the bag up to a roll and picked up speed as he went along. His hands were fast, certainly faster than Joe’s, and it all seemed so effortless. But after a minute or so, Joe stopped him. He wanted to talk about “head hunting.”
Joe offered his son a lesson on how to follow through on a hook to the head without moving his feet.
“Make believe the speed bag is a man’s face,” said Joe, pushing the bag into motion. “You let him move, stalk him, set him up for the jab—then nail him with the left to the head.”
Joe stepped in to demonstrate. “That ain’t nothing but a man in front of you,” he said, eyes fixed on the bag. “Watch him all the time.” He suddenly struck the bag dead center with a left and it ricocheted loudly off the top board.
Now it was Marvis’s turn to stalk the moving bag. “Keep watching,” Joe said after a while. Marvis stayed still and poised to strike. Then Joe yelled, “Stop him!”
Marvis hammered the bag with a vicious left hook that sent it sailing across the gym. “Damn, he took his head off,” muttered one of the kids standing next to me. Joe reconnected the bag, and Marvis whipped it back up to a blur once again. He finished off by slamming the bag two, three, four times side to side.
The whole time Joe and Marvis worked the speed bag, two of the younger boys did their own routine nearby to get their attention. One, about 13 and heavy with baby fat, leaned back comfortably against the wall. He acted as a human punching bag for a skinny, shorter 10-year-old who pounded double-barreled body shots at him nonstop. Every few seconds the smaller kid glanced over to see if Joe or Marvis were watching. The Fraziers never noticed.
Marvis transitioned to skipping rope, and Joe took a few steps back to observe. Suddenly, a slim, weaselly guy in shades, a long overcoat, and floppy hat sidled up to Joe and asked if he remembered him. Joe obviously didn’t recognize the guy but knew just what to do.
“Don’t know you, but maybe heard somebody mention you,” Joe offered with a smile. The intruder relaxed into a long-winded story, and Joe patiently listened. The guy finally wrapped it up with a request for money. “No,” responded Joe, the smile never leaving his lips.
Just as Marvis finished skipping rope, his sister Jacqueline breezed into the gym and through the wooden gate. She stopped to joke with some of the regulars and continuously flashed that Frazier smile. Jacqui stood 5ʹ8ʺ with a trim, athletic build. She wore a navy-blue cap, an iridescent blue shirt, and tight dungarees.
Jacqui was pretty and outgoing and reminded me right away of Joe. She commanded a room just like her dad. And, according to Joe, she had also embraced his always-ready-to-party attitude.
Jacqui, a freshman, was home on a two-week spring break from American University. She had stopped in to see Marvis and get some spending money from Joe. Within 10 minutes, she accomplished both missions, charmed all around her, and headed out the door.
As Jacqui left, Marvis was ready to move on to his sparring session. However, his scheduled partner was already in the ring with another fighter. It turned out that the other fighter had a match coming up a week or two before Marvis.
The unwritten rule of the gym stipulated that the use of the ring, or a sparring partner, went to the boxer with the greater need at the time. Neither Joe nor Marvis objected, despite their disappointment. I was surprised that neither even considered pulling rank.
Before heading back upstairs, Marvis stood with his arms dangling at his sides while Joe toweled him off. After wiping his son’s arms and legs, Joe worked on his face and neck and looked intently at his eyes. The boss then called over Val Colbert, George Benton’s assistant trainer.
I’m not sure exactly what Joe saw, but he obviously felt Marvis had been working too hard in his training sessions. “He’s leaving it in the gym,” fumed Joe. “You burn all the gas in his tanks, this boy will be running on empty. Overtraining is worse than not training at all.”
Up in the outer office, I stood at the picture window looking out over the gym. Most of the younger kids had finished up, the heavyweight sparring match ended, and the dollar spectators began leaving after Joe headed up the stairs. Yet a number of the gym rats still plugged away on their boxing skills with no sign of winding down.
I was waiting for Joe and Marvis to finish their showers in the lair. They also had another meeting with Ken Johnson about the tour. Then I was supposed to get a few more minutes of questions in now that Marvis’s sparring match had been canceled.
Marvis came out of the lair first. The kid looked more like a stylish young business executive than a prizefighter. He wore a natty, black-and-white-checked three-piece suit with a collarless black shirt. It made him seem cool, confident, and certainly more polished than the other fighters his age.
I joined him on the couch, and we just began to chat. I wondered why Joe hadn’t stepped in to spar with him earlier. Did he ever get in the ring with his dad for real and just go at it?
“Well, when I first started out, we sparred together,” said Marvis, choosing his words carefully. “But it was only for publicity, for newspaper photos. We never got into a thing where we both tried to get in there and put the other guy away.”
“How come?”
Marvis laughed out loud. “Because he’s Joe Frazier. You know what I mean. He’d probably knock my head clean off! I was just a baby [in the ring] then.”
That was then, but what about now?
Marvis admitted that he hadn’t seriously sparred with Joe for a couple of years. They apparently stopped because Marvis had become good enough to pose a threat.
“Now, if we got in the ring, he’d probably kill me because he’d consider me real competition,” said Marvis. “Before I was a green kid, but now he knows I can fight. We’d be too conscious of each other’s power to get in the ring together now.”
Marvis also felt a real fight with Joe would be counterproductive. He wouldn’t even be learning anything from the experience.
“Outside the ring, Pop will stand in front of me and show me moves or certain ways he wants me situated or a certain punch,” Marvis said. “He never really showed me anything while throwing leather. We were too busy defending ourselves.”
When Joe came in, I got up to give him my seat on the couch. We started to discuss the session downstairs, and I recalled his concern about Marvis “leaving it in the gym.” Given Joe’s old reputation for superhuman workouts, especially in preparation for his biggest fights, I wondered if overtraining was ever a problem for him too.
“Well, nobody outworked me back then,” he said, hedging his answer.
Joe indicated that any problems with overtraining basically began—and ended—with his old mentor Yank Durham. He was the one who encouraged Joe to do marathon roadwork early on, and to spar more rounds, and do longer gym workouts than anyone else. Joe also credited Yank with recognizing when he was overtraining and making sure it didn’t continue.
For instance, Yank realized prior to the first Ali fight that running in extreme heat sapped Joe’s energy more than anything else. Like Ali, Joe had been training in Florida. Yank saw the problem with the heat and decamped for up north. Joe finished his training for the Fight of the Century in the cold of a Northeast winter.
Joe said Yank made a point of knowing how many miles an opponent put in during roadwork. He made sure Joe did more—sometimes several miles more—in rain, sleet, cold, whatever. Joe admitted he often opted to run even farther than Yank wanted him to do. He saw it as an extension of the work ethic learned from his father.
Yank and Joe were convinced that the extra roadwork helped build the stamina and endurance needed to prevail at the end of a tough round or in the later stages of a long fight. According to Joe, he ran harder than both Jimmy Ellis and Muhammad Ali before his first championship bouts with them. As a result, he remained stronger and fresher when those fights moved past the early rounds.
I wanted to get into other aspects of Joe’s old training routines, but Ken Johnson called us into the inner office. The boss took a seat behind his desk. He was flanked by a brooding portrait and a chalky, plaster bust that both caught his look. We all listened intently as Johnson laid out the upcoming travel arrangements.
The band was currently on their way to North Philadelphia from Providence, Rhode Island, in two vehicles—the mobile home and the equipment truck. After the rendezvous at the gym, the full Smokin’ Joe Frazier Revue was scheduled to be on the road and heading south by midnight. With Joe and Ken Johnson driving the boss’s custom Cadillac “Big Red,” the caravan planned to highball through one-night stands in Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, and Macon, Georgia.
I broke in to ask Joe how they could keep up that schedule. Joe laughed and said their “cruising speed” would be between 90 and 100 miles per hour.
Marvis and I were told to join the tour in six days. We had plane tickets for Augusta, Georgia, on Sunday, March 16. Joe said Marvis could stay for only a couple of days. Then he had to return to the gym in Philadelphia to prepare for the AAU Boxing Tournament—the final obstacle before the Olympic Boxing Trials.
Two days later, on March 12, Joe Frazier and his troupe were already well into their tour. I returned to the gym to ostensibly meet with Marvis about our upcoming journey down south. In truth, I was more interested in just hanging out with the guys in the gym without Joe monitoring my every move. I expected everyone to speak more freely when the boss was on the road.
I arrived at the gym early and stayed downstairs for a while. There were no spectators behind the waist-high gate, and fewer than a dozen boxers cruised through their workouts. The intense buzz from the other day was gone. One guy said things would pick up when Marvis and some of the pros got going later on.
Everything was calmer upstairs as well. The first person to greet me was LeGrant “Lee” Pressley. He was a big, rotund, teddy bear of a man who moved lethargically to the couch in the outer office. Pressley had known Joe since they were kids. Joe’s uncle married Pressley’s aunt, so they were sort of family.
Pressley started working for Joe right before the first Muhammad Ali fight. But he got promoted to “bucket boy” for the Rematch at Madison Square Garden and the Thrilla in Manila. According to Lee, he was the guy in the corner who handled the buckets with the water and the ice, and the one for the spit. And he took the job damn seriously.
“During the rounds of boxing you’ve got to protect the buckets [from sabotage],” he said. “And between rounds you have to have the buckets ready and in the ring. I used to also get Joe up for running every morning [sometimes as early as 3:00 a.m.]. I ran with him, sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
Pressley gave an embarrassed, caught-me laugh. “He was running in the street and I was driving the Cadillac. I’d drive behind him. Joe liked music when he ran—so I’d have the window down and the music blasting. [Sounds ordinary] but I remember traveling with Joe and getting to shake hands with President [Gerald] Ford at the White House.”
“How was it working with Joe in the days leading up to those fights?” I asked.
“Before a fight, Joe gets edgy and mean,” said Lee, comparing him to a warrior gearing up for battle. “Lots of yelling and throwing himself around. And he can be pretty scary when he’s acting mean.”
Pressley noted that Joe saved a whole different level of mean for his sparring partners, especially before the Ali fights. Yet, away from training, Joe was both kind and generous.
“If he goes to the store to buy two suits, he’ll buy you one,” said Lee. “If he travels somewhere first class, so do you. If he hits the fancy nightclubs, so do you—like one big family.”
Pressley said Joe still got really nervous before one of Marvis’s fights. Marvis, on the other hand, got “calm and quiet.”
Pressley then surprised me by boldly taking credit for Marvis becoming a boxer. He claimed it went back to the Thrilla in Manila.
“After one of Joe’s workouts in Manila, I told Marvis [then barely 15] to punch one of the medicine balls as hard as he could,” said Lee, getting on a roll. “He slammed the ball and I said, ‘This kid’s going to be champion someday.’ Marvis lit up. Before this he had no thoughts of being a boxer. He always said he’d never put on a pair of gloves. So, in Manila, at the Ali fight, he decided to be a fighter.”
LeGrant Pressley marveled at how quickly Marvis improved. Only three years later, the then 18-year-old was holding his own with Joe Frazier in the ring. In fact, Pressley reported, the father and son stopped sparring for real because Marvis did too well.
“The last time they sparred was two years ago,” said Lee, repeating what Marvis had told me. “And Joe was not holding back.”
Marvis, on the other hand, had to be encouraged by Joe and others in the gym to open up. He finally listened and delivered one hell of a surprise.
“Joe got hit by a right hand that picked him right up off the floor, just about,” said Lee, bubbling with glee. “Joe said, ‘Damn son, that hurt.’ Hit him right in the eye.”
Joe wound up with a big, swollen black eye. And he bragged about that black eye for a long time, recalled Pressley.
Pressley took off to get some food, and Marvis arrived about 15 minutes later. He sat for a moment before changing. George Benton was busy working with one of his professional fighters and wouldn’t be ready for Marvis for a while.
I mentioned how relaxed everyone seemed with Joe on the road. I told Marvis that even he came across more at ease, his own person today—rather than specifically Joe Frazier’s son. Did people naturally just expect him to be a version of Joe?
“Some do take the time to know me for myself, but I’m learning that strangers label me blindly,” he said, pausing to think about his answer. “As a kid, it used to be a big thing with me. ‘Why would people think of me this way when I’m totally different [than Joe Frazier]?’ I would go out of my way to show people that Marvis Frazier was a good person—not just that he’s Joe Frazier’s son. Also, that I’m not Superman—I’m just like you.”
Marvis noted that people just assumed he would have his father’s commanding personality. They expected he would be an aggressive, take-charge guy.
“People expected me to be a carbon copy of my father—be like him in his forceful ways,” he said. “A long time ago Pop sat me down and told me, ‘Be yourself.’ Now I’m working to be my own man—me—Marvis. I can’t be, and won’t be, Joe Frazier. I can’t and won’t do the things my father did.”
I mentioned the conversation with Youngblood from the other day. I asked whether he might resist turning pro. Was there a chance he would not follow in his father’s footsteps as everyone assumed?
Marvis said, for now, he saw the Olympics as the end of his boxing career. He talked about his desire to go to college. He worried, if he waited too long to go, that something might get in the way.
With that, Marvis went to change for his next boxing workout.
Down in the gym, Marvis spoke briefly with George Benton about goals for the afternoon training session. George went off to resume coaching his professional fighter, and Marvis got to work under the watchful eye of an assistant trainer. Right from the start the session seemed much more mellow than the one with his dad.
Marvis began by practicing a combination designed to set up an opponent for a hook to the head. First, he raised the trainer’s head with an upward right to the chin that started from just above his waist. That opened things up for a tight hook to the head. They repeated the combo just once and moved on.
Marvis moved to the speed bag, whipped it up to a roll, and hit to the rhythm of the trainer’s nonstop chatter. He broke in with a melodic kushkush sound periodically when nailing a combination on cue. The gray-haired trainer never once looked at Marvis to see if the punches were done correctly, but he constantly nodded his approval. He said he knew Marvis had mastered the combos just by “the sweet music” the bag made when hit just right.
The training session got downright joyous after that. Marvis started to skip rope to the strains of “Get Up, Get Down, Get Funky, Get Loose” by Teddy Pendergrass. During the routine he regularly changed cadence, lapsed into a high-stepping skip, and eventually pumped his knees higher and higher while blistering the rope into a blur. Through it all his upper body seemed to sway just a bit to the sensual rhythm of the music, and his smile was infectious.
After shadowboxing for five minutes, Marvis stayed in front of the mirror for a series of calisthenics and complex bending exercises. He carefully studied the reflection of each movement he made while staying in sync to the music. It made me realize that narcissism and just plain feeling good about yourself can be a big part of training.
Before Marvis moved to the ring for his sparring session, we talked about what it felt like when you’re in top form.
“You feel like a racehorse,” he said. “When a racehorse knows it’s ready it just can’t stop moving. He’s prancing and kicking before he gets to the starting gate. That’s the way I feel when my body is up to par. I feel like I could kill King Kong, you know.”
In the ring, fighters also look for different signs that things are clicking. “I know my fight is just right when my jab is almost knocking them off their feet,” said Marvis, throwing a couple of sample lefts. “That’s when I know I’m right and they’re just meat.”
“And when did Joe know he was in a groove?”
“Dad was right when the hook was getting in and hurting them,” he said. “That was his power. He never had to develop a knockout right. When something is taking ’em out, you stick with it.”
A couple of 12-year-olds from the neighborhood came over to get autographs. Marvis stopped to write them both a long, detailed message before signing. Then he chatted with them until it was time for his sparring session.
George Benton had arranged for Marvis to spar with one of his top professionals. Jimmy Young, a crafty veteran at 31, was ranked among the best heavyweights in the world. He had fought Muhammad Ali for the WBA and WBC crown in April 1976. The fight went the distance and ended in a highly disputed decision for Ali.
Less than a year later, Young defeated George Foreman in a 12-round thriller in Puerto Rico. That fight was tightly contested and action packed from beginning to end. Young knocked Foreman down in the final round and took the unanimous decision. The Ring magazine named the match its 1977 Fight of the Year. Foreman quit boxing for a decade after the devastating loss.
The abbreviated sparring session between Marvis and Young seemed brisk and workman-like but clearly lacking passion. Young was coming off a two-round TKO of Don Halpin in New Jersey just four days earlier. He scored well with sharp counterpunching, a trademark for him. Marvis stood straight up against his 6ʹ2ʺ opponent to effectively work his jab. To Marvis’s credit, he avoided going into a protective shell, like other amateurs might have, when Young applied pressure.
After his workout, Marvis talked to me about meeting up for our flight to Augusta in four days. He then took off to the lair, I assumed, to shower and change. I stayed to talk with Jimmy Young and hoped to get an interview in with Benton. Young had nothing but high praise for Joe Frazier’s son.
“I sparred with Marvis before my last two fights, right here [almost] every day,” he said, still cooling down just outside the ring. “He was more competition than I really needed, to tell the truth. Yeah, he’s real good. Matter of fact, I think he’s better than the last two pros I fought.”
One of those fights was a 10-round squeaker against the British champion John Lewis Gardner in London.
“I’m the first American who ever beat him, and only the second fighter to beat him in his whole career,” said Young, referring to Gardner. “Marvis worked with me every day for that fight . . . and was much better than Gardner. He would have taken the British champion. So, he’s a tremendous young prospect. I think he has the potential to move quickly into the top 10 and become the champ someday.”
Just before my interview with George Benton in the outer office, he got paged to the phone and I followed. It was the boss calling from the road. Joe, as if all-seeing, apparently accused Benton of putting Marvis in the ring with guys who were too big or tough for him. Benton got furious and reminded Joe that he was the one who was sick and tired of Marvis sparring with amateur kids from the gym who couldn’t give him a good fight.
“I gotcha on that one!” yelled Benton. “It was your idea to have him fight the better guys.”
I backed away for a couple of minutes to give Benton some privacy. But when I returned to within earshot, he was still yelling into the phone.