Free Come Out Smokin' by Phil Pepe

knew it and he could hardly wait to get on with the carnage. More and more, Mathis was holding Frazier and referee Arthur Mercante pulled him apart and shouted, “Let go.”
    â€œWork, Buster, work,” Frazier chided as he slammed the big fellow with body punches. By the end of the tenth round Frazier had pushed into the lead and it seemed only a matter of time before he would punish Mathis into quitting.
    As the eleventh round started, Mathis was a beaten fighter. The bounce had vanished from his legs and he was practically powerless to stop the wave after wave of punches that a tireless Frazier fired from a slight crouch, punches that derived their power all the way from the squat legs, anchored solidly on the canvas. If Buster picked off one punch or slipped another, there were two, three, four, five more that came behind the first one and found their mark.
    Late in the eleventh round Frazier moved in for the kill. He shot a short, savage right hand that landed flush on Buster’s chin and then almost instantaneously a left was on its way to Mathis’ right temple and Buster went down. His legs slipped out from under him as if someone had yanked a rug away, and he flopped backward, his head hitting the bottom of the ropes, head and shoulders slithering outside onto the apron of the ring, blood streaming from his battered nose.
    Mathis lay there for several seconds, his eyes rolling around in his head, his chest heaving. At the count of four, he began to move. At six, he struggled to get to his feet, but his legs were unwilling and he stumbled into a corner, on his knees as the count reached eight. He stared vacantly at ringside and he tried, once again, to get to his feet. He was up, but swaying, at nine and just as the count reached ten, referee Mercante waved his arms over his head calling a halt and went to Mathis and threw a solicitous arm around the big man’s shoulder.
    â€œThe man said ‘Nine, ten,’ and I said, ‘Eleven, twelve . . .,’ ” Frazier quipped later. Officially, it was a TKO in 2:33 of the eleventh round, but there was no doubt as to the outcome. Joe Frazier was heavyweight champion of the world . . . at least he was the heavyweight champion in the states of New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maine, Texas, and Massachusetts.
    Later, in the dressing room, they asked Frazier if he felt like the champ. Joe bristled. He’d been annoyed that certain members of the press, particularly those in his hometown of Philadelphia, were reluctant to give him the credit Joe believed he deserved. “Just what did that look like to you out there?” he shot back, his words a Joe Frazier hook to the jaw.
    While Joe exulted in his new role, even if his title was recognized in only six states, the WBA’s tournament labored along to its conclusion. On April 27, 1968, fifty-four days after Frazier won his crown and thirteen months after it started, the tournament came to an end with Jimmy Ellis winning the title in a fifteen-round decision over Jerry Quarry in Oakland, California.
    The natural match was between Frazier and Ellis to clear up the muddled heavyweight picture. But efforts to get the two champions into the same ring would be fruitless for almost two years. In that time, Ellis defended his title only once, beating Floyd Patterson in a disputed fifteen-round decision in Stockholm on September 14, 1968.
    Yank Durham, on the other hand, kept his champion active. On June 24, 1968, just sixteen weeks after he won his title, Frazier kayoed Mexican champion Manuel Ramos in two rounds with a brutal attack in the Garden. Six months later, Joe handed Oscar Bonavena a terrible fifteen-round beating in Philadelphia. Bonavena’s only consolation was that he had completed twenty-five rounds of boxing against Frazier and never left his feet.
    On April 22, 1969, in Houston, Texas, Frazier recorded the second fastest knockout in a heavyweight championship fight when he