Woody Goss, AKA “Elwood The Rose,” is a footnote in heavyweight history, and the man from Lancaster, Pennsylvania exited the sport with a none too special 6-5(3) pro record. But Goss does hold the distinction of being the first man to fight a heavyweight legend. It was 50 years ago today when Joe Frazier punched for pay for the first time, with him halting Goss in a round at the Convention Hall in Philadelphia.
Frazier would of course go on to become a true great, a lethally equipped fighting, or “Smokin’” machine. Born into almost unimaginably tough surroundings, his father and mother scraping a living by growing watermelon and cotton on their Beaufort County farm, Frazier never, ever had things easy in life. By the age of just 10, Joe was working the farm with his pop. In the early 1950s, Ruben brought home a small black and white TV, and the Fraziers, along with their neighbourhood friends, would huddle around the flickering screen to watch the big fights.
Everyone watching loved Joe Louis, and Frazier, who was stocky and heavier and stronger than his years would suggest, was declared by his uncle as “another Joe Louis.” Joe would fashion himself a heavy bag, filled with corncobs, and he would bang away at the bag, his hefty hands making the “tree tremble.”
Joe was on his way, but it would be a hard road. Finding work in a slaughterhouse, this in Philadelphia, where he had moved to at age 15, this all on his own, Frazier would be guided and nurtured by trainer Yank Durham. Joe, who won Olympic gold in 1964 and lost some of the vision in his left eye during an accident with a speed bag, with shards of mettle flying into his eye, made rapid progress.
With Eddie Futch also on board, Joe was finely tuned into a dangerous, non-stop, perpetually moving, bobbing and weaving weapon. His left hook sufficient to bring down a small building, Frazier would get in close on a ring foe, he would not let his opponent breathe, and he would bring him into range with hurtful left hooks, thereby being able to zero in on his opposition with his good eye.
Frazier was 19-0 before he got his first shot at a title; and he had been matched tough, Joe coming through testing as well as learning fights with the likes of Oscar Bonavena (who came within a whisker of beating Joe on the three-knockdown rule), Eddie Machen, Doug Jones, George “Scrap Iron” Johnson and George Chuvalo.
Frazier brutalised Buster Mathis (who Joe had replaced at short-notice in the Tokyo Games, this as Buster was injured; as was Joe, but he didn’t let a thing like a busted thumb stop him), with him getting the 11th round TKO in March of 1968. Joe was now the NYSAC heavyweight ruler. Still, politics aside, everyone on planet earth knew the stripped Muhammad Ali was the real champion.
Joe knew it too, and in time he and Ali would of course give the world three epic, never to be forgotten fights/wars/titanic battles as they slugged it out with supremacy on the line.
Before those fights of the century (two of the three, anyway), Frazier fought Bonavena a second time, scoring a wide 15 round decision win, and he stopped Jerry Quarry in a magnificently violent affair. Then, in February of 1970, Joe crushed Ali sparring partner Jimmy Ellis to add the WBA and the WBC titles to his growing collection. Still, Ali was THE champ.
Finally, after years, after so many legal fights, Ali was given back his licence and he and Frazier, both unbeaten, met in the biggest fight in boxing history. And “little old me won,” as Joe would say years later. Frazier had climbed the mountain top, he had silenced “The Greatest.” With his 15-round decision win, punctuated as it was by a final round knockdown, Joe had peaked.
There was only one way to go and that was down. Frazier still had plenty of fight and spite in him when it came to going into the trenches with Ali, but he was run over by George Foreman, this when the unified champ was overweight and ill-prepared. Joe had one great fight left in him.
Manilla, October 1, 1975. “The Thrilla.” Arguably the most vicious, punishing and damaging heavyweight title fight ever witnessed, the 14 rounds of hell Frazier and Ali shared remain hard to watch all these years later. Neither man should have ever fought again and, according to sage old scribe Jerry Izenberg, the rivalry between the two was never settled. Joe was as we know pulled out after the 14th, this by a compassionate Futch, but Frazier, though blind, wanted to go on. While if we can believe some stories that are out there (put there in 2007 with the release of the superb HBO documentary on “The Thrilla”) Ali in the other corner was asking Angelo Dundee to “cut ’em off.”
To his dying day, Joe believed he would have fought those last three-minutes while Ali would have been unable to do so. We will never know.
Frazier was by now 31 years of age, but he was an “old” 31. The wars, brought on by his sheer fighting style, had taken a hefty toll on him. Frazier for some crazy reason fought Foreman again, and he was again battered to defeat; while a 37 year old “Smoke” came back to box Jumbo Cummings to a gift of a draw in late 1981.
But Frazier had long since earned his reputation as a ring great, as one of the best to ever do it. And Joe’s influence would be felt all over the world during his retirement years. The ‘Rocky’ legend owes no small debt to Frazier (who has a small cameo in the 1976 film), while all fight fans still marvel over Frazier’s greatest fights.
It all started 50 years ago today, when a guy named Woody Goss became the very first pro fighter to feel the wrath of “Smokin’” Joe Frazier.
