Former heavyweight champ Frazier remembered in SC

BEAUFORT, S.C. (AP) — The world knew him as heavyweight champion Smokin’ Joe, but Joe Frazier was simply called “Billy Boy” by family and friends in his hometown in South Carolina.

About 250 people including Frazier’s oldest daughter and several nieces, nephews and cousins said goodbye Wednesday at church service outside Beaufort, where the boxer was born in 1944.

Frazier’s casket didn’t make the 700-mile trip from Philadelphia, where his funeral was held Monday. Daughter Jacqui Frazier Lyde said she wished relatives could have seen him in his blue burial suit and patent leather shoes.

Frazier grew up on a 10-acre farm in South Carolina and practiced his devastating left hook on a flour sack stuffed with rags, corncobs and Spanish moss.

Frazier died earlier this month from liver cancer. He was 67.