Never was a thrown towel soaked in more honour

I SAW Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden but not, alas, in the Fight of the Century. It was just last January and Joe was courtside for Knicks-Spurs in the NBA.

The old legs appeared sound enough when he bounced up to let generous acclaim echo round the rafters of a roof that had once barely contained the anger he brought into the ring.

It was Frazier’s legs — not the signature left, the elusive bob or the busy jab — that captivated the incomparable Norman Mailer.

“Every fighter had a part of the body you remembered. With Joe Frazier, it was the legs. They were not even like tree trunks, more like truncated gorillas pushing forward, working uphill, pushing forward. On the night Foreman took his championship, who could forget the film of Frazier’s urgent legs staggering around the ring, looking for their lost leader?”

With legs that didn’t know how to take a step back, it is hard to imagine a sore toe featuring in a post-fight inquest. Different times.

Of course, in one sense, Mailer’s description was unfortunate, as “gorilla” featured heavily among the suite of insults great foe Muhammed Ali hurled in Frazier’s direction ahead of the three fights that helped define heavyweight boxing’s golden era.

“It’s gonna be a chilla and a thrilla when I get the gorilla in Manila.”

Ali’s portrayal of Frazier as an ‘Uncle Tom’ in servitude to the white man and a fighter only “white people in suits, Alabama sheriffs, and members of the Ku Klux Klan” could root for, cut Frazier to the core.

Selling seats cheaply. Ali protested later it was simply the hype game that has demeaned boxing and boxers through the decades. But it was much more hurtful than that. And ultimately, as mourners file around Frazier’s body today in the Wells Fargo Centre in Philadelphia, the stains are ones Ali is left to clean.

As the many memories of a magnificent career spill forth this week, two moments in Frazier’s life loom largest in my mind, even if it seems unfair that Ali takes centre stage on both occasions.

The first is the cruel denouement of that barbaric battle in the Philippines. The sight of a heart breaking just before a body would. Frazier, baked onto his stool before the final round, shaking his head, not done, pleading into the darkness of one shut and one useless eye. Pleading to be let return to the centre of the ring where Ali might not even have been there to meet him, such was his own exhaustion.

In picture dictionaries, a shot of it will do just fine under Bravery.

Trainer Eddie Futch was a man who knew when history was happening around him. “Sit down son, no one will ever forget what you did here today.” A thrown towel was never soaked in more honour.

“He is the greatest fighter of all times, next to me,” panted Ali moments later, victory collapsed on top of him.

“That was the moment they should have locked arms and walked into the sunset,” said Ali cornerman Ferdie Pacheco, later. “That was the moment they should have said enough.”

And on one afternoon, three years on, it seemed they might have. The happier image I have of Frazier is when peace broke out on Christmas Day, like the famous ball games on the Western Front.

At least it was first screened on Christmas Day 1978, when Eamon Andrews presented Ali with the This Is Your Life red book. Ali took most of the hagiography in his loquacious stride until one visitor jolted even his famous composure.

“Oh my, Joe Frazier! How did you get Joe Frazier here?”

After the arch-enemies embraced, Joe paid generous, amusing tribute and you could detect just a hint of shame in Ali’s eyes as he studied the floor of the London Theatre.

On that afternoon, Frazier got the unanimous verdict. Handsome, gracious, funny, the smaller man only in the literal sense. Here were two former friends who should have become a beautiful double act in retirement. Lessons learnt and sorries said.

But, as Ali’s biographer Thomas Hauser pointed out in the Thrilla in Manila documentary, Frazier talked a lot about forgiveness “around times of economic opportunity.” In later years, it was clear that bitterness lingered instead. Frazier seemed, cruelly, to take pleasure in Ali’s deterioration with Parkinson’s, as if it proved which man had dished out the greater punishment.

But we hear he found peace and greater compassion towards the end and we hope so. A heart as big as his deserved that much.