The final bell...

WORRIED eyes turned towards Philadelphia these past few days, knowing the news was bad, hoping without logic that Joe Frazier could beat the odds one more time. Outside the boxing community, however, concern was muted.

Frazier’s liver cancer, diagnosed only a few weeks ago, was so advanced that, once initial rumours were confirmed, the news arrived more regularly, consumed with varying degrees of surprise or disinterest, so disconnected from the wider public imagination had Joe become. Smokin’ Joe was very much a fighter out of his time. It was as if the respect he engendered in the 70s had not altogether survived the journey into an era of disillusion with the boxing industry, a sport seen as in decline through serial neglect.

If the medical bulletins had brought news of a more celebrated contemporary, however, mild hysteria would have infected the response.