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By Root 592 0

himself into the shaping of Chandler. “The boy could fight,” says Burt Watson, Frazier’s business manager. “But Joe just couldn’t bring him into line. He called Joe names, and Joe took it. He thought he was Joe’s equal. Joe would shake his head and say: ‘Your daddy’s spittin’ in the grave at the things you’re doin’. Chandler, too, was gobbled up by the environment. Chandler was a friend of Joe Jr., whom Frazier guarded like a Doberman. Joe Jr. was five-five, 147 pounds, and everyone who saw him not only thought he was a duplicate of Joe, but also found him better; his ring record was 15–0. “He positively walked through people,” says Watson. “One of the greatest talents I’ve ever seen.” Frazier knew it, his heart pounded with recognition of himself; he was alive, back at the hunt again. Until Joe Jr. slipped into a haze of drugs, with Frazier cruising the night streets in his car, looking for him, desperately trying to break his fall; he couldn’t. Joe Jr. got into trouble and was sent to prison for three years. Mentally, it leveled Joe to his knees.

Marvis was the opposite of Joe Jr., listening to his father’s every word. Joe once told him: “If the speed limit is thirty, you do twenty-five. If you’re ever stopped, step out of the car with your hands up. If you’re with buddies, tell ’em to cut out the laughing and pay attention to the officer. Say yes sir, no sir.” Marvis was stopped and got out with hands up. The cop just looked at him, asking: “What’re you doing, son?” Marvis said: “What my daddy told me.” Who is Daddy? Smokin’ Joe Frazier. The cop said, laughing: “Get back in the car…and give him my best.” Always practical, Marvis knew that he did not have the motivation and the destructive instinct of his father, and he sensibly left the ring early after being bopped quickly by Mike Tyson; he became a preacher. Florence, Joe’s wife, was never keen on Joe fighting, let alone Marvis. The two argued often over Marvis as a fighter and Joe’s nightlife, and the final break came when Joe told the family he had had two children by another woman. “When a marriage is gone,” Joe said, “it’s gone. Hey, I wasn’t easy. I know that.”

A Gullah himself, Burt Watson first met Joe in 1990 at a wedding. Aside from his gym, Frazier owned a limo business and was filling in for a driver with a hangover. The two became fast friends, hit the clubs every night until Burt couldn’t handle it anymore. “I was showing up loaded at work, bent out of shape,” says Burt. “So I couldn’t keep up with him anymore. I jokingly told him: ‘Hire me, or leave me the hell alone.’” Burt joined him as business manager. Joe fired the remaining people from Cloverlay, saying: “These are people who have not done me justice.” Frazier’s name had not been in circulation. Burt got him on the autograph circuit, where he’d make three thousand dollars a session, packaged him for commercials, got him into the money flow. “We worked together for ten years,” says Burt, “and I was his shoes and his pants. But nothing seemed to make him happy.”

Joe had a reputation as a two-fisted drinker around town. “Sure, he drank,” says Burt, “but, you know, I never saw him drunk. Four or five of us would be in a place, and he’d take all the drinks, a wine, a vodka, whiskey and brandy, then put them in one big glass and belt it down. He called it his Man or Mouse drink. Joe was a real accessible guy. There’s not a legend you can walk up to and be friendly. I saw Dr. J. out one night, and if you got near him you’d get your leg broke. Not with Joe. Some places were rough. I’d say, ‘Let’s get outta here…I don’t care how good your left hook is.’ Nothing to get a call from Twenty-third and Columbia, the roughest area in Philly, and there he is sitting there and buying drinks for people with no teeth, with wigs on and twirling guns. Nobody gave him trouble. He has the body of a freak, very hard. I accidentally ran into him in the gym, and I saw stars.” What about his eyesight? “He couldn’t see past my fingers. I had to be right on top of him. In the gym, he worked the light and heavy bags with bare