Joe Frazier, Joe Frazier, Joe Frazier

In an effort to increase my semiannual production of posts here at Boxiana I’m going to try to produce some less intensive material. A good start is this clip combining two great joys; personal heavyweight favorite Joe Frazier and my loathing of Morning Joe (Scarborough).

Frazier is promoting the new HBO documentary about the Thrilla’ in Manilla. While I was initially hesitant, really what more can be said about that fight that hasn’t been, from what I hear it’s going to be excellent. It was apparently made by a British filmmaker, and was so good that HBO picked it up.

We’ll see, but it’s hard to imagine it will live up to this clip, with Joe looking regal in his stylish hat and not too far beyond fighting trim. The interactions are bizarre, with the questioners talking to Joe as though he’s not a native speaker.


And Joe actually does respond in a different language. These nobs may have met a black man before, but certainly not someone black like Joe Frazier. He speaks not just with a heavy Philly drawl mixed with too many punches, but with an honesty, earnestness, and feeling that is usually in poor taste on shows such as this. These are people who talk lightly of disagreements over major policy decisions that send people to their death. They debate the forty million people without health insurance and the nine percent unemployment rate as though it is who should be atop the AP poll in college football. It is what I find most contemptible about the pundit class, the breezy, self-congratulatory diminution of important things to the level of mere sporting event. It takes Frazier to show that even sport is serious, it’s personal, it’s important on a level where you can’t just look and move on like these people have done with the Iraq war and so much other wretchedness.

The point really comes into focus at the 4:45 mark, where the woman questioner tries to tie Frazier, Tiger Woods, and the economic collapse together in some sort of serious point. Joe Frazier, befuddled by the comparison between someone who hits a tiny white ball and one who destroyed souls with his fists begins a rambling, borderline incoherent response which, in my dreams, ends with one of his textbook left hooks.

One can dream.



Going to try to post a full preview of this Saturday’s HBO lineup, which includes the Thrilla’ Doc, Pacquiao/Hatton 24/7, and the intriguing Wright-Williams fight.