NEW YORK -- Smokin' Joe Frazier became a fighter in Philadelphia and a legend in New York.
He did it on one magical night: March 8, 1971, when Frazier turned in what was arguably the greatest athletic performance ever seen under the gaudy ceiling of Madison Square Garden 4.0, and what was among the top five performances ever by a heavyweight champion in the history of our oldest and most demanding sport.
Willis Reed's entrance in Game 6 of the 1970 NBA Finals might have rivaled it for drama, and some might say Michael Jordan's 55-point game against the Knicks in 1995 matched it for skill, but no athlete has ever owned the big room the way Frazier did the night he won that epic first battle with Muhammad Ali, the one that was so big it was billed simply as "The Fight."
He did it with a body too short and arms too stumpy for a heavyweight, with a style that demanded that he eat two shots for every one he landed, and against a man who was really not a fighter but an exquisitely proportioned and coordinated ballet dancer who happened to carry a brick in each fist.
Frazier was unforgettable that night, giving so much of himself that he spent the next month in a hospital, and for a time there were serious concerns that he might die. He was dangerously dehydrated and his kidneys were shutting down. His blood pressure soared. At the time, no one outside his circle knew that for most of his career, Frazier was an insulin-dependent diabetic.
All the world knew was that few men had ever paid a higher price in the single-minded pursuit of victory than Frazier did that night.
He fought five of his 12 heavyweight title fights at the Garden, and in the 1970s, what we now recognize as the Golden Age of heavyweight boxing, New York was proud to call Frazier our very own house heavyweight.
He won his belt here; proudly carried the title of New York State Athletic Commission heavyweight champion during the years of Muhammad Ali's exile; gave a brutal beating to the tragic Jerry Quarry here; and unified the title by knocking out the skilled Jimmy Ellis, a sort of Ali Lite, at the Garden in 1970.
For the record, Ali beat Frazier the two other times they met, but neither of those others, not even the celebrated and overhyped "Thrilla in Manila," came close to matching the intensity and skill level both men displayed in the Garden that first time.
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