As the Rev. Jesse Jackson praised, "We've lost a great champion, a man of great dignity and a very decent human being. I remember Joe for his friendship and his gentle way. We never called on Joe to help with any of our causes, including Nelson Mandela, that he wasn't there. I eulogized Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson. Joe deserves to be in that circle of champions."
But in the run-up to Frazier's greatest moment in a prize ring, his March 8, 1971, "Fight of the Century" victory over Muhammad Ali, the first act in boxing's most hallowed trilogy, was marked by Ali's siphoning of a significant chunk of what should have been Frazier's most devoted fan base. Ali, who would go on to lose a unanimous decision to Frazier on boxing's biggest night, had temporarily relocated to Cherry Hill and he made it his mission to loudly goad the man who had given him friendship and lent him money when Ali was suspended from boxing for 3 1/2 years for refusing to be inducted into the U.S. Army for religious reasons.
There was the day that Ali showed up at the Police Athletic League gym where Frazier trained, to challenge him to a street fight that was strictly a bluff, with hundreds of onlookers in tow.
"I came here to rumble," Ali shouted. "If Joe Frazier don't follow me, I want it known he backed down."
Police arrived and advised Ali to move on. He did, to Fairmount Park, a pied piper leading the mostly young crowd, now in the thousands, away from Frazier's workplace. It was symbolic on many fronts, an exodus of a segment of the citizenry that had fully bought into what Frazier, in his 1996 autobiography, "Smokin' Joe" called Ali's "57 brands of b.s."
