A night out with Smokin' Joe

It's difficult to keep Simmy Lewis on the topic, but then it's not easy to confine a conversation to just Joe Frazier when you're trying to fit 94 years of reminiscences into an hour.

When it comes to boxing, Simmy Lewis and David Isaacson are indispensable sources of information. David's excellent, but Simmy just goes back a few years more than the comparatively youthful Isaacson. Simmy, after all, watched South African heavyweight Don McCorkindale fight Joe Woods in 1931.

With no cricket on Saturday, there was an opportunity to call on Simmy in his Oranjezicht home on the slopes of Table Mountain, a place where he has lived since he bought it in 1946.

We were meant to talk about Smokin' Joe, but - inevitably with Simmy - the conversation also touched on the war, English literature, the changing face of Cape Town and a hell of a lot else.

Simmy, who "went up north" with 2nd Anti-Aircraft Brigade during that awkward business with Adolf Hitler, was captured at Tobruk in 1942 and liberated only in April 1945 when American troops reached their PoW camp. In between, he, along with many others, suffered terrible deprivation.

Before he was "taken in the bag" Simmy fought Stukas at Tobruk, a critical objective for both sides in the war in the Western Desert. Later, when he read Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, he could vouch for the author's authenticity of being under attack by these dive-bombers.

But what about Frazier?

Smokin' Joe had died that week, aged 67. A heavyweight champion in the days when the title really meant something, Frazier won 32 fights in all, 27 by knockouts, and lost four times: twice to Muhammad Ali in furious bouts and twice to George Foreman.

OK, back to Frazier.

At the time of the first Ali-Frazier bout, in 1971 - and as hard as it is to believe today - a rand could buy you $7. A Cape Town travel agent was advertising a package to New York. The tickets to Madison Square Garden would cost $950, a small fortune but ameliorated by the exchange rate to R750.

It proved irresistible for Simmy and his wife. They would also get tickets to the Met for opera (another one of his great loves) for just R30 each.

But it almost came to grief outside a New York cinema when he was mugged. Simmy and the mugger struggled for the wallet containing the fight tickets - and Simmy won, but it was a close call. South Africans were not as vigilant then.

On the night of the fight - extravagantly called "Fight of the Century" - Simmy was backing Ali, who had returned to the ring after three years' enforced absence because of his refusal to be conscripted for the Vietnam war: "I got no quarrel with them Viet Congs," he memorably said.

Ali is Simmy's favourite heavyweight, with Joe Louis a close second. But he scored it nine rounds to Frazier and six to Ali.

Even though Ali dominated round nine, Frazier kept moving in, "punching, punching".

"Ali fought in spasms; Frazier fought non-stop," is Simmy's recollection. That proved the difference between the two on the night and Smokin' Joe's knockdown of Ali in the 15th clinched it.

Frazier fought Ali twice more, losing both bouts, with the second defeat being one of boxing's most famous encounters - the Thrilla in Manila. Though the argument about who was the better fighter still rages, Ali-Frazier are as hard to separate as fish and chips, Punch and Judy, Churchill and Hitler . Cain and Abel.

Another thing that Simmy is sure about: Floyd Mayweather will beat Manny Pacquaio - if they ever fight - on yesterday's evidence.