Originally published December 4, 1981.
CHICAGO - He has been too long gone, and the fire that made him Smokin' Joe is only a feeble flicker now.
The judges were kind, generous to a fault, perhaps scoring out of nostalgia. They gave Joe Frazier a draw last night against Jumbo Cummings in a clumsy 10-rounder that, lamentably, went the distance.
There is, of course, no question about his courage, his gallantry. But he is a shot fighter, and even the urgent, impassioned screams of his fans who gathered in a drafty old barn of a building to watch his return could not change that.
Joe Frazier made a comeback, but the rust was as thick as his waist, which bulged and ballooned over his long purple trunks.
Against a skilled boxer, he never would have lasted. He was as willing as ever, still refusing to take a backward step, but a fighter with any sort of a jab would cut him to pieces.
Jumbo Cummings is ponderous and slow. His physique is marvelously sculpted, but it is muscle-bound, and by the second round he was wind- ed. And yet for all his rawness, you could make quite an argument that he won.
After the third round, John F.X. Condon, president of Madison Square Garden Boxing, turned and said, sadly: "Joe's got no legs. The legs are gone all the way right now."
He said it with genuine regret because he is fond of Frazier, an affection born of the salad days when they both made a lot of money together. He made his statement with the heaviness of a man delivering a eulogy about a good friend who has passed on.
The fight was held in the International Amphitheater, a structure with all the lighting of a coal mine. Last month, it was used for a livestock exposition, and the pungent aroma lingers still. The ring was ramshackle, ecurity ineffective, the promotion amateurish. It was, all in all, a far cry
from the glory years when Smokin' Joe was heavyweight champion of the world.
It had been 65 months since he had last fought, and the effects of that retirement, and of the inexorable process in humans known as aging, were sorely evident. His reflexes have dulled and his timing is off. That trademark left hook, the punch that used to paralyze, was wild most of the night.
Oh, he caught Cummings a few times, staggered him, but he could never finish him off, and that may have been the most telling sign of how far he has slipped. For Cummings was ripe for the taking.
As always, Joe Frazier was right in front of his man. "Breathing on him" is the way he puts it. But he is also there to be hit, and he was off-balance last night.
By the first round, he was leaking a trickle of blood from his nose. Later he bled from the mouth. Nicks and lumps blossomed around both eyes. In the eighth round, Cummings pounded him into a corner and cannonaded him with a two-fisted barrage that had him hanging on desperately.
This was not scientific in any sense. It was crude, two men obviously laboring, one too old and too slow, the other too unschooled, running on a tank that hit empty very early.
The people still remember Joe Frazier, still adore him. They chanted his name, long and loud. Maybe that is what he missed, what made him come back.
It was a regrettable decision. He looked worse than even the most hardened skeptics had feared.
The decision of a draw was unfortunate, mainly because it may encourage Joe Frazier to try one more time. He shouldn't. Last night surely proved that once is more than enough.