A gripping, all-access biography of Joe Frazier, whose rivalry with Muhammad Ali riveted boxing fans and whose legacy like a figure in American sports and society endures.

History can remember the rivalry of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali as you for the age range, a trilogy of extraordinary fights that transcended the globe of sports and crossed into a sociocultural play that divided the country.

Joe Frazier was a more complex figure than just his rivalry with Ali indicate. Within this riveting about Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier and nuanced portrayal, acclaimed sports activities writer Tag Kram, Jr. unlinks Frazier from Ali as well as for the very first time gives a full-bodied accounting of Frazier’s life, a journey that started as the youngest of thirteen kids packed in small farm home, encountering the bigotry and oppression from the Jim Crow South, and continuing along with his voyage north at age group fifteen to build up being 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 comes after the boxer through his retirement in 1981, exploring his relationship along with his kid, the would-be heavyweight Marvis, and his fragmented home life aswell as the uneasy place that Ali continuing to take up in his thoughts.

A propulsive and richly textured narrative that is also a robust story about race and class in the us, Smokin’ Joe is unrivaled in its scope, depth, and gain access to and guarantees to be the definitive biography of a towering American physique whose existence was galvanized by conflict and whose mark has proven long lasting.