Relationship With Muhammad Ali
While Ali's characteristic taunts of his opponent began typically enough, after regaining his title, his taunts eventually turned personal. Joe was painted by Ali as the white man's hope and as an "Uncle Tom," interjecting a racial element into an already contentious and controversial series of great bouts. Bryant Gumbel joined the pro-Ali, anti-Frazier bandwagon by writing a major magazine article that asked "Is Joe Frazier a white champion with black skin?", and many younger boxing fans who had no issues with Frazier sided with Ali in their feud because of their admiration for Ali's anti-war and anti-racism views (Frazier rarely spoke publicly about social or political issues).
Frazier petitioned U.S. President Richard Nixon to have Ali's right to box reinstated, setting up the whole series of matches. (Frazier had boycotted the 1967 WBA heavyweight elimination tournament to find a successor to Muhammad Ali, after the champion had been stripped of the title.)
After years of remaining bitter, Frazier told Sports Illustrated in May 2009 that he no longer held hard feelings for Ali.
Ali was among those who attended the private funeral services for Frazier in Philadelphia on November 14, 2011. The Rev. Jesse Jackson gave remarks during the service and at one point asked those in attendance to stand and "show your love." It was reported that Ali stood with the audience and clapped "vigorously."
Read more about this topic: Joe Frazier
Famous quotes containing the words relationship and/or ali:
“Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer—he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)