After the post–Olympic Trials interview in June, I lost contact with Joe Frazier and his son over the summer. It was late August when I received the phone call inviting me to Marvis’s professional boxing debut. The fight was set to take place at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden on September 12, 1980. Although glad to hear from the Fraziers, I remained conflicted over Marvis’s decision to turn pro.
Still, there were some genuine perks to covering the fight at the Felt Forum. I knew the Garden public relations people well from past reporting gigs there. In addition, Gil Clancy, the MSG matchmaker for the event, had consented to sit next to me at ringside. I envisioned picking his brain on the nuances of the fight from beginning to end.
Before the Friday boxing card kicked off, I roamed the area closest to the ring. I soon spotted Florence Frazier and her family settling into their seats. She greeted me warmly and gave me a look-at-where-we-are expression. I empathized with her but decided to only talk about the impending fight in positive terms. I knew she didn’t handle the violence well. And I had no desire to add to her anxiety.
My visit to the dressing room later on was not as well thought out or diplomatic. As a result, it didn’t last very long.
I once again chose to remind Marvis that he didn’t have to risk injury in the pro ranks. In truth, I don’t think he was paying much attention to me. He was rightly focused on the more pressing task that lay ahead. But his dad, as usual, heard every word.
Joe, in a flat, controlled voice, told me this was not the time to mess with his son’s concentration. He said it could get him hurt. He strongly suggested I leave the room to find my seat in the arena.
As I walked from the dressing room, I was furious with myself. Not Joe. I knew he had done the right thing. What’s more, I’d committed one of the cardinal sins for a reporter. I had gotten thrown out of the venue where my story was unfolding.
All my time with the Fraziers had likely made me too invested in their welfare. I was foolishly trying to interfere with the arc of my assigned story. I had mistakenly stopped being the fly on the wall and opted instead to buzz in the ear of one of my protagonists. I muttered recriminations to myself as I went off to find my front-row seat next to Clancy.
Gil Clancy was one of the most respected trainers and commentators in boxing. He had trained some of the greatest champions of all time—including heavyweights like George Foreman, Muhammad Ali, and Joe Frazier, among others. Late in his career, he came out of retirement in the 1990s to help train Oscar De La Hoya. Under Clancy’s tutelage, De La Hoya rose to truly legendary status. He wound up winning titles in six different weight classes that ranged from super flyweight (115 pounds) to middleweight (160 pounds).
Earlier on, Clancy had been the sole trainer for Emile Griffith, who won both the Welterweight and Middleweight World Championships. Clancy was also in the corner for Griffith’s infamous March 1962 welterweight title bout against Benny “Kid” Paret. Griffith wound up virtually killing Paret in the ring. And, as a kid, I was part of the television audience that had watched the live broadcast.
Griffith had initially taken the title from Paret and then lost it back to him. The rubber match at MSG had included a clash at the weigh-in and two fighters who seemed to truly hate each other. Sometime during the 12th round, Griffith backed Paret into the corner and went to work.
Griffith pinned his opponent and started punching. He connected once, twice, then several more times to Paret’s head, and the Cuban fighter stopped throwing back or defending himself. Griffith wound up delivering a prolonged barrage of unanswered blows to Paret’s head that just went on and on. The referee eventually put an end to the fight, and Paret fell motionless at his feet.
It was later revealed that Paret had blood clots in his brain by the time he hit the canvas. He was essentially brain dead while lying in the ring. He officially passed away 10 days after the fight.
According to an April 2011 New York Times article following Clancy’s death, the trainer had discussed the Griffith-Paret fight with Dave Anderson for his book In the Corner. In that interview, Clancy admitted to giving Griffith prefight instructions that sound awfully ominous in retrospect. However, he never saw the words as anything but necessary for a tough fight like this—and most boxing experts agreed with him.
“Anytime you’re inside with this guy,” Clancy had warned, “you’ve got to punch until he either falls or grabs you or the referee stops you.”
I never looked at boxing the same way after viewing that fight. It ceased to be just another sport, like baseball or football. I became hyperaware of the risk every fighter took, especially the pros. And I never felt any boxer was totally safe, regardless of their lofty reputation or the comparative weakness of their opponent.
I wanted desperately to talk to Clancy about that fight. There were so many questions that stayed with me over the years. But I had just spoiled a key reporting opportunity in the dressing room and didn’t want to screw up another one.
Gil Clancy had always been known for his eye for talent. Early on he saw Marvis as potential boxing royalty and secured his first four professional bouts for MSG. Joe, who had recently been inducted into the MSG Hall of Fame, negotiated a $50,000 signing bonus for these initial fights. In addition, he had gotten his son another $5,000 for this debut match.
It was a far cry from the mere hundreds of dollars Joe had received for his first few fights as a pro. And that had been after winning Olympic gold.
The Felt Forum crowd quickly approached the arena’s capacity of 5,600 for this special preliminary bout. The opening four-rounder, on a night like this, usually played to mostly empty seats. Once the fight fans settled in, a loud roar greeted Marvis’s entourage as it snaked its way toward the ring. Joe Frazier waited, arms crossed, on the ring apron for his son to arrive.
The ex-champ wore the same red silk jacket, with the “Smokin’ Joe Gym” insignia, as the other cornermen. He clearly planned to be in Marvis’s corner for this pro bout and the ones to come. George Benton was in the corner as well. It remained to be seen who Marvis obeyed when the action heated up.
The ring announcer informed the crowd that it was Marvis Frazier’s 20th birthday as soon as he entered the ring. The arena erupted into a boisterous version of “Happy Birthday” with everyone singing and swaying along. The whole thing came across as both spontaneous and joyous—a mass outpouring of affection.
I tried to imagine what Marvis’s rather raw opponent thought of that. But moments later something much more intimidating occurred.
Before the fighter introductions, Joe Frazier was brought up to the center of the ring. He was presented to the crowd as “one of the greatest fighters of the 20th century.” He received a prolonged standing ovation and shook hands with all the members of the opposing corner.
After veteran referee Johnny LoBianco gave the fighters their instructions, Joe pulled Marvis’s opponent aside right there in the ring. He wanted Roger Troupe to know that taking on the Fraziers was serious business.
“My boy is gonna get you,” the former heavyweight champ said, leaning in to warn Troupe. Joe followed the threat with a long, hard stare. Marvis passively watched the exchange.
The fight was televised, and the broadcasters sat nearby. I was sure they would have some useful observations, but Clancy’s comments promised to be more revealing. He began by telling me that the 207-pound, 6ʹ2ʺ Troupe was a lot better than his modest record suggested. The ex–pro football player had particularly long arms, jabbed well, and knew how to push an attack when he saw a weakness.
Clancy rated Troupe as a cut above the typical opponent for a professional boxing debut. He said that was particularly true for a celebrity newcomer like Marvis whom everyone wanted to protect. The veteran trainer warned that Marvis had to be on his game here or pay the price.
Despite Clancy’s respect for the former wide receiver, Joe did not seem to see Troupe as a threat. In fact, about 10 months earlier, the ex-champ had made it clear what he thought of any pro football player who traded shoulder pads for boxing gloves. He had been reacting to the transition at the time of Ed “Too Tall” Jones from the gridiron to the ring.
“It’s not that easy [to box],” Frazier had said, in a piece published by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “A boxer can play football or baseball because every youngster played these sports. But not every young man has boxed. I started boxing when I was 16. It took years to learn—how to deliver and protect yourself. I hardly think a pro football player will ever become a boxing champion.”
George Benton leaned in to give Marvis his last-second instructions. The young fighter started by looking at his trainer but soon turned away to check his dad’s reaction. This struck me as a bad sign. I wondered if George caught the drift in attention as well.
Sure enough, Marvis, frustrated early by Troupe’s long arms and persistent jab, ignored Benton’s game plan. Instead of boxing, and working his way in close, the kid began to lunge with his punches. He got away with it at first, but Clancy commented that even a novice would eventually take advantage of a mistake like that.
Moments later Marvis responded to Benton’s pleas from the corner and mounted a more controlled offensive. He pushed Troupe into the ropes with a series of jabs followed by combinations of tight hooks to the body and face. Clancy flashed a smile and compared the hooks to those thrown by Joe early in his career. All went well until the final minute of the round when Marvis got anxious and started to reach once again.
Troupe caught Frazier midlunge this time with a big overhand right to the face. He pressed the attack and drove Marvis into the corner with an uppercut to the chin that caused his body to sag and jangled his legs. Troupe, hot to end it, followed with two straight rights to the head and barely missed with a lunging right that Marvis ducked. Two more rushed rights grazed Marvis’s head as time in the round ran out.
My stomach had dipped wildly at the end of that round as I braced for the worst. Clancy immediately put into words what my body had silently screamed. He admitted that Marvis would have been knocked out if the round had lasted 10 seconds longer or if Troupe had been more patient. The television announcers soon came to the same conclusion.
“The kid looked defenseless there at the end of round one,” one of the announcers said.
Things got heated in the Frazier corner after the near knockout. I have no idea what was said, but Marvis soon got back to the Benton approach in the second round. He knocked Troupe down early on with a straight right to the head. But Clancy noted that Troupe’s legs were not shaky and Marvis missed doing more damage with several misguided jabs and wild hooks.
Near the end of the round, Marvis rocked his opponent again with a looping overhand right. The punch came at the end of a sequence where Frazier knocked Troupe through the ropes and onto the ring apron. However, it was now Troupe’s turn to be saved by the bell as Marvis missed his chance to finish him off.
Between rounds Benton was the one in the ring talking to Marvis. However, Joe slapped his son’s arm from the apron and yelled his own advice. Marvis was trying hard to listen to George but gave in and turned to hear what his dad had to say as the bell sounded.
Marvis stayed on top of Troupe with hooks to both sides of the body for most of round three. Clancy applauded the kid for scoring consistently inside but worried that he was getting hit too much in the process. He also wanted Marvis to double up on left jabs and hooks and then be ready to land the right when the opening came. Right on cue, the kid began to do just as Clancy suggested.
Marvis’s more active hook wore Troupe down in the last minute of the round. Clancy saw that Troupe was starting to drop his hands. Seconds later, Marvis connected with a tight, overhand right and a left hook to the head. Troupe bent over and slouched toward the ropes. Marvis landed another couple of rights to the head and an uppercut flush on the chin. The final sequence drove a dazed Troupe through the ropes, and the referee stopped the fight.
Marvis raised his hands in victory while jumping jackknife-style into the air. Troupe remained on the canvas, under the lower rope. He looked glassy eyed, and unable to get up, as the celebration kicked off around him. The doctor, brought in to check Troupe out, finally helped the woozy fighter to his feet.
Clancy commented on the power Marvis showed with those finishing shots. He seemed immensely relieved and gave a loud “Whew!”
Joe stood in the ring hugging his son and helping him off with his gloves. Soon they were surrounded by the other cornermen and supporters. Amid the joy, I was more fixed on how close Marvis had come to losing his first pro fight, in the first round, against a complete unknown. Joe obviously thought just about the same thing. He eventually pulled Marvis away to the center of the ring and kept shaking his head.
Without knowing Joe’s exact words, I got the message. He later shared that message with Maury Allen of the New York Post.
“We have a lot to learn,” said Joe, about his son fighting like a pro. “It’s back to the drawing board.”
The television announcer, interviewing Marvis and Joe in the ring, immediately noted Marvis’s early troubles. The kid admitted to being anxious at first and to getting caught with a couple of good shots. Joe looked pained by the recounting of his son’s first-round woes.
The announcer tried to change Joe’s negative mood and draw him into the interview. He made an awkward comparison between Marvis’s comeback win and his dad’s 1971 victory over Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden.
“Joe, you remember those days?” asked the announcer.
Joe didn’t bite. He was still fixated on the dangerous lapses he saw in that first round.
“Yeah, John, I go way back, but I don’t know how I’m feeling from this [fight] because sometimes you have to go back in the gym and make a lot of changes,” said Joe. “Sorry, I got a lot of changes to make on Monday and I won’t—”
The announcer, not liking the direction of Joe’s comments, abruptly swung the mic back to Marvis. Things seemed to go better for a while. Then Marvis pointed out once again how he “got spanked” in that first round.
Joe scowled and placed a hand around his son’s neck as he talked. He was fuming. Suddenly, in the middle of Marvis’s on-air comments, Joe interrupted the interview by throwing a big towel over the kid’s face. The announcer picked up on Joe’s pissed-off vibe and started to shut things down.
“Okay Marvis, we wish you the very best of luck and know you’re going to be a great professional. . . . And a very happy birthday to you. I remember you were this big, Marvis.” The announcer held his hand to his chest and began to back off. “I was with you in those days and I’m happy to be with you now. . . .”
Joe sensed the bum’s rush to finish the interview and his part in souring the mood.
“Yeah, I’m not always easy,” he said.
“Okay Joe,” said the announcer, lowering the mic. “Good to have you. Congratulations.”
Joe and Marvis moved somberly off across the ring. Joe had his head down, and Marvis edged away from him. They were not talking. My first instinct was to go congratulate Marvis and put the emphasis on the great finish. One look at Joe’s expression convinced me to simply wave as they passed by.
Weeks later, I got the news that Joe was now his son’s head trainer. George Benton had been relegated to the role of assistant trainer along with Val Colbert. My first thought was what a terrible decision. Joe had the heart of a champion, but George had the wisdom and patience to develop a champion. I knew Marvis would be the one to pay the price for Joe’s mistake.
Benton soon decided to leave Marvis’s camp. He left the Joe Frazier Gym as well. He never got to complete his mission to turn Marvis Frazier into a truly great, thinking boxer.
The Fraziers were back at the Felt Forum four weeks later for Marvis’s October 10 match against Dennis Rivers. James Shuler, a 21-year-old former top-ranked amateur middleweight, was also on the card. He was another highly touted member of Joe Frazier’s growing stable of fighters. According to a New York Times piece back then, Joe claimed to be handling nine boxers in all.
Joe talked about “putting his music aside” for a while to concentrate full-time on directing the careers of his young boxers. Several, like Shuler, had met Joe at his North Philadelphia gym. Shuler had been just 12 when they first crossed paths. He had been working out there ever since.
Both Marvis and Shuler won in convincing fashion on this night, and Joe’s new career move looked promising. Of course, it helped that Marvis’s opponent, despite standing 6ʹ3ʺ and weighing 215, had the same 1–0 pro record. The big exception here was that Rivers’s inexperience really showed.
Marvis chased Rivers around the ring in the first round and hit him constantly for two and a half minutes after that. The referee luckily stopped the fight at 2:32 of the second before it got really ugly. Both Marvis and Joe were ecstatic after the win and bragged about being back on track.
“I’m getting better as we go down the road,” Marvis told reporters, flashing a grin. “I got him with two right uppercuts at the end. He took some good shots. In fact, I changed position at one point so he wouldn’t know where I was working from.”
Joe, for his part, lauded his son’s dramatic improvement since his first shaky outing. Of course, nobody mentioned that Rivers was a lot less dangerous or aggressive in the ring than Roger Troupe. The outcome was never in doubt.
In the postfight interviews, Joe said Marvis’s immediate career plans called for a couple of monthly four-rounders before stepping up to six-round matches in the new year. Almost a month later, that fight schedule fell apart in frightening fashion.
While sparring with Jimmy Young in the North Philly gym, Marvis took a blow to the chin. He fell to the canvas and remained conscious but completely paralyzed for more than 10 minutes. Medical tests later revealed a congenital weakness in the neck—not the “pinched nerve” suspected after the James Broad knockout in the Olympic Trials. According to Marvis’s autobiography, a neurosurgeon was brought in to reduce the chance of another incident.
On April 10, 1981, six months after his cakewalk over Rivers, Marvis finally made it back for a match against a minimally talented, inexperienced fighter named Melvin Epps. Marvis pursued the punch-shy Epps around the Felt Forum ring for six uneventful rounds. The surgically repaired neck never got tested in the fight. Even so, Joe took the victory as a confirmation that his son could continue to box for a living.
Just one month later, in May 1981, Joe dramatically raised the level of Marvis’s competition. He booked a televised match against the highly regarded, 21–1 Steve Zouski for the main arena at Madison Square Garden. The 27-year-old had started his career with a dozen victories, mostly by knockouts, before suffering his lone loss. The expectation was that he had too much ring experience for the mostly untested Frazier.
Marvis surprised the experts—and most of those in attendance—by dominating the action all through the six-round bout. He eventually prevailed with a TKO in the final round. The fight was stopped after a barrage of Frazier blows went unanswered.
This completed the Fraziers’ initial four-fight contract with Gil Clancy and Madison Square Garden. For better or worse, it convinced Joe he was handling Marvis’s pro career just fine. The kid was undefeated. It was time to plan the next phase and for his son to continue stepping up.
Joe Frazier’s professional career, despite the Olympic gold medal, began with a whole lot less fanfare or support than his son later received. There were no major publicity campaigns for the early matches, and nobody offered to foot the bill for training expenses. And, as noted before, he was paid a lot less prize money as well.
Joe returned from the 1964 Olympics with a damaged left hand, no job, and nobody willing to invest in his pro boxing dreams. The Philadelphia slaughterhouse reneged on giving Joe his old job back. They saw he couldn’t manage the work with his injury. The local black businessmen Yank Durham approached for money turned him down. They mostly thought Joe was too small to be successful in a heavyweight division dominated by big guys like Muhammad Ali.
Florence continued to work for a while, doing her share. Joe and his wife were able to scrape by until his hand mended and Yank got him back in the gym. The trainer decided to get Joe some professional experience first and look for long-term financial backing once the victories began to mount up. The plan called for Joe to build a winning record with some easier fights.
Durham went overboard and wound up with a true bum-of-the-month parade. For his first four bouts, Joe fought the dregs of what professional boxing had to offer. Unfortunately, the prize money matched the competition.
Joe supposedly made a paltry $125, from selling complimentary tickets, for his pro debut on August 16, 1965, at Philadelphia’s Convention Hall. Joe’s opponent, a last-minute stand-in, was Woody Goss. He was a pipefitter by trade. The fight lasted less than two minutes into the first round before it was stopped.
In the second fight, about a month later, Joe went up against a somewhat tougher Mike Bruce. In this bout, Joe showed a weakness in his attack that would haunt him throughout the early part of his career. He exchanged some wicked blows with Bruce in the first round. Then Joe got knocked down in the second. It took a tirade from Durham between rounds to motivate Joe to knock Bruce out in the third.
Morty Holtzer, in one of our conversations, had described Frazier’s early problems as a professional. Believe it or not, Joe was not assertive enough in those days. He also had a terrible problem with starting slow.
“Joe was very quiet and unassuming as a [young] pro,” said Holtzer, smiling at my surprised reaction. “At first, nobody paid much attention to him [even with the Olympic medal]. Nobody really thought he’d be much good [as a professional].”
“You said he also needed to be more assertive in the ring,” I reminded Holtzer.
“Yeah, Joe was the kind of fighter that needed three rounds to warm up—no matter how many minutes [he spent] warming up in the dressing room. He would [often] take a beating the first two or three rounds. But, once he worked up steam, his conditioning and endurance would carry him right over the guy.”
Just eight days after rallying against Bruce, Frazier returned to the Philadelphia Convention Hall to knock out the then 12–4 Ray Staples in 2:06 of the second round. After another slow start, Joe really went to town on his lighter opponent. In fact, Staples never won another fight after that, according to BoxRec.
On November 11, 1965, Frazier won his fourth pro fight against the monumentally inept Abe Davis. This time there was no hesitation in getting the job done. Joe knocked him out in the last minute of the first round. Davis, a professional victim throughout his career, never got much better after that. He finished his boxing days with a dismal record of five wins, 27 losses (13 by KO), and one draw.
Both the Staples and Davis bouts came with the same chump-change pay-outs. Heck, according to Joe, the pushovers were getting more money to risk a beating than he was for meting out the punishment. Yank Durham realized it was once again time to try to find some boxing angels with deep pockets.
Durham put his fighter together with a neighborhood reverend, William Gray, according to a publicity bio Joe provided. Gray helped them reach out in turn to a local businessman, F. Bruce Baldwin. It was Baldwin who finally put together a diversified group of 80 black and white investors. That original group included a department store executive, a former Olympic sculler, and the sportswriter Larry Merchant, among others.
The Cloverlay Inc. official agreement, dated December 16, 1965, called for the investors to purchase shares at $250 each. A few years later, those shares were already valued in excess of $14,000 apiece and rapidly on the rise. The syndicate agreed to give Joe 50 percent of the fight purses off the top. They also provided him with a nominal weekly salary that escalated along with the size of the prize money. Yank got 15 percent, and Cloverlay paid all expenses out of its 35 percent cut.
This deal was similar to the one Cassius Clay made with the Louisville group that bankrolled him when he went pro in 1960. It also closely mirrored Joe’s arrangement with his son in their deal with MSG. In that instance, Joe assumed the roles, and percentages, of both trainer and financial backer.
In 1966, once the new agreement kicked in, Cloverlay managed to get Joe only slightly bigger purses at first. However, the regular salary allowed him to train more worry-free, and life at home got easier too. In time, the payoffs started to reflect the boxer’s continued success. In the first seven months of that year, Frazier recorded seven victories and none of them came close to going the distance.
On September 21, 1966, in his 12th professional bout, Joe finally stepped up to the big time. He fought a 10-round, main event in Madison Square Garden against a ranked contender. His opponent was the hard-hitting, South American champion Oscar “the Argentine Strong-Boy” Bonavena. It was a fight many boxing experts thought Joe would lose.
Bonavena was about Joe’s height but outweighed him by at least 20 pounds of solid muscle. He was also one of the few fighters who could match Joe’s strength and punching power. The free-swinging brawler—known for throwing many not-so-legal blows—was coming off a decision over the respected Canadian champion George Chuvalo. With a record of 21–2, most by knockout, Bonavena had also become adept at keeping other bears, like Joe Frazier, from doing damage inside.
Morty Holtzer had worked Frazier’s corner for that fight. He recalled that Joe was still plagued by slow starts. He had not yet figured out how to effectively penetrate the defenses of a bruiser like Bonavena. Holtzer laughed at the memory of how Joe had tried to rely on his jab from the opening bell.
“Right from the first round he got clobbered,” said Morty, who mimicked Joe’s attempt to throw a flurry of jabs. “He tried to box Bonavena, which you can’t [do]. In fact, Joe couldn’t box anybody. Bonavena, a dirty fighter, was doing everything but kicking him. [Joe] got knocked down in the second round with a right.”
Years later, I viewed a videotape of the fight. It showed Frazier dazed by that punch and slow to recover. He went down again later in the second. It was surprising that Joe survived the round.
Holtzer saw the conversation in the corner before the third round as the key to the fight. In fact, he considered it crucial to Frazier’s whole boxing success going forward.
“Yank [looked] ready to walk out because Joe was not listening,” said Morty, describing the tension in the corner after round two. “We told him to fight inside with short hooks to the body. He [finally] listened and annihilated him. He never had to use the right hand because the left was enough. [We] used to call that a Philadelphia punch years ago.”
It was true that Joe’s heavy, left-hook attack became entrenched as his signature style in this bout. But Morty’s take on the denouement of the fight, and how Frazier “annihilated” Bonavena down the stretch, was a gross exaggeration. It ended in a close, mixed decision for Frazier, not a shattering knockout.
Still, considering the early knockdowns in round two, it was a startling turnaround. In addition, the comeback came against a potent, more experienced opponent. After a year as a pro, Joe Frazier boasted a 12–0 record and was poised to become a title contender.
Marvis Frazier, after his first four pro victories at MSG, traveled to Las Vegas for two competitive bouts. On August 22, 1981, he took a bruising, six-round unanimous decision against Tony Pulu. The fighter from Tonga, sporting a 19–11–1 record, brought a good deal of experience to the match and made the kid work.
Less than a month later, on September 16, Joe snagged a coveted showcase bout for his son. He wangled him a place on the undercard for the megafight between welterweights Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns. It was Marvis’s first scheduled eight-round match, but he rose to the occasion and ended it in four. He had Guy “the Rock” Casale, a New Jersey fighter with a 15–2–3 record, in trouble from the third round on.
Joe had Marvis throwing a lot of combinations in the third, and several connected with his opponent’s face. Casale’s eyes puffed up, and a cut opened on his nose. Later, in the fourth round, Marvis continued to head hunt and wound up breaking the guy’s nose. Finally, just before the bell, a crisp right to the head had Casale wobbly, and he decided not to come out for the fifth.
Joe and his boy were 6–0 in the pros and clearly on a roll. Fight experts and fans were starting to believe, and that first shaky match against Roger Troupe seemed a distant memory. The hope was for one more good fight, one more solid win, to finish out the year.
Unfortunately, Marvis lost the rest of 1981 and all of 1982 to a series of medical problems. It began with a viral ear infection about a month after the Casale fight that wasn’t properly diagnosed or treated at first. This was followed by a lingering case of hepatitis and months of intensive conditioning to get back into fighting shape. The hepatitis had caused a temporary inflammation of the liver and jaundice. But, luckily, there was no long-term damage.
Joe had his son ease back into the ring with a 10-rounder against a weak opponent. Amos Hayes had a losing record when he faced Marvis on February 8, 1983. And it only got worse after suffering a fifth-round TKO.
One month later, Joe purposely raised the level of competition when he pitted his son against the much more capable Mike Cohen. He also turned the Charleston, South Carolina, match into a kind of family reunion for nearby relatives from his ancestral home. The family festivities certainly lasted a lot longer than the fight. Marvis knocked out the 14–3 Cohen in two rounds.
The next fight Joe Frazier booked was the ultimate revenge match. It was meant to settle an old score that had been eating away at him—and his son—for almost three years. The Fraziers were finally getting another shot at James Broad, the man who had paralyzed Marvis with one punch in the 1980 Olympic Trials. They were also getting a chance to put Marvis up against another undefeated rising star.
The 8–0 Marvis Frazier faced the 12–0 Broad in a nationally televised bout on April 10, 1983, in Atlantic City. That gave Broad, a Wildwood, New Jersey, native, an enormous hometown advantage. It seems Broad had won a whop-ping 10 of his previous 12 professional fights right there in Atlantic City. The Jersey native also came into the match about 30 pounds heavier.
The commentators for the fight were my old ringside companion Gil Clancy and the great Sugar Ray Leonard. They described an old-fashioned slugfest with Marvis rocking the 228-pound Broad in round two. Broad found an opening and returned the favor in the seventh. Joe had Marvis in close, breathing on his opponent, all the way.
Marvis came out and dominated the ninth round. He did some real damage and looked to be in charge. Broad, surprisingly, almost turned the whole thing around in the 10th and final round. He mounted a furious attack down the stretch that had Marvis struggling to hold on.
Two of the three scorecards gave Marvis a slight 5–4–1 edge. The other came in at a more comfortable 6–3–1. It was a unanimous decision that drew high praise for the Fraziers from both television commentators and other boxing experts in the days that followed.
Joe quickly seized on the victory as a sign that his still inexperienced son was ready to become a serious heavyweight contender. In addition, the old Larry Holmes “promise” of a championship match was always on his mind. He worried that the time to cash in on it might be growing tight. After all, Holmes was closing in on his 34th birthday.
Holmes was also edging closer to Rocky Marciano’s record of 49 heavyweight fights without a loss. Joe knew that reaching that milestone might prompt the champ to retire as well.
Manager Joe Frazier became more intent than ever on finding just the right opponent for his son. It had to be someone beatable, but impressive enough to justify a title shot way ahead of schedule.