Joe Frazier didn't have to look far for the motivation to succeed in the boxing ring.

He was born into poverty in the Deep South town of Beaufort, S.C., in 1944. He grew up in a shack, without running water, indoor plumbing or telephone service.

The idea of becoming a boxer — punching his way to a better life — came when his Uncle Israel, watching the Friday night fights on TV with Frazier's father and other relatives, anointed Joe as another Joe Louis. The 7-year-old looked like the heavyweight champion.

The uncle's idea stuck.

"The most important thing, my dream, was to make things good for my family, my father and my mother," Frazier, 63, told IBD.

Young Joe didn't have the luxury of his family buying him a heavy bag and gloves. That didn't stop him. He was so determined, he made his own home-made versions.

His heavy bag was a burlap sack he filled with rags, corncobs, Spanish moss and a brick in the middle for weight. He tied a rope to it and hung it from a backyard oak tree. For gloves, he wrapped his hands with his father's necktie or his mother's or sister's stockings.

The next several years, Frazier worked the bag almost every day for an hour. He was constructing arguably the greatest left hook in history.

You could say he completed that work on March 8, 1971 — when that hook found its mark in what some call the greatest sports event in history. On that night in New York's Madison Square Garden, the undefeated Frazier sent the undefeated Muhammad Ali to the canvas in the 15th round. Smokin' Joe won a unanimous decision to retain the heavyweight championship.

Frazier had won that unified title the year before by beating Jimmy Ellis. It came after Ali was stripped his crown for refusing induction into the military.

To many fight fans, Ali was still the champ — until his loss to Frazier.

The new undisputed champion wore his belt two more years before falling hard to George Foreman in Kingston, Jamaica.

When Frazier quit for good in 1981, his pro record included 32 victories, four losses and 27 knockouts. He also won an Olympic gold medal in the heavyweight division in 1964 and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.

"My role models were all great champions, and it takes a lot of work to be a champion," Frazier said. "It took lot of work for guys like Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, right down the line. They had to sacrifice, and my hat's off to them, because I know what they went through. Nobody can help you be responsible and sacrifice and do the things that need to be done to succeed but you."

It all paid off, wrote Bert Sugar in "Boxing's Greatest Fighters": "At his peak, Joe Frazier was a gladiator, one of boxing's greatest."

Before he started hitting hard, Frazier hit a low ebb. He was almost 18, 30 pounds overweight and had no formal boxing instruction.

"I hated being ordinary, hated having a job that was just a job. . . . I felt disgusted about how sloppy I looked. . . . At the same time I was kicking myself for not having acted on that dream of mine to be the next Joe Louis. Two years out on my own, and what did I have to show for it? A big butt and no life to speak of. It was time to get serious," Frazier wrote in his autobiography "Smokin' Joe," with Phil Berger.

So Frazier moved to Philadelphia with money lent to him by a relative, then joined a boxing gym and bought his equipment.

His first sparring session showed him just how far he had to go if he was going to be a champion. He took a pounding. But he was willing to keep facing the punches.

"I was confident that in time I would succeed. And I backed my confidence with the old standby — hard work," Frazier wrote.

He would get up at 4 a.m. and run three to four miles, punctuating the workout by sprinting up the steps of Philadelphia's art museum. Then it was off to his job at Cross Bros., a slaughterhouse where he'd work his combinations on slabs of beef during breaks.

Ring a bell? Yes, Sylvester Stallone found Frazier's regimen so inspiring, he borrowed it for his "Rocky" movies.

After work, Frazier summoned the energy to hit the gym.

"I was nothing but diligent about boxing. I was eating right . . . fat-free, vegetable-filled meals — and I was no longer staying out late. Come midnight, man — I was in bed. I was treating my body like the resource I knew it was, giving it all the rest and nourishment it needed. Fat-boy Frazier was long gone, and in his place was 190 pounds of lean, mean fighting machine," he wrote.

Frazier's son and former heavyweight boxer Marvis Frazier, whose professional record was 19-2 under his father's guidance, heeded his words about sacrificing.

"Son, if you're going into this game, it's no joke. In the ring, you can get your brains shook. . . . You have train hard, you've got to get your rest, you've got to eat right," Marvis recalled his dad telling him.

With the help of trainer Yank Durham, Joe Frazier evaluated his strengths and weaknesses to develop his ring strategy.

Short for a heavyweight at 5 feet 11 inches, and with a short reach, he had to take his attack right into the teeth of his opponent without getting clobbered. He mastered slipping punches and moving his head and shoulders side to side to get close enough to unload his devastating left hook.

Frazier's success in the ring let him buy his family a 365-acre plantation in South Carolina in the 1970s. That was a far cry from the shack in which he had lived.

He also believes in giving back to his community, and does so through his Smokin' Joe Frazier Foundation, which helps keep kids off the streets through education and boxing programs.

After defeating Ali in 1971, Frazier was invited to address the South Carolina Legislature.

"I am here today," he told his audience, "as a young man whose boyhood dream was realized when I won the heavyweight championship of the world."

He was proof, he said, that "you can do anything you want to do if you really put your heart and soul and mind into it."

BY MICHAEL MINK