Sparring with Smokin' Joe

Sparring with Smokin' Joe

Author: Glenn Lewis

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-02-10

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1538136805

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"This Maileresque combination of personal reflection, boxing analysis, and sports biography is a must read for fight fans...." Booklist, Starred Review An intimate portrait of Joe Frazier, whose ferocious rivalry with Muhammad Ali made them both boxing legends and cultural touchstones for an era. Just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Fight of the Century (Ali–Frazier I), Sparring with Smokin’ Joe provides a penetrating, at times brutally candid, look at legendary champion Joe Frazier. Glenn Lewis spent several months in the gym, on the road, and in verbal tussles with Frazier in 1980, when Frazier was at a crossroads in his life and career. Lewis recounts Frazier’s candid takes on his still-recent Hall-of-Fame career, wars with Ali, and hard-scrabble roots. Frazier also reflects on Ali’s upcoming comeback fight against Larry Holmes, his own possible return to the ring, preparing his son Marvis for a pro boxing debut, and the impact of racial tensions and cultural upheaval on his fighting legacy. Sparring with Smokin’ Joe reveals compelling, never-before-heard anecdotes that give new insight into the usually private Frazier, including how Ali’s verbal attacks on Frazier alienated him from his own people and continued to trouble him long after retiring from the ring. An intimate portrait of a legendary fighter, Sparring with Smokin’ Joe finally shares Frazier’s side of an unforgettable rivalry.


Box Like the Pros

Box Like the Pros

Author: Joe Frazier

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2005-11-01

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0060817739

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Former World Heavyweight champion Smokin' Joe Frazier and William Dettloff, senior writer for The Ring magazine, present a complete guide to the fight game – from the history of the sport to how to throw a crushing uppercut and take a punch without flinching. Drawing from the experiences of one of the masters of the sport, Box Like the Pros is a must–have for anyone pursuing boxing as a hobby or who is interested in training to become a professional boxer. Frazier, with longtime boxing writer William Dettloff, presents a complete introduction to the sport, including the game's history, rules of the ring, how fights are scored, how to spar, the basics of defence and offence, the fighter's workout, a directory of boxing gyms, and much more. Box Like the Pros is an instruction manual, a historical reference tool and an insider's guide to the world's most controversial sport.


Smokin' Joe

Smokin' Joe

Author: Mark Kram

Publisher: Ecco

Published: 2020-06-02

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780062654472

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A gripping, all-access biography of Joe Frazier, whose rivalry with Muhammad Ali riveted boxing fans and whose complex legacy as a figure in American sports and society endures History will remember the rivalry of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali as one for the ages, a trilogy of extraordinary fights that transcended the world of sports and crossed into a sociocultural drama that divided the country. Joe Frazier was a much more complex figure than his rivalry with Ali would suggest. In this riveting and nuanced portrayal, acclaimed sports writer Mark Kram, Jr., unlinks Frazier from Ali and for the first time gives a full-bodied account of Frazier's life, a journey that began with the youngest of thirteen children packed in a small farmhouse, encountering the bigotry and oppression of the Jim Crow South, and continued with his voyage north at age fifteen to develop as a fighter in Philadelphia. Tracing Frazier's life through his momentous bouts with the likes of Ali and George Foreman and the developing perception of him as the anti-Ali in the eyes of blue-collar America, Kram follows the boxer up to his retirement in 1981 and beyond, exploring his relationship with his son, the would-be heavyweight champion Marvis, and his fragmented home life as well as the uneasy place that Ali continued to occupy in his thoughts. A propulsive and richly textured narrative that is also a powerful story about race and class in America, Smokin' Joe is unparalleled in its scope, depth, and access and promises to be the definitive biography of a towering American figure whose life was galvanized by conflict and whose mark has proven to be lasting.


Larry Holmes

Larry Holmes

Author: Larry Holmes

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1429975547

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In Larry Holmes, the reader will experience the uplifting odyssey that took Larry Holmes from a boxing nobody to a world champion. Holmes is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweight champions of our time and held the title for more than seven years. But his rise to the top was hardly an easy one. He began his life as one of twelve children raised by a single mother in Cuthbert, Georgia, and had to struggle in poverty for the first sixteen years of his life. His road to champion-from which he would net $40 million-was one requiring doggedness and extreme courage, qualities that led people to dub Holmes "The People's Champion." Also featured in the book is an insider's look at Holmes relationship with Muhammad Ali, his views on the state of boxing in the 1990s-including the Mike Tyson situation, his fights with Don King, and his ratings of the top boxers today. Larry Holmes is a champion in every sense of the word. He has risen to every challenge he faced-from poverty to ridicule to naysayers-and his life story is both inspiring and moving.


Smokin' Joe

Smokin' Joe

Author: Joe Frazier

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Published: 2013-10-10

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1620642166

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When boxing was bold, bright, and glamorous and the fights were the hottest sporting events of the year, Joe Frazier was king as the Heavyweight Champion of the World. From 1970 to 1973 he reigned. With a career record of 32-4-1 with twenty-seven knockouts and an Olympic gold medal, Frazier leaves little question that he was one of the greatest fighters of all time. Well-known, loved, and revered as a gentleman and a fierce competitor in the ring, Joe Frazier speaks his mind in Smokin' Joe-about growing up poor and fighting in the first $2.5 million bout; about the early days of his friendship with Muhammad Ali and how their relationship changed; and about the often corrupt world of boxing and what really went on inside and outside the ring. Personable, good-natured, and funny, Frazier's story is a real delight.


Knuckler

Knuckler

Author: Tim Wakefield

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2011-04-06

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0547517718

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At forty-four years old, Tim Wakefield is the longest-serving member of one of baseball’s most popular franchises. He is close to eclipsing the winning records of two of the greatest pitchers to have played the game, yet few realize the full measure of his success. That his career can be characterized by such words as dependability and consistency defies all odds because he has achieved this with baseball’s most mercurial weapon—the knuckleball. Knuckler is the story of how a struggling position player bet his future on a fickle pitch that would define his career. The pitch may drive hitters crazy, but how does the pitcher stay sane? The moment Wakefield adopted the knuckleball, his career sought to answer that question. With the Red Sox, Wakefield began to master his pitch only to find himself on the mound in 2003 for one of the worst post-season losses in history, followed the next year by one of the most vindicating of championships. Even now, as Wakefield battles, we see the twists and turns of a major league career pushed to its ultimate extreme. A remarkable story of one player’s success despite being the exception to every rule, Knuckler is also a lively meditation on the dancing pitch, its history, its mystique, and all the ironies it brings to bear.


No Way but to Fight

No Way but to Fight

Author: Andrew R. M. Smith

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2020-01-10

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1477319786

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Olympic gold medalist. Two-time world heavyweight champion. Hall of Famer. Infomercial and reality TV star. George Foreman’s fighting ability is matched only by his acumen for selling. Yet the complete story of Foreman’s rise from urban poverty to global celebrity has never been told until now. Raised in Houston’s “Bloody Fifth” Ward, battling against scarcity in housing and food, young Foreman fought sometimes for survival and other times just for fun. But when a government program rescued him from poverty and introduced him to the sport of boxing, his life changed forever. In No Way but to Fight, Andrew R. M. Smith traces Foreman’s life and career from the Great Migration to the Great Society, through the Cold War and culture wars, out of urban Houston and onto the world stage where he discovered that fame brought new challenges. Drawing on new interviews with George Foreman and declassified government documents, as well as more than fifty domestic and international newspapers and magazines, Smith brings to life the exhilarating story of a true American icon. No Way but to Fight is an epic worthy of a champion.


The Windsor Diaries

The Windsor Diaries

Author: Alathea Fitzalan Howard

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1982169192

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The never-before-published diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard—who spent her teenaged years living out World War II in Windsor Great Park with her close friends Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, the future queen of the United Kingdom—provide an extraordinary and intimate look at the British Royal Family. Like so many others in Great Britain, young Alathea Fitzalan Howard’s life was turned upside down by the start of the Second World War. Sent to stay with her grandfather at the historic Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park, Alathea found the affection she so craved through her close friendship with the two princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, and their parents King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, her neighbors at nearby Windsor Castle. Together, the girls enjoyed parties, cinema evenings, picnics, and more, all recorded in honest and captivating detail in Alathea’s diary, which she kept as a constant source of comfort. Day by day, from ages sixteen to twenty-two, she recorded the intimate details of her life with the Royal Family and the anxieties of wartime Britain. Now, published for the first time, these unique diaries unveil a candid and vivid portrait of the British Royal Family and of Princess Elizabeth in particular, the warm, quiet young girl who was already on her journey to her ultimate destiny: the Crown.


Facing Ali

Facing Ali

Author: Stephen Brunt

Publisher: Pan

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1743280440

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Experience for the first time what it felt like to face Ali in the ring, through accounts of the people that were there - up close! Muhammed Ali cast a blinding light onto his sport, on the tumultuous times he in part initiated, on all of those who surrounded him, and who surround him still. That includes the fighters brave enough to stand alone, across the ring from the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. Ali's own story has been told again and again, but the stories of those who faced him have, by and large, been ignored. For each, the moments alone with Ali changed their careers, changed their lives, and affected them for ever. FACING ALI tells the story of fifteen men from around the world, from famous names like Joe Frazier, Joe Bugner, George Foreman and Henry Cooper to lesser lights like Tunney Hunsaker and Jurgen Blin. Each man, many for the first time, tell their stories in their own words. The resulting book offers a unique perspective on what it was really like to fight Ali, and gives new insights into the character of the most famous man on the planet.


The Greatest Game Ever Played

The Greatest Game Ever Played

Author: Mark Frost

Publisher: Disney Electronic Content

Published: 2002-11-06

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 1401381863

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THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED is the story of Francis Ouimet and Harry Vardon, who in pursuit of their passion for a game that captivated them as children, broke down rigid social barriers that made their sport accessible to everyone on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, positioning golf as one of the most widely played games in the world. Ouimet and Vardon were two men from different generations and vastly different corners of the world whose lives, unbeknownst to them at the time, bore remarkable similarities, setting them on parallel paths that led with a kind of fated inevitability to their epic battle at Brookline years in the future. This collision resulted in the big bang' that gave rise to the sport of golf as we know it today. For Mark Frost, Francis Ouimet and Harry Vardon represent everything that's right about sports in general and sportsmen in particular; gentlemen, champions, teachers, leaders, and each in their own quiet way, heroes. In THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED, Frost attempts to create penetrating studies of both of these men, along with over dozens of the game's seminal figures, within the dramatic framework offered by the tournament when they finally met, one of the most thrilling sports events in history, the 1913 U.S. Open.