Legends: Requiem for a Heavyweight
Joe now spends more than half the year on the road, cashing in at trade shows, memorabilia auctions and public appearances. He signs gloves and posters, shakes hands, takes time to chat with fans about their lives, their families — gives them what Wolff calls “the Joe experience.”
Over the years, however, Joe’s experiences have, more often than not, not been terribly good, particularly when it came to his personal business dealings. When Ali sold his name and image in 2006 to CKX licensing mastermind Robert Sillerman, he earned $50 million; George Foreman generated more than twice that amount by unloading his grill enterprise. But Frazier has squandered his fighting fortune on bad investments, unscrupulous representation, generosity, carousing and skirt-chasing. The New York Times reported that following Frazier’s 2002 car accident, Larry Holmes was rumored to have helped pay his hospital bills.
Wolff sees Frazier as an “untapped opportunity,” and has focused his energies on both remaking the champ’s image and marketing that image relentlessly. Hollywood producer and director Penny Marshall is optioning Frazier’s life rights; there’s now talk of a music project and a television deal. “Joe will be out of the red by the end of the year,” Wolff says.
In the next few months, Joe has appearances scheduled in Las Vegas, Idaho and Scotland. “I just go where he tells me,” Joe says with a chuckle, nodding to Wolff. “I sign and take the pictures.”
Back on North Broad, taped to one of the caged windows in what is left of Joe Frazier’s Gym, is a laminated placard. A testimonial. Its title is “What Joe Frazier’s Gym Means to Me?,” the question mark now a fitting epitaph. Its author is Ralph Mitchell, a boxer who grew up on the rough streets of North Philly and found a home in Joe’s ring. His heartfelt essay talks about how he learned about love — “love of life and love of people” — at the Frazier gym by watching “the Frazier family interact with each other and the people around them.” Mitchell concludes by writing, “To sum it up, I would say Frazier’s Gym is a place where one can grow as a person and an athlete while making lifelong friends.” It’s something the gym’s owner and the city he fought for could never seem to do.
