Joe Frazier and Joe Hand-When We Were All Young

When I was building the Gym for Joe Frazier the driving force was Joe Hand and he might never have realized his importance.. The Cloverlay Group had stepped up at a critical moment to help Joe Frazier after he won the Gold medal at the Olympics. The group was formed for good reasons but I think they really didn’t understand the dynamics involved in supporting an undisputed heavy weight champion of the world.

The Cloverlay Group was well intentioned to see that a local Olympic hero didn’t wind up without money to buy Christmas presents for his kids, but the bigger picture didn’t seem to register. They didn’t understand that they had a world class talent on a contract.

I was just a young man, but as a collegiate athlete with bigger dreams than talent, I knew that Joe Frazier was a special talent and person .. The budget conversations with Cloverlay were frustrating. The showers in the Gym were too expensive as proposed. The question raised in the shower discussion was whether a boxer really needed a tile shower after his workout. The water and soap were important not the material on the walls and floor was the Cloverlay input into the conversation.

Nobody was mean or evil but in my office we discussed how clueless these folks were as to how special the talent was, that they were involved with managing.

The exception was Joe Hand the Philadelphia cop who had talked his way into Cloverlay with a $250 investment. He seemed to have an early understanding that Cloverlay consisted mainly of folks who were helping a poor black fighter who had some talent and was having trouble making financial ends meet. The support was given in many cases as some sort of gesture to social responsibility.

He never knew it but Joe Hand kept my company on the project. About once a week at our company staff meetings we discussed whether we should bail out on the project since every Cloverlay meeting was about how we could do something cheaper. Whenever this happened Hand would shortly appear with a positive focus on the real importance of the project. That goal was to give Smokin Joe a place of his own that gave pubic recognition to his accomplishments.

Joe Hand never knew exactly what we were discussing behind closed doors but his business and life accomplishment indicate that his instincts were spot on at important moments.

As we got to know Joe Frazier we joined the Joe Hand philosophy which was to push through and get the gym built because it was an important project to give the Champ a place from which to move to the next steps in his trip from Beaufort South Carolina to a legendary status in the history of boxing.

Joe Hand became a big deal and Joe Hand Promotions is now a big time company promoting closed circuit, pay for view, events on TV. I’m not sure how his training as an detective/inspector on the Philadelphia Police force figures into this whole story, but if I was a cop I’d do some investigation as to how to acquire the instincts and positive attitude of Joe Hand.