Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [10]
Yank Durham believed Frazier had an unhealthy respect for Ali. “Don’t tell me what the man can’t do,” Joe was telling Gypsy one day in the gym. “The man does what he want in a ring. He a wonder.” Gyp called him Smoke because of the heat of his ring pace, and the name began to stick. Yank heard the talk and grumbled, “You betta get that shit outta your head, Smoke. Ali goes to the bank with that kinda thinkin’. He’s just a man.” Frazier met Ali the night following the Zora Folley bout in the Garden, his last before he exiled for evading the draft. Durham recalled, “Somebody takes Joe over, `Champ, this is Joe Frazier,’ and I’m sayin’ I don’t want this happening. I want Ali remaining a face, a name, nobody important now. I’m training a dog, you see, to eat a dog.” Ali sized Frazier up and said, “I know who he is. Stay healthy, Joe. I’ll be back. We gonna do some business.” He then snapped Joe’s suspenders, saying, “These won’t keep you standin’. You not big enough for me. But we’ll make some money anyway.” Joe gave him a big smile and said, “Could be.” Sensing too much softness in Joe, Durham broke in, saying, “Clay, you ever need some money, we’ll always have some sparring work for you.” Ali just looked at Yank, then turned away, with his aide saying to him, “Can you believe that country nigger?” Yank pulled Joe aside and said, “You best get some sense in your head, boy. You too impressed by him. You’re somebody. Got a big future. Get them stars outta your eyes, else he’ll pick the gold right outta your pocket.”
Unknown to Durham—and not much was—Frazier and Ali remained close during the early days of the exile. Ali was a lonesome king, as all kings soon are without treasure to dispense. It had come down, so the inside word was, that the champ was even short on grocery money, and that certain members of his entourage often turned up with bags of food at his door. To his annoyed wife, Belinda, a proud and resourceful woman, that inside word was merely a line floated to extract sympathy for Ali. Joe gave him a couple of hundred here and there, but denied a report that he personally took $2,000 to Ali so he could pay his hotel bill in New York. “Wasn’t much I give him,” Frazier told me, quelling rumors Ali over time was into Joe for anywhere between $20,000 and $200,000. Even with the entire Milky Way filling his eyes when it came to Ali, Frazier was so attentive to money that those sums are ludicrous. But Joe was willing to do almost anything else, and always said: “Not right to take a man’s pick and shovel.” While he did not approve of Ali’s military position, he disagreed with his license being lifted.
Until Ali went on the college lecture circuit he was cut off from making money but also from what he most needed, the energy source of a constant audience. According to Belinda, he feared that he was shrinking, that he would become smaller by the day until there would be nothing left. Frazier tried to allay his dread, “You’ll be back. Better than ever.” Ali said, “Joe, you the big man now. You gotta keep my name out there. Don’t let ’em forget.” To that end, Frazier lobbied the press, Commission people, and rallied some old champs like Joe Louis, who was unsympathetic to Ali, largely because of his black nationalism, his loud presentation of self, and his evasion of the military. Infuriated by how agreeable Joe was when it came to Ali, Yank Durham exploded one day, “You better start keeping your mouth shut about him. We don’t need him. He needs us! Don’t you understand anything, boy? He using you. Wake up, for chrissake!” Durham would not hear of the philanthropic bargain Joe would strike with Ali. Gypsy told me of a day he once drove to New York with Joe and Ali, how the two worked up plans for one day meeting for the title.
“An even split, okay, Joe?” Ali asked. “Right down the middle. I don’t have much. I gotta come back big. I’d do the same for you.”
“No trouble there,” Joe said.