Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

Retired heavyweight Boxing Champion Smoking Joe Frazier lost his fight last night with liver cancer.

The 67-year-old Frazier, who was in hospice care, died last night after being diagnosed with liver cancer in October, Darren Prince, a spokesman for the Frazier family, confirmed in an e-mail.

Muhammad Ali, who was beaten by Frazier in “The Fight Of The Century” and forever indebted  to Frazier for keeping him afloat during his draft dodging ordeal with the U.S. government, released a statement to ESPN saying,

“The world has lost a great champion. I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration. My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones.”

During their fighting years, Ali, who was a member of the Nation of Islam, showed his true colors by publically calling Frazier a “monkey” and anyone who supported him an “Uncle Tom.”

So not true, but in typical Ali fashion, his mouth outshined his greatness as he himself was never called out on his self-hatred tactics and words for his people in his own efforts to promote the fight, his ego, and his pockets.

Smoking Joe would later vent his disdain for Ali in his autobiography “Smoking Joe,” factually writing,

“Joe Frazier didn’t turn his back on Cassius Clay when practically everyone else did. And for that, the scamboogah insulted me in the way most calculated to hurt — by picturing me as a pawn of white folks. To me that was not only a low blow, it was a perfect example of Clay’s nature.”

Foreman would later lose the title to George Foreman who would then drop the title back to Ali.

R.I.P. Champ.