"I want to help my brother-man. That's why I put the gym here," Joe Frazier says, kicking shut the door to his office, which sits above the Frazier Gym in North Philadelphia. The gym looks out on North Broad Street, in a neighborhood strewn with single-parent homes. Truant school children sell crack on street corners, and boarded-up buildings are visibly crumbling, brick by brick. "You get out here and say the wrong thing out of your mouth, somebody'll shoot you," Frazier says.
The legendary boxer himself was once a tough kid from a tough place. Before he toppled Muhammad Ali in the "Fight of the Century," he grew up in downtrodden Laurel Bay, South Carolina with his parents, Rubin and Dolly. Joe farmed the land with Rubin by day, and by night he helped with the underground liquor business, delivering Rubin's locally popular "white lightning," which he sold by the gallon.
"Right from the beginning it was hell," Frazier says.
In Mark Kram's book Ghosts of Manila, the Sports Illustrated reporter describes Joe's experience on the Bellamy farm, where he and his father worked. Young Frazier witnessed the beating of a black peer by one of the landowners, and was deeply troubled by such injustices, frustrated with what he called simply "the problems between the blacks and the whites." Laurel Bay, South Carolina had little or no upward mobility to offer a young black man.
At age 15, Frazier left South Carolina on a Greyhound Bus, settling with his older brother Tom in New York. Work was hard to find, and Frazier found alternate means of income. He and his friends would "touch off and steal cars," he says.
But the would-be Heavyweight Champion of the World wanted legitimacy; he wanted more for himself than small-time vehicle theft could provide.
"I kept on hearing bells that I didn't see," Frazier says. "There were things that I wanted that weren't there."
Frazier finally "saw his bells" in the boxing ring. He settled anew in Philadelphia, where the PAL (Police Athletic League) turned him into a fighter. Frazier worked in a local slaughterhouse to support himself, but boxing soon became Frazier's career. He won a Gold Medal in the Tokyo Olympics. He beat Buster Mathis to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World. And he became the first person to defeat Muhammad Ali, when he toppled Ali in what they called "The Fight of the Century," a 15th round unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden.
"Frazier Outpoints Ali and Keeps Title; Champion Floors His Rival With Left Hook in the 15th; Loser Fails in Plan To Wear Foe Down," read the New York Times headline on March 9, 1971.
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When Frazier bought the gym on North Broad Street 38 years ago, he did so because he wanted young people in the neighborhood to transcend hardship as he had -- he wanted young men and women to become world champions in their own right. "The PAL was there for me," Frazier says, and he wants to provide the same service for the next generation of Philadelphia youth.
"The fact that the gym is in North Philly is a testimony to how real they are," Frazier Gym alumnus Scott Dixon says. "Most people, when they make it, move out of the neighborhood."
When Dixon was growing up, he lived seven or eight blocks from the Frazier Gym. Before he met Joe and his influential son, Marvis Frazier, Dixon was dealing drugs and developing a criminal record. The North Philly native had a hardened mentality. "I wanted to get money and didn't care how I got it," he recalls.
"Smoke and Marvis gave me some dignity. They gave me the focus I needed. They taught me how to be a man. They taught me the meaning of hard work."
The Fraziers are well known in the neighborhood. Barred windows afford Broad Street passers-by a glimpse onto the gym floor. North Philly parents remember the famous Ali-Frazier rivalry. They excitedly bring their sons -- and sometimes their daugters -- to meet and train with the legendary boxer's team.
On the gym floor, curious neighbors stop to see the action. A local fireman stops by during his lunch break, leaning over the railing, gazing at a young trainee as he hits the speed bag. "What you weigh, man?" he calls. And the young trainee answers proudly, "A buck twenty-five."
Local youths know that the "Frazier option" is available to them, Dixon says, "but a lot won't avail themselves of it."
The Fraziers are proactive in the community -- they approach the youth as soon as they walk in the door, sometimes right out on the street.
When a boy comes into the gym with his father, Joe Frazier, unmistakable in his patina gold "Smoke" medallion, approaches him. "Where's your belt," he asks him. "You ain't got a belt? We gotta' do something about that."
"Kids can't be walkin' around with their pants all hanging down their rear," Frazier says. "I don't pity on nobody. I train them just the way I trained myself."
He treats every kid that comes into the gym as if he were his own son. "If your hair's not combed, if you got plats and braids in your hair, if you've got an earring in your ear -- 'Hey, you're taking that out.'"
"He took guys off the street and made them fighters ... made them into respectable young men," Scott Dixon says.
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Rev. Marvis Frazier, Joe's son, helps his father run the gym. Marvis himself is a notable ex-fighter who fought Tyson and Holmes.
"Pop builds more than just fighters; he builds life champions," Marvis says. "We've got guys who have gone on to be computer consultants, accountants, Navy Seals, all because of what he believes. He believes in helping your brother and your sister. When you raise the hurting, the poor, then you raise everything else in a society. And that's what he's been trying to do here for the last 38 years."
"Instead of a kid standing on a corner and selling a crack vile, and a lot of kids in this neighborhood are subject to that happening, Joe Frazier has a place here ... to build self-esteem."
Many of the youths that come into the Frazier Gym have never been outside of Philadelphia; they see their neighborhood and their city as a dead end.
The Frazier Gym is under the jurisdiction of the 22nd District of the Philadelphia Police Department, a district that consistently reports some of the highest crime counts in the city. There were 30 murders, 50 rapes and 623 aggravated assaults in '03, according to the Philadelphia Police Department. This occurred in the relatively small 2.19 mile area of the 22nd District, which houses 14 elementary schools, one parochial school and two high schools.
As a young man in South Carolina, Joe Frazier said to himself, "Man, there's something better than what I'm doing here down in the South." The consequences of that decision were immense: an Olympic Gold Medal, a Heavyweight World Championship. He wants his fighters to realize the same thing; he wants neighborhood kids to realize that there is more out there than what they encounter every day on the streets.
"Not every kid that comes in here is going to be a Muhammad Ali or a Joe Frazier," Marvis Frazier says. "But Pop gives the kids the opportunity to go and see the world, to be exposed to other things so that they will learn culture and know that living how they're living is not the end of it. After these kids have proven this is what they really want to do, Mr. Frazier cuts their dues, he gives them shoes, he gives them tape, he gives them hand wraps ... that is, if they really want to be a champion."
Former boxer Ralph Mitchell would catch the bus to the Frazier Gym when he was 17. He came from a single-parent home in Philadelphia's West Oak Lane neighborhood.
"From day one Marvis and Joe adopted me into the family," Mitchell says. "Marvis would come to the house and talk to my mother about me. Over Christmas [and] Thanksgiving, I would be right there with the Fraziers just like I was family."
"I missed a lot of things growing up without a father, but they instilled a type of ethics in me," the 32 year-old says.
Mitchell lost his home a few years ago, and the Fraziers allowed him to live above the gym for free.
"When Joe found out that I didn't have anywhere to go, he stayed up until 2 a.m. to help me clear out a spot over the gym," Mitchell says. The aspiring boxer lived there for nearly two years.
"Without their help, I just don't feel that I would have the outlook on life [that I do]." It was only through the help of the Fraziers, Mitchell claims, that he achieved what he wanted in boxing and his career. "They gave me a place where I could focus."
Mitchell now works as a computer programmer in Princeton, New Jersey. He fought on the Fort Bragg boxing team, but was forced to leave boxing "due to a fallen arch," he explains. He was saddened by the loss of boxing, but he is excited about his career and a new business he is starting called "Digital Dream." He owes his professional success, he believes, to the Fraziers.
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Membership at the Frazier Gym is $25, but Joe Frazier has made exceptions more than once for needy young men and women --the gym is receptive to both male and female boxers. Jacqui "Sister Smoke" Frazier-Lyde, Joe's daughter, learned to fight there. She went on to fight Ali's daughter, Laila Ali, in a highly touted bout.
At the gym, young boxers work under the tutelage of professionals. "That's what makes our gym here number one," Frazier says. "We've all been there before. He's been there [gesturing to Marvis]. I've been there. And we teach the young men and young ladies right there on the floor."
The gym has produced myriad big name fighters, Tyrell Biggs and Bam Bam Hines among them. Olympic Gold medalist Meldrick Taylor was a product of the Frazier Gym.
Frazier champions an intercultural understanding in sports competitions and beyond. "I just want to make sure," he says, "that my brother -- my white brother, my Puerto Rican brother, my African brother, my Muslim brother, my Jewish brother -- can further their ability in boxing. That's why I'm here. I grew up through the animosity, the bigotry, the hatred. I just want to make things good for the younger generation."
"What Mr. Frazier does is not just about boxing," Marvis Frazier says. "Boxing is short lived, but it's one platform that helps build respect." And self confidence, too. "Maybe if kids can learn to hit that heavy bag, maybe they can also learn to read a little better."
City life may be improving. The city's Uniform Crime Report showed a significant decrease in major crimes (total murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, thefts and auto thefts) reported between '95 and '03. The total number of major crimes across the city fell from 108,278 to 83,074. But in the 22nd District, the year's crime count rose from 2,857 in '95 to 2,893 in '03, including a peak in '99 at 3493 major crimes reported.
For youth in the 22nd District, the presence of a boxing gym can't mask the reality of poverty and crime. But there are other organizations making an effort in the North Philadelphia community. Three PALs (Police Athletic Leagues) and four City of Philadelphia Recreation Centers are located in the 22nd District. The proximity of the ever-expanding, improving Temple University campus offers resources to neighborhood youth.
Frazier's gym "gives young people something to do," he says humbly. More than that, the gym gives kids the opportunity to learn boxing from strong, concerned mentors. When a youth first walks in the door to Frazier's gym, he has no idea of the regiment he is about to undertake. Frazier himself makes a point of warning newcomers. "Ass kickin' you gonna' give," he tells them, "but ass kickin' you gonna' receive, too." And if they still want to box, the Frazier team wants to teach them.
