BoxRec

I watched this fight yesterday. It was supposedly a somewhat controversial decision. I scored it to see how I personally had it. Well, Bonavena obviously won the 2nd round big, but Frazier won most of the other rounds. Bonavena was very muscular, extremely strong. It was apparent he was stronger than Frazier. He always bulled him all around the ring. But while Bonavena was the one pushing Frazier back, Frazier just kept punching as he went backwards, making it of very little importance that Bonavena was able to push him around. Frazier hit low many, many times, and I was surprised they didn't take a point away. Bonavena had good skills and was able to fight Frazier pretty well on the move, but Smokin' Joe worked his body, headbutted some, and pounded his head immensely. Frazier threw and landed more, I believe, and was the aggressor throughout the fight. He also displayed tremendous heart in rallying after being nearly knocked out in the 2nd round. I had it a draw or for Frazier by one point, personally. I think the split decision for Frazier was fair. How did everyone else score the fight?

As the fight was scored on a round winner/loser basis I have Frazier winning something like 6-4 or 5-4-1. If the fight was scored under the modern 10-point-must-system Bonavena would have won the second round 10-7 and been the winner. It was a close fight, what would have happened to Fraziers progress if he had lost a decision?
Søren Woller

I don´t think that Floyd Patterson handled Bonavena easily, he was actually on the floor twice. Floyd did very well to win a difficult fight (like he also did against George Chuvalo). Does anyone know the score? On my copy of the fight the reading of the scorecards is not audible.

Søren Woller

I don't recall Patterson being down against Bonavena either.

Watch the fight
Søren Woller

Correction:
Floyd Patterson was only floored once by Oscar Bonavena. In the forth round by a left hand. He was up early (about 2) and took a standing mandatory 8 count. My mistake.
The score is announced as unanimous, but I cannot hear the scores, does anyone know?
Søren Woller

sorry for bringin this thread up, but i just saw the fight

i'm suprised at how close the judges had it.......using the old system i scored it something like 7-3 for Frazier......he landed the hardest punches that really knocked Bonavena back....plus there's his body attack....and agression

Joe frazier hit Oscar low repeatedly during there first fight, but a point was not deducted. I always wonder if the cache' of being an Olympic Champ
had anything to do with it.

According to the New York Times, Patterson slipped to the floor facefirst in the 4th. Refreee Johnny Lobianco ruled it a knockdown though. Scores were; 5-4-1, 6-4, 7-2-1 all for Patterson. Bonavena evidently suffered a broken hand in the bout as well. According to the article, it appeared that Bonavena was hurt briefly by a left hook in the 9th. The bout drew 17,958 fans to the Garden, pretty impressive for a non-title bout during the 70's.

tegenm wrote:According to the New York Times, Patterson slipped to the floor facefirst in the 4th. Refreee Johnny Lobianco ruled it a knockdown though. Scores were; 5-4-1, 6-4, 7-2-1 all for Patterson. Bonavena evidently suffered a broken hand in the bout as well. According to the article, it appeared that Bonavena was hurt briefly by a left hook in the 9th. The bout drew 17,958 fans to the Garden, pretty impressive for a non-title bout during the 70's.

17000 fans for a ntb at the garden.

Man, I long for those days again.

The term "Philadelphia fighter" often conjures visions of the fictional Rocky Balboa or the very human Joe Frazier. In a sense, those two are one and the same. Stallone was inspired by Ali-Wepner to write the movie, but models the action on Ali-Frazier. Balboa is obviously a white, southpaw version of Joe Frazier, given his self-effacing humour, big left hooks to the body and inability to match Apollo Creed's razor-sharp wit. Furthermore, the spartan training methods are filmed in Philadelphia, including the famous scene of Balboa running up the Art Museum steps and the Apollo Creed fight at The Spectrum, where Frazier is introduced into the ring and berated by Creed as Ali would have berated him.
Sly greatly admired Frazier. Stallone grew up mainly in Hell's Kitchen in NYC, and most of what he knew of boxing he knew from the great Ali-Frazier feud. What Stallone wouldn't have known is an earlier altercation Frazier had endured in the sport he loved. As a schoolboy, Joe had met the great Philadelphia light-heavyweight Harold Johnson. Frazier idolized Johnson, who fought a series of classic fights with Archie Moore in the 1950's when Frazier was growing up and would go on to win the world light-heavyweight title in the early 60's. At the same time, Joe was doing well himself and looking ahead to the Tokyo Olympics. Frazier looked up Johnson for advice and was told that the Olympics was a crock of shit and that he should turn pro immediately (late 1962). He shouldn't worry if he might take a few lumps on the way up; that was the learning process. A fighter fights.
Johnson was always his own man, and cared not a jot for what anyone thought or said of him. But Joe Frazier was a surprisingly sensitive young man. He wanted to be admired and loved, most of all by Johnson. Plus, he had other interests, such as his love of soul music. The life of anonymity and drudgery that Johnson offered was alien to this.
Joe listened to himself. He burst onto the national scene as Olympic heavyweight champ two years later, but a broken thumb he suffered in the semi-final of the Games caused Frazier to lay off for nearly a year afterwards. But a bust thumb doesn't take a year to mend. Frazier was dithering on how to proceed. By this point, he was certainly not going to take the Johnson route of self-management and Spartanism, and yet Joe was never entirely comfortable alienating himself from the Johnson ethic neither.
When he did turn pro, Frazier chose syndicate management, a compendium of Philadelphia businessmen calling themselves Cloverlay Incorporated. Johnson publicly reviled Frazier for handing his career over to white men in suits. A fighter manages his own career and doesn't turn it over to men in suits he said. It was conduct unbecoming of a Philly fighter.
Joe would never shed himself of the hurt of Harold's snub. Much of the hatred he felt towards Ali stemmed from that same hurt. Joe admired Ali as he admired Johnson, but both turned against him.
Still, Cloverlay had an Olympic champ on their hands, and a crowd-pleasing, in-your face destroyer to boot. Frazier's punching power gave immediate credibility to Sir Smoke as the one who might someday beat Ali. The PR dimensions of the thing were obvious. Frazier was promoted as the "anti-Ali;" sober, reflective, charitable; a perfect contrast to the superannuated and motormouthed Louisville Lip, and the perfect man to uphold the legacy of Sullivan, Dempsey, Louis and Marciano.
While the words "Muslim" and later "draft" were never uttered in any Cloverlay release, they were never too far from the surface. Joe Frazier had both the ability to take Ali and the moral fibre to meet the public's expectations of the heavyweight champ.
In building Frazier's ring career, their strategy was just as obvious and just as obviously cribbed from Cassius Clay and the Louisville group that managed him in the early 60's. Clay began his career in Louisville against Tunney Hunsaker, built up a record of KOs against third rate opposition and occasionally faced opponents that would entice notice from the weekly TV boxing shows.
Frazier opened his career in Philly with a one round KO of Woody Goss on 16 August 1965 and proceeded through 11 straight KOs of such luminaries as Dick Wipperman, Charlie Polite, and Al Jones. It was 1966, and plans to build to an Ali fight for 1968 or 1969 were on schedule. But events were causing a change in Cloverlay's timetable. The champion's impending induction into the US Army meant that the champ might not be available much past the Spring of 1967. And who knew when Ali would be available again! Or if! The Cloverlay investors approached Joe's trainer Yank Durham about having Smokin' Joe ready for a title fight within months.
Durham thought it was the investors who had been "smokin.'"
Frazier's physique was such that his defence was always going to be problematic. He was only 5'11" and had a reach of 73." Durham had taught his protege a variety of head movements, slip techniques and a bob and weave style. Frazier had yet to master these teachings, and the long and short of it was, Joe was simply always going to have to take a few to get inside a taller, talented opponent. Moreover, If Frazier was to fight Ali by the next Spring he'd have to first defeat two or three ranked contenders.
Cloverlay secured an option with the NBC network for a September 1966 bout at the Garden between Joe and the young Argentinian, Oscar Bonavena. Durham hit the roof at the news. Joe simply was not ready. Durham had been looking for a fight against George "Scrapiron" Johnson, a man with a granite chin but no power. Bonavena was big, young, strong and powerful, if slow and stylistically challenged. Durham thought it the wrong match at the wrong time for Joe and had the potential to be a disaster. But Cloverlay was undaunted, and Cloverlay had the only say.
The Bonavena fight very nearly turned into the disaster that Durham feared. Down twice in round one, Frazier showed courage to survive and great determination to slug it out with "Ringo", but never managed to hurt him once. He scraped home on a 10-round decision that was only attainable through the 'Rounds' scoring system in New York at the time. The verdict from the boxing press was quick. Frazier was promising and powerful, and had showed great courage to survive the first round. But he was still too raw, still too easily hit. He would need more seasoning before he would be a credible threat to the great Ali.
In June, 1967, Ali refused induction and was immediately stripped of the title by the WBA, the pre-eminent governing body of the time. Joe Frazier was invited to participate in an eight-man elimination tournament to name Ali's successor. But to win the tournament meant having to beat three credible opponents for short money. Neither Durham nor Cloverlay cottoned to that, so Joe sat the tourney out in favor of the warhorse tour. But even before the WBA tournament was resolved, the New York Commission announced that it would not recognize its winner. On March 4, 1968 Joe Frazier knocked out Buster Mathis in 11 rounds to become the Heavyweight Champion of New York State. He would unify the title within two years by destroying the WBA tournament's winner, Jimmy Ellis.

Under NY's old -- and very good -- scoring system -- one judge had it 5-5 in rounds with Bonavena a 7-5 winner on points because of the knockdown.

I beleive the NY system one of the best -- extra points -- knockdowns, etc, came into play if the rounds were even.



AND
One poster mentions Cloverlay as Frazier's management company -- one of the shareholders was none other than HBO's Larry Merchant; another was, I think, Butch Lewis's father.

Mike