I remember before one of the big fights a television interview with Joe Frazier.
A television crew must have went and knocked on the door of his house asking for an interview.
It was clearly his house because there he was laying on the bed in what looked like his bedroom in a night gown. Nothing fancy in any way. Come to think of it it might have been our place or someone's place down the street. Just laying under a bare light bulb propped up on some pillows. And that was startling to me at the time. I was a kid.
Here is the potential heavy weight champion of the world. If not the best heavy weight boxer in the world clearly the second best. A very tough hombre. Not because he was fighting for a world title. But because he was Joe Fucking Frazier.
And there he is propped up on the pillow looking at these cameras in his room without a fucking care in the world for all of that pomp and pazazz.
He knew that any value and judgement that was important, that would count, would be the assessment of what happened under those big lights on top of that canvas.
But I just remember being fucking startled by how brutally real he was propped up there in his fraying robe.
A long way from Gentleman Jim I can tell you. Or some of the other one's prancing around with all that glitter and cheap talk.
Smokin' Joe Frazier. An exemplar of keeping it real.
(Image attribution: “Joe Frazier’s Gym for Sale” by Tony Fischer, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0)