10 November,2011 09:29 AM IST | | Special Features
Joe Frazier, better known as Smokin' Joe, who became the heavyweight champion of the world and earned boxing immortality with three epic battles against Muhammad Ali, passed away earlier this week. CS tells you more about this boxing heavyweight who lost his battle with cancer:
>>u00a0Smokin' Joe Frazier was the first boxer to beat Muhammad Ali. Frazier won the Olympic heavyweight boxing gold medal for the US in 1964 and held the crown from 1970 to 1973. He is eternally linked with Ali thanks to their trilogy of fights in the 1970s, among the most famous in the history of the sport. Frazier won the first and Ali the next two.
>>u00a0Frazier was born in segregated South Carolina in 1944, the youngest of 12 children. When he was a little boy, his uncle told him that he would be the next Joe Louis, the celebrated black heavyweight champion of the 1930s and 1940s. Moving to Philadelphia, he aimed to make good on that prediction.
>>u00a0Frazier amassed a career record of 32 wins four defeats and one draw. He retired after a second loss to George Foreman in 1976, then came out of retirement for a fight in 1981 before ending his career for good.
>>u00a0After retiring, he made cameo appearances in several Hollywood movies, and two episodes of The Simpsons.
>>u00a0Frazier never became as famous as Ali. He also lost almost all of his money. He lived alone in an apartment above the gym where he trained young fighters in a run-down section of Philadelphia.
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