Joe Frazier quotes

Joe Frazier was an American professional boxer and Olympic gold medalist, renowned for his fierce fighting style and historic rivalry with Muhammad Ali. His relentless pressure and powerful left hook made him a dominant force in heavyweight boxing during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He is remembered as one of the greatest heavyweights in boxing history and an icon of determination. Here are 28 of his quotes:

Ali always said I would be nothing without him, but who would he have been without me?

Joe Frazier

Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people.

Joe Frazier

A sound body keeps a sound mind.

Joe Frazier

Ali kept calling me ugly, but I never thought of myself as being any uglier than him, I have 11 babies, somebody thought I was cute.

Joe Frazier

I had a job to do in the ring, and the businessmen around me had a job to do outside the ring, I did my job by beating up most of the guys they put in front of me and staying in shape, but the people I trusted didn't do their jobs.

Joe Frazier

I don't think a man has to go around shouting and play-acting to prove he is something. And a real man don't go around putting other guys down, trampling their feelings in the dirt, making out they're nothing.

Joe Frazier

I am who I am, and yes, I whipped Ali all three times.

Joe Frazier

I want to hit him, step away and watch him hurt. I want his heart.

Joe Frazier

I wasn't a big guy. People thought the big guys would eat me up. But it was the other way around. I loved to fight bigger guys.

Joe Frazier

I had my Olympic gold medal cut up into eleven pieces. Gave all eleven of my kids a piece. It'll come together again when they put me down.

Joe Frazier

When I go out there, I have no pity on my brother. I am out there to win.

Joe Frazier

The boxing game has been good, so we need to give back. We have to teach young men how to be men.

Joe Frazier

Ali even told me in the ring, 'You can't beat me - I'm your Lord.' I just told him, 'Lord, you're in the wrong place tonight.'

Joe Frazier

My left eye went when I was young. I was working the speed bag, and some steel went in the eye and scratched it to pieces. I was kinda blind in that eye.

Joe Frazier

Work is the only meanin' I've ever known.

Joe Frazier

I grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina, in a six-room farmhouse with a couple of leaning posts to keep it from fallin'. I came up in a time when men were men.

Joe Frazier

The way I fight, it's not me beatin' the man. I make the man whip himself.

Joe Frazier

Joe Frazier's life didn't start with Ali. I was a Golden Gloves champ. Gold medal in Tokyo '64. Heavyweight champion of the world long before I fought Ali in the Garden.

Joe Frazier

Twenty years I've been fighting Ali, and I still want to take him apart piece by piece and send him back to Jesus.

Joe Frazier

I hated Ali. God might not like me talking that way, but it's in my heart.

Joe Frazier

My family's support and the negative environment of the day toward blacks in South Carolina became the forces that led me out of the South - first to New York, then to Philadelphia, where I found opportunity in the form of a PAL gym and my trainer, Yank Durham.

Joe Frazier

There are places on a man's head that are as hard as a rock. Your head's actually stronger than your body. And you don't have too many instruments up there workin'.

Joe Frazier