Joe Frazier’s search for Marvis’s perfect next opponent surprisingly traced back to a pivotal fight in his own boxing career. It took him back to his bout against British champion Joe Bugner on July 2, 1973. Coincidentally, Marvis told me this was the first time he had been allowed to travel overseas with his dad to one of his matches. The fight had served to revitalize Joe’s career, at perhaps its lowest point, and left a lasting impression on his son.
“I went to the Bugner fight [at 12] and I was there in London, England, with the guys in the training camp,” Marvis had said, in an early chat up in the lair. “All we did was mostly stay in the hotel room because Pop was resting. But I didn’t mind. As long as I could stay with him, that was cool.”
Yank Durham, and the rest of Joe’s management team, had seen the bout as a key test of Joe’s immediate standing in the heavyweight ranks and a bellwether for his boxing future. Frazier had suffered his first professional loss to George Foreman just three months before. He was still smarting from the multiple knockdowns and the loss of the title he had secured in the Fight of the Century against Ali. In addition, many in the boxing establishment had been questioning Joe’s ability to challenge for another championship after such a devastating loss.
Even Joe admitted that the way he lost to Foreman—in just two rounds—had somewhat shaken his confidence.
A quality win against Bugner had been deemed the key to showing the Foreman loss was just a fluke. Bugner, only 23, was a young rising star at the time with an amazing number of victories for his age. He was 43–5–1 going into the match and consistently ranked as a top 10 contender. However, despite several noteworthy wins, he had probably gained his greatest measure of acclaim for a recent loss. He was fresh off going the distance in a tightly contested 12-rounder with Muhammad Ali.
After Ali had taken the unanimous decision in Las Vegas several months before, he made a point of showing his respect for the man he had just battled. Ali said Bugner was definitely capable of becoming the world heavyweight champion. Later on, Ali’s manager Angelo Dundee agreed.
Frazier’s fight against the 6ʹ4ʺ, 221-pound Brit quickly turned into a vicious 12-round brawl. Bugner, who seemed even taller due to his straight-up stance, scored well from the outside early on with combinations and sharp counterpunching. Joe began leaping forward in the middle rounds to get inside and go to work. This led to him pounding away at Bugner’s body and head near the end.
Frazier did his most damage in the 10th round. He had backed Bugner into a neutral corner and then put him down with a typical Smokin’ Joe left hook. Bugner surprised Joe by making it to his feet. Then the Brit showed how dangerous he could be by doing some damage of his own.
Many years later, Bugner looked back at the sequence in an interview with The Ring about the best fighters he had faced in his extremely long career. He had credited Joe Frazier for having the “best chin.”
“He was so tough and I landed everything I had that fight,” Bugner had said, referring to the 1973 match. “He dropped me in round 10 with a huge left hook and I remember looking at Andy Smith [my manager] who gave me the signal to get up. I got to my feet and suddenly Joe left himself wide open, and I caught him with a perfect right hand on the button. His legs went from under him and his knee almost touched the canvas.”
Bugner’s point had been that anyone else he ever fought would have gone down from that blow. But not Joe—not that day. Frazier had survived a sure knockout punch and took the tight decision on points. British referee Harry Gibbs, the sole official for the match, scored it 59¼ for Frazier and 58½ for Bugner. In the British scoring system at the time, the winner of a round gets 5 points and the loser receives 4¾.
Frazier’s victory restored his swagger in the ring. It also placed him once again among the elite in the heavyweight division. After London, he hoped to get Foreman to honor the title rematch clause in their previous contract. He was ready to reclaim his title. But Big George refused to honor the deal.
Yank Durham rose to the occasion as both a trainer and manager. He brushed off the Foreman rejection and parlayed the Bugner decision into an even more important bout for Frazier’s career. He arranged the rematch against Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden instead.
This was just one of the reasons why Joe talked about Durham in such reverent tones. He saw him as the perfect manager—the one who always chose the right match and kept him moving toward the big payday, the title, and greatness. He fancied he could do the same for his son.
Tragically, Yancey Durham suffered a stroke and died a month after Joe’s win over Bugner. It was less than six months before the Ali-Frazier II match. The toll of Yank’s death on Joe’s career going forward was hard to measure. That’s when longtime assistant trainer Eddie Futch took over. He was promoted to oversee Joe’s preparation for Ali and to make all future decisions in his corner.
In 1983, Joe Frazier decided to pit Marvis, age 22, against the now 33-year-old Joe Bugner. They fought on June 4 in a televised main event from Atlantic City. It turned out to be a lot more than just the rarity of a father and son taking on the same opponent a decade apart.
The savvy veteran brought a 57–9 record to the match with the younger Frazier. That record included wins over the likes of Jimmy Ellis and Henry Cooper. It also now boasted two battles that had gone the distance with Muhammad Ali. Bugner’s second Ali fight, on June 30, 1975, had been in Kuala Lumpur for the WBA and WBC belts. He had once again pushed Ali all through the bout and had his chances to win in a close decision.
Bugner didn’t fight for more than a year after his second loss to Ali. But, still in his midtwenties, he came back to fight Brit Richard Dunn for the European Heavyweight Championship and the British and Commonwealth crowns. He knocked out the highly regarded Dunn in the first round.
Despite the easy win, Bugner fought only one more time—early in 1977 against the tough Ron Lyle—before taking another three years off until August 1980. The now 30-year-old fighter had his ups and down over the next couple of years but scored four straight knockouts in the bouts leading up to the clash with Marvis.
The towering Bugner weighed a hefty 238 pounds for the fight. Marvis barely cleared 200. Many boxing people, including Bugner, went on record saying that Marvis belonged in the new cruiserweight division for boxers from 176 to 195 pounds. Joe never considered that an option. He figured a win against a big man like Bugner would end that argument.
“I never liked really big guys,” Joe had said at our first meeting. “I like a small, lanky guy like Ken Norton. Actually, the number one kind of build was the way the Champ [Muhammad Ali] was earlier in his prime. Going up to 220 is not necessary. Look at your really great champions—these guys were never huge. Rocky Marciano was 185. Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, these guys weren’t monsters. Primo Carnera and George [Foreman] were the only good big champions I can think of.”
Joe Frazier was a loud, consistent voice in his son’s ear from the opening bell. He had Marvis in smokin’ mode, in close, pressing his opponent all through the 10-round fight. Bugner jolted Marvis at times with a powerful, accurate jab. He also scored with punishing body shots. But Marvis just kept coming at him.
Marvis used his strength in the clinches to counter Bugner’s weight. He used his speed to beat his opponent to key spots on the canvas, to cut off the ring when necessary. According to William C. Rhoden’s New York Times report on the fight the next day, Marvis also peppered him with “quick over-hand right punches and leaping left hooks patented by his father.”
In a comparison of father and son, Bugner had high praise for Joe as a true “legend.” He offered qualified praise for Marvis. He saw him as potentially “a very good fighter” with a strong hook to the body. Unfortunately, Bugner also said the kid seemed “very vulnerable to the right uppercut, and a left jab as well.”
Nevertheless, Marvis took the unanimous decision in convincing fashion. It gave him a win on CBS-TV against a well-known, time-tested, respected warrior. As a result, it jumped Marvis up a bit in the heavyweight rankings. It also gave him the small measure of legitimacy his manager felt he needed for that early shot at a title.
Joe Bugner continued to win regularly against top competition after the loss to Marvis. He retired a second time in 1987, at age 37, and miraculously came back for one more long stint eight years after that. Eventually, at 48, Bugner finally won a world title in 1998 against James “Bonecrusher” Smith. It was the somewhat lightly regarded World Boxing Federation (WBF) version of the heavyweight crown. But he had the distinction of becoming the oldest man to ever capture a world championship belt at the time.
Marvis followed his big win over Joe Bugner by marrying his high school sweetheart, Daralyn Evon Lucas. He was just shy of his 23rd birthday but considered himself much further along in life than his parents when they took the plunge. In this instance, Marvis knew best. The couple had a strong, loving marriage right from the beginning.
Joe took part in all the family festivities but didn’t miss a beat in his role as fight manager. He was more than ready to cash in on the Bugner win, Marvis’s 10–0 record, and the Larry Holmes promise. In fact, according to Marvis’s autobiography, Joe was already pushing for a World Boxing Council championship fight against Holmes while the newlyweds cruised the Caribbean on their honeymoon.
The Holmes-Frazier title match was snakebitten right from the get-go. As soon as Joe and promoter Murad Muhammad announced the November 25, 1983, bout, the WBC refused to sanction it. Challengers for the championship had to be ranked among the top 10 contenders. Marvis, after defeating Joe Bugner, was generously ranked only 11th.
The WBC also mandated that the next title defense for Holmes had to be against the number one contender. That was currently Greg Page, who most boxing people saw as a highly dangerous opponent. In addition, there was already a tacit agreement in place for a Holmes-Page fight through the maneuverings of promoter Don King.
The upshot of all this was that there were still plenty of hurdles to clear before Marvis Frazier and Larry Holmes could step in the ring. What’s more, even if Marvis managed to get the fight—and miraculously won—he would not be crowned the champion. The WBC ruled the title would be declared vacant instead.
Larry Holmes was initially enticed into the Frazier match by the promise of a staggering $3.1 million payday. He also desired to do everything possible to avoid fighting Greg Page. Holmes didn’t want to risk a loss to Page with Rocky Marciano’s record for consecutive fights without a defeat looming so close. He obviously saw the still raw Marvis Frazier as the easier opponent.
Holmes decided to defy the WBC and reneged on his earlier deal to fight Page. The WBC countered by saying it would approve a “non-title” fight with Frazier if Holmes could come to terms with Page and Don King. In the end, Holmes agreed to a three-pronged approach to the dilemma. He signed on for a title match first against the 10th-ranked Scott Frank before the November date with the Fraziers. The dreaded Page fight was supposed to take place after the one with Marvis.
The champ quickly disposed of the 20–0–1 Frank on September 10 in Atlantic City. The contest lasted just 1:28 into round five of the scheduled 12-rounder. Holmes easily won on a TKO and retained his WBC crown.
In some of the title bouts leading up to the Frazier dispute, and the Frank fight, Holmes had handled several celebrated, more ominous foes. For instance, he knocked out Leon Spinks, the former undisputed world champion, on June 12, 1981, in the third round. He took out the undefeated Great White Hope, Gerry Cooney, in round 13 a year later. And he prevailed over “Terrible” Tim Witherspoon via a hard-fought split decision on May 20, 1983.
In the days before the champ’s match with Marvis, a lot of the talk centered on Holmes’s huge size advantage. Holmes was 6ʹ3ʺ, with a long 81-inch reach, and a much thicker, more massive 220-pound body. But the real lopsided “tale of the tape” for this fight centered around the experience of the combatants.
Holmes came into the match with a 44–0 professional record that included 31 knockouts. He had won an incredible 16 straight heavyweight title defenses against the best boxers in the world. He had fought a total of 320 pro rounds against opponents with a combined 1,042 fights to their names.
Marvis’s professional experience was puny by comparison. He had just 10 pro victories, six by knockouts, against mostly novice competition. He had boxed a mere 54 rounds in the pro ranks. All his opponents combined had amassed just 211 fights—and at least a quarter of those came courtesy of Joe Bugner.
The mismatch appeared startling even before a single punch was thrown. Larry Holmes hulked over the comparatively slender Marvis Frazier during the prefight instructions at the Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion in Las Vegas. It looked like some beefy NFL lineman preparing to run over a high school kid. In that moment, as I watched on a prime-time television feed over NBC, I became genuinely afraid for Marvis.
Years later, I watched a YouTube video of the match. It included live commentary from a rather reserved British announcer. All it did was confirm how right my initial fears turned out to be.
Round one began with the champ from Easton, Pennsylvania, flicking away with a long, efficient jab. He seemed to be biding his time, just probing for an opening. He also used his superior bulk and strength to push his opponent into the ropes when needed.
Marvis, inexplicably, started out by standing upright, smack in front of Holmes. He did a nimble job of slipping the constant barrage of jabs for a while. But he was unable to get close enough to the champ to throw any effective punches of his own as the round moved on.
I assumed Joe was calling the shots in the corner. He must have seen this as a good strategy. I just didn’t know why. The British announcer didn’t see the wisdom in the Frazier fight plan either.
Around the two-minute mark, things were sailing along in acceptable fashion. Marvis wasn’t doing any damage, but he kept dodging most of the incoming shots. Then the kid got cocky enough to suddenly drop his hands and taunt the champion. That was when it all fell apart.
Holmes faked a jab and got the expected flinch. He patiently waited a beat, measuring the next punch. A moment later, a powerful overhand right connected to the side of Marvis’s head.
Marvis reeled backward and fell in a heap to the canvas. After taking the eight-count, he rose up tentatively on one knee. He then stood on shaky legs.
Holmes, rightly known as “the Easton Assassin,” immediately pounced with a speed that belied his size. He backed Marvis into his corner, inches from where Joe hugged the apron. Seven straight rights connected with Marvis’s head and jaw as his dad looked on.
Holmes purposely hesitated between blows to give the referee time to step in. Marvis’s mouthpiece flew out of the ring after one mighty shot, and Holmes took an even longer pause in his attack. He began waving his right arm, visibly urging referee Mills Lane to stop the fight.
The veteran referee didn’t oblige. Holmes continued to whale away on the defenseless challenger. He kept doing his job.
After 15 unanswered blows, Lane momentarily checked Marvis’s eyes. He apparently found them okay. He allowed Holmes to deliver four more accurate punches before stopping the fight. It officially ended in 2:57 of round one.
After the referee waved Holmes away, Joe climbed into the ring. He grabbed his son.
“It’s all right,” Joe said, hugging Marvis. “It’s all right.”
Joe spoke to reporters a bit later about that moment. They wanted to know what else he had to say to his son.
“I told him I still love him and don’t worry,” said Joe.
Holmes went over and gave both Marvis and Joe a heartfelt hug. Joe later reported to the press what Larry told him in that emotional moment.
“He said he didn’t want to fight no more,” said Joe, according to a New York Times story the next day. “That he didn’t like doing this.”
Holmes also told journalists directly about his reluctance to beat up on the son of a friend. He sounded truly upset.
“I didn’t want to hurt him,” said Larry, in his comments to a reporter for UPI. “He was hurt bad and I didn’t want to hurt him anymore. I called the ref in to stop it four or five times before he stepped in. Marvis was taking an awful lot of punishment.”
Holmes told UPI that he knew exactly how things would unfold. Nothing in that one-sided round surprised him.
“I said before the fight that Marvis was biting off more than he could chew,” said Larry, referring to the challenger’s lack of experience. “Fighters like that are made for me. He stood right there in front of me. Those guys are so easy to hit. I couldn’t miss him.”
If Holmes came off as heartsick over the lopsided contest, remarks to the New York Times showed that his trainer was absolutely furious about it. Eddie Futch had been the head trainer in Joe Frazier’s corner for the last two fights with Muhammad Ali. He was now in Holmes’s corner, but obviously still cared deeply for Marvis and the Frazier family.
“What a ridiculous mismatch,” said Futch, criticizing Joe’s mistake in rushing to book a title shot that endangered his son. “How could Joe let a kid in with a fighter who has this much experience? I thought Marvis needs at least a year more experience, five or six good fights.”
“I never make mistakes,” replied Joe, when he heard his old trainer’s comments. “I know what I’m doing.”
As a fighter, that kind of bravado plausibly helped in surviving a tough stretch in the ring. In a manager, it might have contributed to getting an overmatched fighter killed. Any boxer would rightly be scared if he heard that come out of the mouth of someone who controlled his fate.
Thirty minutes after the fight, Marvis was bruised but luckily appeared to be okay. Referee Mills Lane defended his decision to let the fight continue. He insisted Marvis had “clear eyes” when he had checked them. Lane reminded reporters that Marvis Frazier’s corner could have stopped the fight earlier.
Joe’s answer to Lane came straight from his warrior heart. But, once again, it wasn’t something any boxer ever wanted to hear from his corner.
“I’m not the guy who believes in throwing in the towel,” said Joe, who never made a move to stop the beating.
Joe’s refusal to act seemed even more callous given his history with Eddie Futch. Remember, Futch was the trainer who threw in the towel before the 15th round of the Thrilla in Manila. Joe had been sitting on his stool between rounds badly beaten, both eyes swollen shut. In arguably the biggest boxing match of all time, Futch had put his fighter’s health over his own visions of glory. Joe didn’t appear to be able to do the same, even for his own son.
In the aftermath of the Frazier bout, Larry Holmes once again refused to honor his commitment to fight the number one contender Greg Page. The WBC stripped Holmes of his title. However, the newly formed International Boxing Federation (IBF) immediately recognized him as the heavyweight champion.
Marvis Frazier had lingering problems of his own following the public dismantling by Larry Holmes. After a humiliating half-hour press conference, he sank into a heavy depression. In his autobiography, Marvis described how he abruptly escaped to California for a while with his wife and cousin. He confessed to not going back into training for nearly eight months.
Joe Frazier’s new strategy now called for his son to go up against one contender after another until Holmes consented to a second fight. He wanted a real title match against Holmes this time around. His plan ignored the fact that there were much less lethal fighters holding versions of the heavyweight crown at the time. He had simply reverted back to his old fighting instincts to get revenge and beat the best. And, of course, Marvis was the one destined to pay the price for his manager’s stubbornness.
In order to beat these contenders, Joe borrowed a page from the George Benton training manual. He had Marvis sparring with some of the toughest professionals around. Ironically, some of the worst injuries Marvis endured in his boxing career came at his dad’s gym while training.
During his sparring sessions, Marvis suffered a torn retina in his left eye and a detached retina in the right. The latter injury required surgery. It took months to recover and left Marvis with diminished eyesight for the rest of his life.
Michael Spinks was one of the topflight sparring partners Joe brought in to toughen Marvis up. Spinks later beat Larry Holmes twice in a row, in 1985 and again in 1986, to take the heavyweight title. He prevented Holmes from breaking Marciano’s all-time undefeated streak. Larry fell one victory short of the record with 48 straight wins.
In one of their sparring matches, Spinks reportedly caught Marvis with a short, powerful punch to the chest. The blow fractured Marvis’s sternum. In another training session, the highly ranked heavyweight Pinklon Thomas got Marvis to step back awkwardly. It resulted in a partial rupture of his Achilles tendon. It took several months to heal by Marvis’s recollections.
Despite all the setbacks, Joe’s plans for success looked pretty good for a while once Marvis recovered. Joe eased his son back into action with a good, old-fashioned cakewalk of a fight. On September 25, 1984, Marvis overwhelmed a 6ʹ5ʺ stiff named David Starkey in New Jersey. The mismatch lasted 2:50 into the first round. Given Starkey’s lame 3–7 record, I had to wonder what took so long.
The next five matches after that were all against top contenders, serious prospects, or future champions. Marvis didn’t knock any of these guys out, but he managed to win every decision. That turned out to be more difficult and impressive than it sounds.
The first of these victories came about a month later in a non-title fight against the United States Boxing Association (USBA) cruiserweight champion Bernard Benton. Marvis wasn’t able to get down below the weight limit to qualify for a shot at the belt. Still, he controlled the action against a man who would later capture the WBC cruiserweight crown.
Marvis actually swept one official’s scorecard 10–0 in the Benton fight. He also received matching scores of 7–2–1 on the other two cards. Years later, looking back, he suggested the true outcome of the bout had been closer to that 10-round shutout than the more moderate scores.
“He was good,” Marvis told an interviewer from doghouseboxing.com in 2009, “but I won almost every round.”
I always considered that sweep—even if on only one official’s card—an amazing feat. It seemed a heck of a lot more difficult, and dominant, to win every round of a main event than to score a first-round knockout. Marvis’s loss to James Broad in the Olympic Trials showed that any competitive boxer could luck into a surprise opening and end it with a fortuitous punch. However, there is not enough luck in the world to get through 10 straight winning rounds of boxing without earning it.
Two months later, Marvis finished off 1984 with a December bout against the undefeated Nigerian heavyweight Funso Banjo in London, England. His opponent’s name might have sparked some jokes, but the fight was tough and pretty tight for most of the 10 rounds. The Fraziers edged out Banjo in the British single-official scoring system by a tally of 98–97. Coincidentally, the referee for the fight was the same Harry Gibbs who had given Marvis’s father the close decision over Joe Bugner in 1973.
Joe Frazier next booked a May 1985 match against the perennial contender James “Quick” Tillis. Most people associated the massive Tillis’s nickname with his surprising hand speed rather than his ability to motor around the ring. The Oklahoma-born boxer also got the handle “Cowboy” due to his propensity for wearing an outlandish 10-gallon hat and western costumes. But the natural southpaw had some other eccentric habits that made him seriously dangerous to fight.
Tillis often switched midfight to an “orthodox” stance deemed more appropriate for a righty. He suddenly would go from leading with his right hand, as expected, to pumping powerful jabs or hooks with his left. Quite a few of his opponents were caught off guard and paid the price. This might have explained some of the 27 knockouts in 31 victories Tillis brought to his fight with Marvis.
The five losses on Tillis’s record going into that fight told an interesting story of their own. On a high note, more than half of those rare defeats were in championship bouts. However, the way he wound up losing his fights formed a pattern that drove his handlers crazy.
In March 1981, Tillis lost a WBA World Heavyweight Championship match to Mike Weaver. About a year and a half later, he dropped the IBF and USBA titles to the same Greg Page that scared the heck out of Larry Holmes. Tillis also lost a North American Boxing Federation (NABF) heavyweight title fight to Terrible Tim Witherspoon in 1983.
Tillis started strong against Weaver and had him in trouble in the beginning. Unfortunately, he pooped out in the later rounds and wound up falling short in a closely scored unanimous decision. Angelo Dundee, his frustrated manager at the time, begged Tillis to step it up as things slipped away. Dundee ultimately dropped him from his stable of fighters.
In the Page bout, Tillis struck first with a knockdown early on and looked to be in charge. But he soon began to tire and got knocked out in the eighth. A similar scenario unfolded in Quick’s fight with Carl “the Truth” Williams—an elimination bout for a shot at a major title. He put Williams down twice in the first round and then ran out of gas later. He lost that decision as well.
Tillis stuck closely to his now familiar script in the fight with Marvis Frazier. The smarter cornerman would have seen it coming and told Marvis to stay away in the opening rounds, make Tillis chase, sap the early energy. Instead, Joe had his fighter in close and exchanging blows.
It almost cost his son the fight. Cowboy predictably caught Marvis with a good shot in the second round that led to a standing eight-count. Given his vaunted knockout power, it could have been a lot worse. As the fight wore on, Tillis faded, as he had in the past, and practically handed the Fraziers the unanimous decision in the final rounds. Marvis won, but Joe made it harder—and riskier—than it should have been.
The 6ʹ5ʺ contender Jose Ribalta boasted an 18–2–1 record, with 12 knockouts, when he faced Marvis Frazier in Atlantic City that September. At just 22 years old, the Cuban boxer was three years younger than Marvis and at least as far along in his quest for a heavyweight title shot. In fact, Ribalta believed he would have been fighting for a crown if he had not been robbed in a recent bout against James Smith.
The Ribalta-Smith fight had ended in a tight split decision. Ribalta thought he had won by a wide margin. The outcome had crushed him at the time, and he never quite got over it.
“The only fight I really shed tears was when I fought James ‘Bonecrusher’ Smith,” said Ribalta in a 2014 interview on On the Ropes Boxing Radio. “Because this was my beginning, my first experience of being in a fight and clearly winning the fight and not getting the decision. I really started crying after that fight.”
Ribalta’s match with Marvis may have prompted more than a few sobs as well. The 10-rounder went down to the wire and ended in a majority decision—two officials going for one fighter and the other calling it a tie. Marvis had the edge on two cards with scores of 6–4 and 5–4–1. The third card had it five rounds apiece.
It was hard to fault Joe’s fight plan in this match. Any kind of win against a towering, talented opponent like Ribalta meant doing something right. The Fraziers did seem to earn this victory, and Ribalta didn’t complain as vociferously. In Marvis’s eyes, the decision should not have been so close, and he said just that in an interview many years later.
In the small, incestuous world of heavyweight contenders, it should have surprised no one that Joe Frazier next scheduled the same James Smith who had just driven Ribalta to tears. Marvis had originally met and beaten Smith in the Golden Gloves when they were both top-ranked amateurs. Now they were experienced pros and Joe saw a win over Bonecrusher as a surefire ticket to a higher ranking for his son and an eventual shot at a heavyweight belt.
The college-educated Smith, a latecomer to boxing in general, didn’t turn professional until November 1981. Yet, he had already fought in two tightly contested heavyweight championship bouts by the time he faced off with Marvis on February 23, 1986. His first big fight had been against Larry Holmes in 1984 for the IBF crown. The other one had just taken place in Nevada with Tim Witherspoon for the NABF title. Both fights wound up as losses for Smith, but they announced in graphic style that he had arrived.
Smith’s scheduled 15-round bout with Holmes took place about a year after Marvis Frazier’s one-round debacle against the champ. Unlike Frazier, the 6ʹ4ʺ Smith had the size, reach (82 inches), and punching power to keep Holmes at a distance while still doing considerable damage himself. Bone-crusher got to Holmes a number of times in the fight and looked to have him in trouble more than once. Later in the grueling match, Smith began to run down, and Larry won on cuts in round 12.
Smith told a UPI reporter that he saw the 10-round main event against Marvis Frazier as a “crossroads fight” in his boxing career. At 32 years old, he had a respectable 15–4 record against some top competition, but he had blown both of his shots at a championship. He wasn’t sure how many more chances he would get if he didn’t take that one and go on a winning streak. Although Marvis was only 25, his manager also seemed to see this as a make-it-or-break-it opportunity.
Marvis came out at the start of round one dancing and moving. He stuck the jab and had Smith off balance for a while. This was a departure from Joe’s insistence that Marvis fight inside like he used to do. Maybe all of George Benton’s talk of Marvis not having to fight like a bear had registered after all.
It didn’t take long for Joe to prove me wrong. By midway through the round, he had his son down in a Smokin’ Joe crouch trying to bore his way in under Smith’s long reach. Once inside, Marvis leaned on the older fighter and stayed active. For his part, Smith looked to use his 234 pounds to trap Marvis on the ropes and work the body. It didn’t look flashy, but the heavy blows took a toll.
Marvis got in trouble again in the third round before settling down in the fourth. In an effort to fight in close, he once again allowed himself to get pinned on the ropes early in round five. Smith unloaded a series of heavy blows to the body and forced him to cover up.
Joe yelled for his son to get out of there. Marvis finally worked his way free and seemed on the defensive most of the round. Smith acted like he smelled a knockout and kept punching throughout the fifth.
Near the end of round five, Marvis was backing up from an exchange, trying to find some breathing room. Smith landed a sweeping overhand right that put him down. Marvis quickly got to his feet but still seemed shaky at the bell.
Marvis admitted after the fight to being “stunned” by the punch. But he emphasized how quickly he managed to regroup. In truth, Marvis’s better performance in the later rounds seemed to be more a product of Smith having punched himself out in that go-for-broke fifth. Bonecrusher was still cornering Marvis on the ropes from time to time but didn’t have the energy to make him pay.
In the 10th and final round, Joe obviously thought that his fighter had done enough to be safely ahead on the officials’ scorecards. He had Marvis change tactics and go on the run. Smith still wanted to mix it up, but he was too tired to close the gap. The crowd booed the lack of activity.
I had Marvis with just a slight lead at that juncture. It seemed like a terrible gamble to just throw away a round at the finish of a tight fight. That would have been an impossible loss for a manager to explain.
“Pa felt we were comfortably ahead,” Marvis told reporters about Joe’s avoidance strategy. “He told me just keep moving.”
Two of the three final scorecards proved how wrong Joe’s assessment of the fight had been. They had Marvis ahead by just a single point in the 10-point must scoring system. One read 97–96 and the other 96–95. The third inexplicably had Marvis winning it by a score of 97–92. I wondered if Joe had filled out that card himself.
This time James Smith was the one who claimed to have been robbed. I didn’t agree, but it was open to debate. By the way, Smith met Tim Witherspoon a second time 10 months and four fights later for the WBA Heavyweight Championship. Smith came out pumped and immediately sent the champ to the canvas three times in rapid succession. He won the fight and the title in 2:12 of the first round.
I guess losing the crossroads fight had not ended Smith’s chances for a crown. Now the question was, what would winning it do for the Fraziers?
James Smith had been ranked eighth by the WBA when he lost to Marvis Frazier. The outcome of that fight, combined with Marvis’s other impressive victories of late, suddenly catapulted the Fraziers into the middle of the heavyweight title discussion. Marvis’s record had soared to 16–1, and the WBC made him the ninth-ranked contender. The IBF jumped him all the way to number four among its top heavyweights.
Larry Holmes was temporarily out of the championship picture. All manager Joe Frazier needed to do was slow down, scan his options, and carefully choose the right match to keep his son moving toward a title bout. The optimum opponent had to be slightly higher ranked and plausibly beatable. He also had to be the kind of boxer that would allow Marvis to get into a rhythm and likely go the distance. After all, Marvis had only notched seven knockouts since turning pro, and none of them had been against contenders.
Joe’s impatience, and desire for a shortcut to the title, unfortunately got the better of him. He opted for the match that would lead directly to a championship fight. Joe signed to have his son fight the number two ranked WBC contender—the fast-rising assassin that everyone else was avoiding. He simply underestimated the danger of putting Marvis in the ring with a young, hungry Mike Tyson.
And, to just give Tyson every advantage possible, Joe agreed to hold the match at the Civic Center in Glens Falls, New York. Mike grew up in the nearby town of Catskill.
Iron Mike, also known as the Baddest Man on the Planet, came into the July 26, 1986, bout with Marvis undefeated. He was 24–0 against fairly elite competition, and an astounding 22 of those fights ended in knockouts. However, even more ominous for the Fraziers, the majority of those wins were first-round knockouts fueled by a fury rarely seen in a boxing ring. He made it clear he would obliterate all who stood in his way.
Tyson had just turned 20 about a month before the fight. He had expressed a much-publicized desire to become the youngest heavyweight champion of all time. That meant he had to beat out Floyd Patterson, who had won the title at 21 years and 11 months. Like everything else Tyson did in the ring, he did it more quickly and violently than people expected. Kid Dynamite, another nickname, reached his goal later in 1986, with more than a year and a half to spare.
Mike Tyson connected with a vicious right uppercut moments after the opening bell. It left Marvis stunned and wobbly. Tyson followed up by driving him into a neutral corner with a jarring combination and finished the job with another uppercut to the chin. Just 30 seconds into the fight, Marvis was lying unconscious on the canvas. The referee didn’t even bother to complete the count as the ABC Wide World of Sports camera zoomed in for the closeup of the inert body.
“I could have counted to 20 and he wouldn’t have gotten up,” said referee Joe Cortez, according to BoxRec.com. “Marvis was really out of it. I was more concerned about the safety of the fighter.”
In the postfight news conference Tyson verbalized what most boxing people had known for a while. “I’m the best fighter in the world,” he declared.
Marvis, for his part, agreed and readily paid homage to the victor’s obvious punching power. “Mike, you must have had a sledgehammer,” he said, forcing a grin.
Joe, on the other hand, still refused to admit he took Tyson too lightly. Just as with the Larry Holmes match, he never owned up to making a mistake. His postfight comments to Iron Mike sounded more like a challenge coming from a future opponent than the words of a losing manager.
“I’d like to see what he’s got myself,” said Joe, referring to Tyson’s punching power in a New York Times report the next day. “What is the guy, an animal? I want to make a date and go down and work with him. I want to check him out myself. I don’t believe he can hurt me.”
Even before the fight, boxing experts had criticized Joe for booking the Mike Tyson match. They questioned his management skills. Some also questioned whether he saw his fighter in the ring or old Smokin’ Joe himself.
Lou Duva, the celebrated manager and trainer, gave the New York Times this damning assessment of Frazier about a week before the fight.
“He’s a stubborn, opinionated guy,” said Duva. “But the question is does he book fighters’ matches from here” [a finger pointed to his heart], “or here” [he touched his head]. “Who’s fighting the fight: Joe Frazier or his fighter? He’d like them to be as good as Joe Frazier could be. But there’s only one Joe Frazier.”
In that same article, George Benton chimed in with exactly what went wrong in Marvis Frazier’s professional career. It sounded very much like a trainer-poet’s ode to what could have been.
“I had him a boxer—a fighter who didn’t get hit with a lot of punches,” said Benton, recalling the days before Joe pushed him out. “Then, somewhere down the line he became more of a brawler-type fighter.”
Unlike Joe, Benton never felt Marvis had to mix it up or eat a lot of leather to be victorious.
Despite the lack of an official announcement, or a recognized meeting of the minds in the Frazier camp, the Tyson hammering had effectively ended Marvis’s boxing career. Oh, he went on to fight three more times and won them all. But, by his own account, his heart was no longer in the game.
The ambush by Tyson had sapped much of Marvis’s fighting spirit. It had also robbed him of the expectation of bringing another heavyweight crown to the Frazier family. Like the Larry Holmes one-rounder, it was a fight his manager never should have booked.
It took 11 months for Marvis to return to the ring—fighting now more out of obligation than dedication. He fought the capable veteran Tom Fischer at the Hilton in Secaucus, New Jersey. Fischer had a 35–10 record going into the 10-round bout, and he had recently gone the distance in a main event with Leon Spinks. Fischer weighed 217 pounds for the bout, but Marvis nearly matched him at a career-high 214. Ironically, this was around the weight George Benton had originally seen as optimum for Marvis once he grew to maturity.
Marvis used his newfound heft to work effectively in close right from the start. He soon put Fischer down twice from a steady barrage of body shots. Referee Vincent Rainone stopped the contest and awarded Marvis the TKO in 2:47 of round two. The fast, one-sided win reminded boxing people how good Marvis could be. It also demoralized Fischer enough to put him into retirement.
Joe rewarded his son by stepping up the pace of his latest comeback. Two months later, in August 1987, Marvis returned to the Hilton in Secaucus to fight a lightly regarded 6–12–3 Robert Evans. It was not a great sign that Evans went the whole 10 rounds before losing in a lopsided unanimous decision. The match did little for rekindling Marvis’s waning enthusiasm. He waited 14 months before willing himself to return for his final professional bout.
“I knew it was my last fight before I took it,” confessed Marvis, in a 2016 article for Boxing Insider.
It was appropriate that the highly respected 31–2–2 Philipp Brown became the last man Frazier faced in the ring. Brown had won eight straight fights coming into the match and gave Marvis a chance to go out with his head held high. He had also been the opponent in Marvis’s amateur coming-out party when he reached national prominence. On March 31, 1979, the undefeated Marvis Frazier had decisioned Brown in his 30th match to claim the National Golden Gloves Championship.
Marvis’s quote in the Washington Post after that Golden Gloves triumph had an eerie, woebegone ring to it in retrospect.
“I’m not enthused about being a pro,” he had said with certainty. “I’m taking a year off for the Olympics, if it is God’s will to give me the strength.”
Marvis once again went the distance with Philipp Brown on October 12, 1988. He again won the fight in a unanimous decision and had reason to celebrate. The strain of training, and the pain of fighting against fierce pro heavyweights, was finally over. The depression that haunted him in his final years of boxing began to fade. He was free.
I was home in New York, looking after my seven-year-old daughter and her baby sister, when I heard the news. I felt a strange sense of loss for what Marvis could have done, for what Joe wanted for him, for all the years of sacrifice. I also realized how much I had wanted the Fraziers to get their one more championship.
Marvis finished his professional journey with a 19–2 record. When added to his 56–2 amateur mark, it left him with a sensational 75 wins and only four losses for his total boxing career. His only losses in the pros, stunning as they were, came at the hands of two of the greatest heavyweight champions ever. Sadly, these losses have come to define Marvis as a fighter and seem to be all people remember.
Joe Frazier’s role in his son’s boxing career remained complex from start to finish. Smokin’ Joe the brawler gave Marvis the pedigree, work ethic, and inspiration needed to win. Unfortunately, in the end, Joe the manager and trainer deprived Marvis of the patience and fighting style best suited for him to capture a heavyweight crown in the complex world of professional boxing.
I’m convinced that George Benton would have turned Marvis Frazier into the “thinking fighter” he had always envisioned. He would have kept him more on the outside, picking his spots and avoiding unnecessary risk. As a result, he would have kept him healthier and more active—and he would have extended his years in the ring. He would have certainly made better match-making and boxing decisions than Joe.
In the long run, Benton would have had an excellent chance of getting Marvis his championship ring. He might have gotten him his piece of boxing greatness as well.