Winner, and Still (Partial) Champ

For weeks, the surly boasts blew down from New York's Catskill Mountains.

In his training camp at Grossinger's resort, the slab-chested challenger, Jerry Quarry, 24, growled: "I'll come out burn-in'." At the nearby Concord Hotel, the undefeated champion, Joe Frazier, 25, growled: "I'll come out smokin'." Fight fans have learned to expect that the loud er the talk the duller the fight -- but not this time. At Madison Square Garden last week, both fighters were burnin' and smokin' in one of the hottest heavyweight bouts in recent years.

Some fans fancied the fight, which determined the heavyweight champion of six states (New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts and Texas),* as a bitter white-black confrontation. But it was more a clash of styles: Quarry the classic, come-to-me counterpuncher v. Frazier the swarming, go-get-'em slugger. Beyond that, each man was hungry--ring talk for the kind of cunning and courage that are born of deprivation.

Hard Luck. Quarry is one of three brawny, brawling brothers fathered by a former itinerant Irish club fighter who had the word HARD tattooed on his left fist and LUCK on his right. While bouncing between 30 different elementary and high schools in California, young Jerry broke his right hand punching a baseball umpire and suffered a twelve-stitch gash when someone shattered a pool cue over his head.

Shortly before his match last year with Jimmy Ellis for the World Boxing Association title, he injured his back when one of his brothers playfully crunched him into a jukebox in the family's saloon in Bellflower, Calif. He fought anyway, lost a split decision and ended up in a cast with three cracked vertebrae. Nonetheless, he went into the Frazier bout with only two losses in 37 fights; he was billed by his followers as the first great white hope since Rocky Marciano. "Screw white hopes," Quarry snapped. "I'm a fighter."

Frazier agreed: "All I know is, he's a person and I treat 'em all the same way." That is, with the same brutal indifference that he once applied to sides of beef in a Philadelphia slaughterhouse. "When I was training, I got to thinkin' way back to the farm in Beaufort, S.C.," recalled Frazier, one of 14 children. "I thought about the days I ate raw turnip butts and radishes with dirt on 'em. Then I thought about how I will retire undefeated with a million dollars and go into business as a singer." He thought, too, about Quarry. "He bleeds," said the ex-butcher. "He cuts. I expect we'll see some more of his blood."

Hoked-Up Scene. With Quarry at 198 1/21/2 lbs. and Frazier at 203 1/21/2 lbs., the two collided at the opening bell like opposing tackles. Quarry, landing punishing body punches with a dull whap-whap that could be heard as far back as the $10 seats (the ones at ringside went for $100), took the early advantage. In the third round Frazier caught Quarry with a sweeping left hook, opening a deep inch-long gash under the challenger's eye. By the end of the seventh round, Quarry's vision was impaired, and the ring doctor stopped the fight.

Still undefeated after scoring his 21st knockout in 24 fights, Frazier immediately turned to the ringside seats and, in an obviously hoked-up scene, shouted at Jimmy Ellis: "You're next!" Muhammad Ali, the man who popularized such gate-building theatrics when he was known as Cassius Clay, got in his licks, too. After the fight, the suspended Muslim minister said that until his appeal on a draft-evasion conviction is decided, "I don't want to say I'm formally retired. And they can't have a real champion until I do that or until I'm physically whipped." Amen.

* Most of the other 44 states, plus several foreign countries, are members of the World Boxing Association and recognize Jimmy Ellis as "world champion."

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