The Final Round

Joe Frazier was a man who knew how to fight. In an illustrious heavyweight career, Frazier rode his compact frame, insatiable engine and heavy hands to a 32-4-1 record and two championships. He fought Foreman and Ali, the latter engagements forming an epic three-part war that took four years to finish. As fierce as he could be between the ropes, Smokin' Joe was not immortal. On November 6, he finally fell to an opponent his legendary pressure could not rattle; a battle wherein his inhuman drive and toughness were just not enough. Frazier succumbed to liver cancer at the age of 67.

A native of South Carolina, Frazier eventually found his way to Philadelphia, and had embodied the fighting spirit of the city ever since. Beloved as much for his gentlemanly manners outside the ring as his hard charging persona within, Frazier played a crucial role in an age that helped to define the nation, on and off the sports page. A dominating figure when boxing commanded the attention of Mainstream America, Frazier is best known for his world stopping fights with Muhammed Ali. Indeed, after one meeting, the two men's fates would forever be intertwined, even in death. It is impossible to remember one without the effect he had on the other. The quick witted Ali ferociously mocked his challenger, words that seemed to have cut Frazier deeply. At times bitter enemies and reluctant friends, there had been a begrudging peace between the two as of late, with Frazier seemingly taking a mellowed position on Ali in a 2009 Sports Illustrated piece.

The fights were a juxtaposition, the artistic matador versus the brutal bull, the wind fighting a rock. Frazier's workman-like style endeared him to those whom the bombastic Butterfly turned off, and his relentless offense wore down the shuffle. Ali was taller, faster and arguably the better boxer; it was Frazier's indomitable will and solid understanding of the sweet science that closed the gap. To many, Frazier was the establishment, the stoic warrior for the blue collar men and women swept up by turbulent times.

Frazier handed Ali the first loss of his career in "The Fight of the Century" at Madison Square Garden, catching the notoriously fleet champ with a left hook in the 15th round. That hook was his trademark, a mighty hammer into an opponent's head. It is born in a brief moment of silence, with 2:44 left in the fight. A shot from the side that struck like lightning, followed by stunned moments before the thunderous reaction from the crowd, realizing what they had just seen. Ali's tendency to pull his head straight back from a punch played right into Smokin' Joe's hands: "The Butterfly did it all the time, and it's the reason it was so easy for me to hit him with the hook," Frazier writes in Box Like the Pros. "Every time he thought he was leaning away from it, he actually was leaning right into its path."

The hook, and will, that felled the seemingly invincible Ali could not defeat this final opponent, a brutal disease savagely attacking one of the most vital of organs.

One of the greatest ages in American sport has lost an icon.