Boxing Card Set In Honor Of Smokin’ Joe Frazier On The Late Champion’s 80th Birthday

PHILADELPHIA: Smokin’ Joe will headline another boxing card.

The household of Joe Frazier is about to honor the previous heavyweight champion with a slate of bouts in Atlantic City, New Jersey — website of his mother and father’ first date, his son famous — to have fun what would have been his 80th birthday.

Joe Frazier Jr. Promotions in affiliation with Danny Swift Garcia Promotions will run the cardboard that includes principally younger fighters on Jan. 13 at Boardwalk Hall, as soon as the premier house of boxing on the East Coast. Frazier, the relentless, undersized heavyweight who dominated the division as champion, would have turned 80 on Jan. 12. Frazier died on Nov. 7, 2011, after a quick battle with liver most cancers.

In the years after his loss of life, Frazier’s bond with Philadelphia has solely grown tighter. Frazier has a statue exterior an leisure complicated close to the town’s three sports activities stadiums on the positioning of the now-demolished Spectrum, an area the place he fought. Frazier spent a lot of his life in his adopted hometown preventing till the top to earn respect as one of many metropolis’s sports activities greats.

“Some people say he hasn’t gotten his just due,” Joe Frazier Jr. mentioned. “My father was never about that. He was all about giving back to the kids. If it was up to him, he wouldn’t have a statue or a mural out anywhere. But it does make me feel good to see the recognition and his name kept alive.”

Without a viable venue accessible in Philly, Frazier’s household determined to roll the cube on Atlantic City, as they hope for a boxing revival on the boardwalk.

“My father didn’t box there. But he did a lot of gambling there,” Frazier mentioned, laughing. “But come to find out, my mother and him had their first date there. It’s just the proximity of it, being so close to Jersey and Philly. It’s been the mecca of boxing before. Let’s just bring it back.”

Undefeated fighters Dylan Price and Leanna Cruz are a part of the combat night time, as is Philadelphia heavyweight Joey Dawejko.

HBO and Showtime have every discontinued boxing programming, leaving promoters hopeful of discovering a streaming service for a card billed as “Hooked on Greatness.”

The 35-year-old Garcia, a Philly native and former WBC gentle welterweight champion, mentioned it was his mission to construct a greater path towards title fights for blossoming fighters.

Garcia sat out all of 2023 and hasn’t fought since a July 2022 win over José Benavidez Jr. at Barclays Center. He hoped to combat once more subsequent 12 months.

“I didn’t fight because I didn’t want to,” Garcia mentioned. “I wanted to fight. It’s just politics. It didn’t happen. It’s not that easy. People think you can just call people up and say you want to fight next week. You have to wait your turn. Right now, I’m just waiting it out.”

Frazier is perpetually linked with Muhammad Ali, the heavyweights concerned in maybe the best trilogy of fights. A vicious left hook from Frazier put Muhammad Ali on the canvas within the fifteenth spherical in March 1971 when he grew to become the primary man to beat him within the Fight of the Century at Madison Square Garden. They went 41 rounds collectively.

Frazier was small for a heavyweight, weighing simply 205 kilos when he received the title by stopping Jimmy Ellis within the fifth spherical of their 1970 combat at Madison Square Garden.

“I understand that if we don’t continue to bring his legacy out, he will be forgotten in the minds of the young ones,” mentioned Frazier, the 41-year-old son. “That’s who I really want to educate. Everyone my age and up knows who he is. They’ll always remember.”

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(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is revealed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)