Boxing great and Ex-Heavyweight Champ Joe Frazier dies of cancer at 67

Joe frazier

   Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champion whose furious and intensely personal fights with a taunting Muhammad Ali endure as an epic rivalry in boxing history, died Monday night. He was 67.

His business representative, Leslie Wolff, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Frazier had liver cancer and that he had entered hospice care.

Joe frazier knocked down muhammed ali

    Known as Smokin’ Joe, Frazier stalked his opponents around the ring with a crouching, relentless attack — his head low and bobbing, his broad, powerful shoulders hunched — as he bore down on them with an onslaught of withering jabs and crushing body blows, setting them up for his devastating left hook.

It was an overpowering modus operandi that led to versions of the heavyweight crown from 1968 to 1973. Frazier won 32 fights in all, 27 by knockouts, losing four times — twice to Ali in furious bouts and twice to George Foreman.