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referee Zach Clayton decided he had gone along with the gag long enough. He stopped the fight after 1:42 of the first round.
    â€œIf they want a fight,” Clayton said, “let them get somebody who can fight. This guy can’t fight at all. One punch will kill him.”
    It was hardly what could be called an auspicious debut for an Olympic champion. Only Joe Frazier was really pleased with what went on in the ring. “He’s a good fighter,” Frazier said. “Isn’t he, Willie?”
    â€œHe’s a good fighter, Joe,” said Willie Reddish, willingly going along with the charade.
    â€œSure he’s a good fighter,” Frazier continued, as if to convince himself. “He was fighting pro when I was an amateur. Who do you guys think I’m ready for now?”
    â€œHow about Buster Mathis?” someone asked. “He beat you twice in the amateurs.”
    â€œHe got two decisions over me,” Frazier corrected, “but he didn’t beat me. I don’t consider I got beat when I lost by one point and he had his trunks up to his chest.”
    Now Frazier was ready for managerial offers. All it would take to represent him, Joe said, was $25,000 placed in a trust fund and a salary of $150 a week. Buster Mathis, he was told, was getting $90 a week. “Buster Mathis has only one mouth to feed,” Frazier argued. “I have four.”
    After Frazier’s debut, Yank Durham had some doubts, but he kept them secret. “I said to myself, ‘This guy needs a lot of work. You got to guide him the right route, because if you don’t, with this idea of his that he can lick Clay . . . he can lick Patterson and all those guys, he’s headed for trouble.’
    â€œI told him, ‘In due time, you’ll be able to beat all these guys and no doubt you’ll be fighting for the championship of the world inside of two years. But you’ve got to listen.’ ”
    Back to the gym they went. There was work to be done and they wasted no time getting to it. Many boxing experts were of the opinion that Frazier would
never
be a great fighter. He had those short, tree-stump legs and short arms that gave him a reach of only 71 inches, which did not compare favorably with other heavyweights. Muhammad Ali had an 82-inch reach, Sonny Liston’s was 94 inches, Joe Louis’ 76 inches. Even Ezzard Charles, small by heavyweight standards, had a 74-inch reach.
    But there was power there, and if this was what Durham had to work with, he would have to make the best of it. He designed a style of fighting tailored to Frazier’s unique physique. Obviously, Frazier was not going to dance and jab like Ali. He was going to have to get inside his man where his short arms could reach his opponent and where his strength could do the most good.
    Frazier thought he could get by as a boxer. Durham knew it was foolhardy, that Joe wasn’t built for boxing.
    â€œForget it,” Yank said. “Quite naturally, the boy seen other fellers doing it and he thought it was for him. I told him, ‘Listen, you’re too short for a boxer, you’re a fighter. You got the power and this is what you got to do with it—you got to keep applying pressure on them other guys. With your power, you can do your thing only one way. That’s to keep within hand distance of your opponent all the time. You don’t do it no other way . . . in, forward . . . forward . . . punch . . . punch . . . punch all the time. No one will stand up to you. No one.’ ”
    Telling a fighter what to do is one thing, getting him to do it is another. That was Yank Durham’s job and Yank Durham was very good at it. “All we have to do,” he told Joe, “is keep fighting, keep training, keep banging heads and we’ll get there.” And Joe Frazier did as Yank advised because “there” is where he wanted to get.
    Durham waited a month and four days before sending