January 2002 - July 2006 - The Jerry Quarry Foundation

having a tournament every year. Even if they were held every 30 years, the same
argument holds up: He who stays out of the tournament shouldn't get the reward
of just going after the winner after everyone else has fairly competed. If
Frazier was the best, and he very well might have been, he belonged in the
tourney to prove himself. He opted out. It was a faimiliar theme for Joe's
team, the path of least resistance. And you know, you keep going back to Joe
didn't have to face Mac Foster because Jerry beat him, Joe didn't have to fight
Earnie Shavers because Jerry beat him, Joe didn't have to fight Ron Lyle because
Jerry beat him---for pity's sake, why did Joe have to wait for the guy he could
beat to knock off the others? Sounds like a classic way to avoid trouble---bide
your time and let dominoes knock down other dominoes---you only have to take one
of them and by default, you've beaten them all! That might hold water with you,
but it doesn't with me. We know that styles make fights and part of the
fascination of boxing is when a guy like Ray Leonard gets a decision over Hagler
(Forget that the decision was controversial---at best, the fight was a draw or
even a very slight Hagler win, but the point is that people expected Hagler to
KO Leonard early and because of styles, it didn't go that way.). Champions don't
wait for others to do their work for them. Hey, Foreman crushed Norton and Ali
KOed Foreman. So that should have taken Ali off the hook from having to give
Norton another fight. Guess what? In Yankee Stadium, Ali put his title on the
line against a younger, fresher, stronger Ken Norton. Ali beat Quarry twice and
Quarry beat Lyle and Shavers. Okay, Ali doesn't have to face these guys.
Except, he did, both of them. Was this a case of Ali's handlers being careless?
I doubt it. It was a case of a Champion wanting to be a real Champion by taking
on the top ten fighters regardless of how they performed against common
opponents. Kent, I really doubt that Lyle or Shavers would have turned down a
money fight against Joe Frazier, circa 1974. In 1975, Shavers was more worthy
of a "shot" against contender Frazier than walking wounded Jimmy Ellis was. I
don't think it was Shavers who was afraid of the outcome of a fight with
Frazier. We could speculate all day on who avoided who---but when it's ONE MAN
who failed to fight everyone else (even though "everyone else" was fighting
eachother) you walk away feeling that maybe that ONE MAN was the one who was,
and I'll go ahead and use the term, DUCKING the competiton...the knockout
capable, live fighter competition. To form an opinion of who avoided who, I
don't have to look further than the fights that Frazier DID take on (Bugner, who
couldn't knock out a parakeet, Ellis, who was previously easily defeated by
Frazier when he actually could fight and was done by '75, Daniels...you list the
rest). Simply put, my opinion is that the only boxer we've been discussing who
might have avoided Frazier and not the other way around is Ken Norton, who
didn't fare well against strong KO guys himself. |
|7/2/05 02:05:42 PM|Angelo|dc||funktron@yahoo.com||||10|Clarification: In my
last post, what I meant to say was that from HAGLER'S viewpoint, at best the
fight against Leonard was a draw or a slight win. I actually scored the fight
in favor of Leonard by a point---even considering that Hagler was the Champion,
I might have given the nod to Sugar Ray, by a thread. |
|7/2/05 03:58:42 PM|Angelo|dc||funktron@yahoo.com||||10|And Kent, before you
bring up that there was "no money" in Frazier-Lyle or Frazier-Shavers, keep in
mind that there was LESS MONEY in Frazier-Daniels or Frazier-Ellis II. (held
half way around the world it was such a stink bomb). This wasn't about money or
about buddy-buddy can't fight that guy (Norton). It seems like a clear-cut
strategy to keep Frazier from getting shelled again like he did against Foreman.
And one more time, Frazier would have fought whoever they told him to, including
King Kong or Godzilla. I don't think it was about Frazier's courage, but it WAS
about a smart management team who didn't want to lose title fights against Ali
(read,$$$$) by walking into a landmine like Earnie Shavers or Ron Lyle. Smart?
Yes, but it tarnished Frazier's place in boxing history. His "place" is that he
fought Ali in two very exciting fights and one decent fight. His "place" has