Joe Frazier's confidant has found a home with UFC

Burt Watson speaks in a gravelly voice and says it wasn't always like that. His job changed his voice, he said. Most weekends, somewhere in the world, this West Philadelphia native, an Overbrook High graduate, starts yelling, "Let's roll!"

The stars of the Ultimate Fighting Championship know Watson's yell means it's fight time.

How Watson wound up as UFC's site coordinator - baby-sitter to the stars, he calls it - is a tale that began four decades ago, on a Manhattan street. Walking along, Watson said, he saw two cars collide. The heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Frazier, emerged from one of the cars.

The two Philly guys struck up a conversation on the sidewalk, Watson said. Just out of the Marines, working as a clothing fabric salesman in Manhattan, Watson gave Frazier his number.

"You know what? He called me," Watson said. "We communicated a little and became friends."

Years after that, after Frazier retired, Watson became his business manager. That led to jobs as site coordinator for promoters such as Don King and Butch Lewis, and eventually to UFC.

Home for Watson now is usually the road. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, he was in Brazil, British Columbia, New Zealand, Ireland, Costa Rica, and China. Also, Albuquerque; San Antonio; Las Vegas; Atlantic City; and Bangor, Maine. He's currently in Japan.

When he gets home, "I've lived in this neighborhood for maybe 25 years," Watson said, sitting in his home office on Conshohocken Avenue. In that office, one photograph shows six men. Five are former world heavyweight champions: George Foreman next to Joe Frazier, then Muhammad Ali, Ken Norton, and Larry Holmes. In the middle of them, Burt Watson.

After meeting Frazier, Watson said he didn't get into his inner circle right away.

"Joe was the kind who would pick up stray pets," Watson said. "He would pick up a strange dog and bring it home. I was a strange dog he picked up."

Eventually, after Frazier retired, Watson said to him, "You're either going to have to leave me the hell alone or give me a job."

That may be one of the great job pitches. At the time, Watson lived in an apartment on Presidential Boulevard. Frazier would come over, Watson said, but would get bothered by needing to park his car, get rung in through security, get in the elevator, etc.

So they arranged for Watson to move around the corner, to a first-floor apartment, where the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world would knock on a window late at night. Frazier wouldn't wait for a response, just open it up and climb in. "My wife, she knew who it was," Watson said.

Branching out from Frazier, Watson's path to UFC went through Don King and other promoters, starting with Butch Lewis. One time, Watson coordinated a Don King production in Monterrey, Mexico, and "he gave me 60 people to work with me and none of them spoke English."

He's been with UFC for a dozen years. Of his own role, Watson said, "I pull the plow. I plant the seed and make it grow. I do anything and everything for the fighters in the course of the week to see to it that they have a comfort level to get in that cage on Saturday night."

He sets up the training rooms, drives from the hotel to the arena, and from the arena to the hospital, timing the drives. There are a thousand details. And when it's time to fight, UFC fighters know it starts with a Burt Watson yell.

"Let's roll - that's almost a curse," Watson said. "We'd go to an event and I would be running up and down, all around, into the lockerroom. . . . I said, 'There's got to be an easier way to do this.' We were in MGM, I think it was, I said, 'I'm not running to them dressing rooms anymore.' That's when I started screaming. All right, baby, it's time to roll. We're rolling!"

If people know Watson's background, they ask about the man he first met on the street. Even the UFC guys want to know. For instance: Did anything make Frazier mad?

"Any mention of Muhammad Ali's greatness, and no mention of how Frazier contributed to that and made it all happen," Watson said.

Not a new theme, obviously, when it comes to Ali and Frazier. Watson just learned it from the passenger seat of Frazier's car when he brought up Ali and paid the Greatest a compliment.

"We stopped for gas and he left me for about an hour before he came back," Watson said. "All he said was 'Next time, think.' I knew what he meant."