97 days after 'Fight of the Century', champion boxer failed to draw crowds to concert in Cork

Doing some research, I found myself trawling through the display ads on the entertainment page of the Evening Echo dated Thursday, June 10, 1971. The film Kelly’s Heroes, starring Clint Eastwood, was playing its last three days at the Capitol Cinema. A concert by Rory Gallagher at the Savoy Cinema was being advertised for the following week, as was a new show by the legendary Cork comedy troupe The Swans at the Opera House. At The Stardust Club, The Chessmen Showband would be playing the following Sunday night.

Below the ad for The Stardust Club, I was stunned to find an ad for a concert at the City Hall that same Sunday, June 13: Joe Frazier and The Knockouts. And even more surprising was the display ad directly below this: Joe Frazier and The Knockouts, Redbarn Ballroom, 10-2.30. Two shows in one night in Cork!

This was extraordinary. Not only was I not aware that Joe Frazier, the reigning world heavyweight champion of the world at the time, had a sideline as a soul singer, but also that he had brought his band to Ireland a mere three months after fighting in what was then the biggest boxing match ever staged.

On March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden, New York, Joe Frazier fought Muhammad Ali in what was billed The Fight of the Century. Ali was returning to the ring after his long ban following his avoidance of the military draft. This would be the first of three legendary fights between the two, culminating in The Thrilla in Manila in 1975.

But what topped all that for me was that Frazier’s concert tour of Ireland in the wake of the Fight of the Century had been a disaster at the box office. How did this happen?

Joseph William Frazier was born in rural Beaufort, South Carolina, on January 12, 1944.

He was the youngest child in his family. It was Joe’s uncle, impressed by his nephew’s strong physique, who suggested that the boy should take up boxing.

At 15, Joe climbed on a Greyhound Bus and moved to Philadelphia, where he worked in a slaughterhouse. He quickly established himself as an amateur boxer to the point where, at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, he won a Gold Medal as a heavyweight. A career as a pro boxer was a certainty, and Joe pursued it with dogged determination.

It has often been suggested that Joe Frazier had the misfortune of living and fighting in the shadow of Muhammad Ali. But when Ali, the reigning World Heavyweight Champion, was banned from the ring and stripped of his titles in 1967, it presented Frazier with an extraordinary opportunity.

In a title decider, Frazier knocked out Buster Mathis in the 11th round. Smokin’ Joe-as he had been christened by his coach Yank Durham, he said-had gone from being a child picking vegetables in South Carolina to World Champion.

When the Supreme Court reversed Ali’s ban in 1971, destiny demanded the inevitable Frazier-Ali showdown.

The Fight of the Century was watched by a global audience of 300 million. Not only was it the biggest bout in history, but it was the most anticipated sporting event ever.

In the run-in, Ali, the supreme showman and publicist, had dismissed Frazier.

But in the ring, Frazier brought all his resources to bear: his crouching, aggressive style, his extraordinary ability to absorb punishment, and his formidable left hook. He used it to devastating effect against Ali. The fight went the full distance, and Frazier won it in a unanimous decision by the judges. It was Ali’s first defeat.

Fast forward exactly 97 days later and Joe Frazier was in Cork with his band The Knockouts, as part of a European tour.

The then-champ was once asked what he would like to do beyond boxing. He didn’t hesitate. ‘Singing, that’s what I want to do. Singing is what it’s all about.’ And he formed a band to do just that in the late 1960s, and they released a clutch of singles.

However, Joe Frazier and The Knockout’s 1971 tour of Ireland was a commercial failure.

Under the heading ‘Heavyweight drew a ‘lightweight’ Cork audience,’ the Cork Examiner reported on Monday, 14 June 1971 that the concert at the City Hall had only 40 ticket sales.

The report went on to describe how the previous night, at the City Theatre in Limerick, Frazier refused to go on stage because only 55 tickets had been sold.

Similar stories would emerge from around the country.

High ticket prices were cited as one of the reasons for the very poor attendance. Though Decimalisation Day had been February 15, 1971, the ticket price for the City Hall concert was advertised as being 22 shillings. Tickets to see The Chessmen at the Stardust that same night were 50p, the equivalent of 10 Shillings in old money.

The Evening Echo, in a piece entitled ‘A K.O. For Frazier’ expressed the view that ‘people apparently were just not interested in paying 100p or more to hear a boxer sing.’

Frazier was a slugger as a boxer. Unlike the elegant dancer that Ali had been, Frazier was lacking in finesse. It was brawn first and last.

Was that one of the reasons Frazier embraced being a performer? He possessed a passable singing voice, but as can be seen in videos, he did have a groove about him. And his enjoyment of the music is infectious. Did he hope that being the leader of a band would alter the perception of him as being the boxing guerrilla Ali always dismissed him as being? The general public seemed not to have sufficient interest to find out.

While Frazier had defeated Ali in the Fight of the Century 97 days before he stepped on the stage of the City Hall in Cork, it was his opponent who captured the public imagination and not him, the champion.

Ali’s status in 1971 was approaching mythic proportions. And Ali’s unique charisma radiated across the universe via television.

Frazier may have been one of the greatest boxers of all time, but he knew he could not compete with Ali where personality was concerned, and, in fairness to him, he never tried to.

There were other compensations for him. One was his band, The Knockouts. Another was one of his prized possessions, his maroon Cadillac with two white telephones in it. ‘I’ve got some nice things with my boxing money,’ Frazier told a reporter.

Showing at the Lee Cinema that same week in June 1971 was a film entitled Flaming Frontiers-an apt encapsulation of Smokin’ Joe Frazier and his nemesis, Mohammad Ali, their careers being all about pushing the boundaries, sporting and otherwise.

While Ali permeated the consciousness of the world forever afterwards, Frazier will be remembered for his honest but explosive endeavours in the ring and being the first to defeat Ali. That will always be enough.

This story originally appeared in the 2025 Holly Bough.