In Memoriam : Joe Frazier dies after fight with cancer

Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight boxing champion who gave Muhammed Ali his first defeat, died Monday night after a fight with liver cancer. He was 67.

Joe Frazier passes away

The family issued a statement confirming the champions death.

Frazier had been under hospice care after being diagnosed weeks ago with liver cancer.

Until then, Frazier had been making appearances and autograph sessions where the most recent was in Las Vegas in September.

Frazier was diagnosed last month with the disease, his personal and business manager said.

Leslie Wolff, who has been Frazier’s manager for seven years, said the boxer had been in out and out of the hospital since early October and receiving hospice treatment the last week.

Boxing legend

Joseph Frazier, nicknamed “Smokin’ Joe,” was an American professional boxer who competed from 1965 to 1981.

Frazier was known for his strength, durability, formidable punching power, and relentless pressure fighting style.

He was the first man to beat Ali, taking him down in what is called the “Fight of the Century” in 1972.

In his autobiography, “Smokin’ Joe,” written with Phil Berger, Frazier said his first trainer, Yank Durham, had given him his nickname. It was, he said, “a name that had come from what Yank used to say in the dressing room before sending me out to fight: ‘Go out there, goddammit, and make smoke come from those gloves.’ “

Foreman knocked out Frazier twice but said he had never lost his respect for him. “Joe Frazier would come out smoking,” Foreman told ESPN. “If you hit him, he liked it. If you knocked him down, you only made him mad.”

Frazier was born on Jan. 12, 1944, in Laurel Bay, S.C., the youngest of 12 children.

He won the Olympic heavyweight boxing gold medal for the United States in 1964. He also held the title of world heavyweight boxing champ from 1970 to 1973.

Rest in peace