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Most likely, I’ll write about Joe Frazier for the rest of my life. Remembering Joe Frazier I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Joe Frazier, who died one year ago, on November 7, 2011. I met Joe at the Sahara Hotel in LasVegas on December 1, 1988. I’d just signed a contract to become Muhammad Ali’s official biographer.Two days of taping were underway for a documentary entitled Champions Forever that featured Ali, Frazier, George Foreman, Ken Norton, and Larry Holmes. I was there to conduct interviews for my book. On the first morning, I sat at length with Foreman; the pre-leanmean -grilling-machine model. George was twenty months into a comeback that was widely regarded as a joke. Six more years would pass before he knocked out Michael Moorer to regain the heavyweight throne. “There was a time in my life when I was sort of unfriendly,” George told me.“Zaire was part of that period. I was going to knock Ali’s block off, and the thought of doing it didn’t bother me at all.After the fight, for a while I was bitter. I had all sorts of excuses.The ring ropes were loose. The referee counted too fast.The cut hurt my training. I was drugged. I should have just said the best man won, but I’d never lost before so I didn’t know how to lose. I fought that fight over in my head a thousand times.Then, finally, I realized I’d lost to a great champion; probably the greatest of all time. Now I’m just proud to be part of the Ali legend. If people mention my name with his from time to time, that’s enough for me.That, and I hope Muhammad likes me, because I like him. I like him a lot.” Then I moved on to Ken Norton, who shared a poignant memory. “When it counted most,” Norton reminisced,“Ali was there for me. In 1986, I was in a bad car accident. I was unconscious for I don’t know how long. My right side was paralyzed; my skull was fractured; I had a broken leg, a broken jaw.The doctors said I might never walk again. For a while, they thought I might not ever even be able to talk. I don’t remember much about my first few months in the hospital. But one thing 216 THOMAS HAUSER I do remember is, after I was hurt,Ali was one of the first people to visit me.At that point, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to live or die.That’s how bad I was hurt. Like I said, there’s a lot I don’t remember. But I remember looking up, and there was this crazy man standing by my bed. It was Ali, and he was doing magic tricks for me. He made a handkerchief disappear; he levitated. I said to myself, if he does one more awful trick, I’m gonna get well just so I can kill him. But Ali was there, and his being there helped me. So I don’t want to be remembered as the man who broke Muhammad Ali’s jaw. I just want to be remembered as a man who fought three close competitive fights with Ali and became his friend when the fighting was over.” Larry Holmes held out for cash, so our conversation was short:“I’m proud I learned my craft from Ali,” Larry said.“I’m prouder of sparring with him when he was young than I am of beating him when he was old.” End of conversation. That left Joe. Frazier wouldn’t talk with me because I was “Ali’s man.” But at an evening party after the second day of taping, Joe approached me. He’d been drinking.And the bile spewed out: “I hated Ali. God might not like me talking that way, but it’s in my heart. First two fights, he tried to make me a white man.Then he tried to make me a nigger. How would you like it if your kids came home from school crying because everyone was calling their daddy a gorilla? God made us all the way we are. He made us the way we talk and look.And the way I feel, I’d like to fight Ali-Clay-whatever-his-name-is again tomorrow.Twenty years, I’ve...

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