Former Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Joe Frazier died

Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight boxing champion  died on 7 November 2011 after a battle with liver cancer. Frazier is most famous for defeating bitter rival and another boxing legend Muhammad Ali in the 1971 Fight of the Century.

World heavyweight champion, Frazer had started life as a share-cropper's son growing up in South Carolina and punched meat in a Philadelphia slaughterhouse.

Known as Smokin' Joe, he won 32 fights in all, 27 by knockouts, losing four times - twice to Ali in furious bouts and twice to George Foreman. He also recorded one draw.

Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali battled it out in a famed 1970s trilogy of bouts (3 fights). In the epic Thriller in Manila on 1 October 1975, in Quezon City in The Philippines, Frazer could not return for the 15th round because of a swollen shut eye. Frazier won the first of those three match-ups, the Fight of the Century on  8 March 1971, at Madison Square Garden, punctuating his 15-round win by flooring Ali with a leaping left hook. Ali scored a 12-round decision over Frazier at the Garden in a non-title bout in January 1974.

After won gold at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics by defeating Australia's Athol McQueen. Frazier won the WBC and WBA heavyweight titles in 1970 by stopping Jimmy Ellis in the fifth at Madison Square Garden.

Frazier and Ellis fought again at Melbourne's Junction Oval in 1975, with Frazier winning in nine rounds and earning him the Manila shot at Ali, who had defeated George Foreman in the famous Rumble in the Jungle.

Frazier  formed a back-up group called the Knockouts after he turned to siging. After retiring, Frazier made cameo appearances in several Hollywood movies, and two episodes of The Simpsons.