Smokin' Joe Frazier, 67, Dies

Muhammad Ali's fiercest rival succumbs to cancer – one of the few fights the man ever lost.

Smokin' Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champion of the world and Muhammad Ali's greatest rival, has died at the age of 67 due to cancer. Frazier, a South Carolina native, won an Olympic gold medal in 1964 before going professional and setting his sights on the sport's finest athlete, Muhammad Ali. The two first tangled in 1971 at New York's Madison Square Garden, with Frazier becoming the first man to defeat Ali after a bloody and beautiful 15 rounds that has since become known as the "fight of the century." The two would battle again for 12 rounds in 1974, with Ali emerging victorious, and yet again in "The Thrilla in Manila," when the sport's two biggest stars fought one last time in the Philippines in 1975. After 14 brutal rounds, Frazier's trainer held the boxer back from going at it again, as Frazier had been nearly blinded in the fight. At the time, Ali said that fight was the closest he had ever been to death. Compared to Ali's brazen outspokenness, Frazier was far more reserved and soft-spoken. The two would remain nemeses long into retirement before eventually reaching a detente in recent years. Frazier retired from boxing in 1976 with a record of 32-4-1, and lived out the rest of his life in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia.