Days when Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali were kings of the ring are long gone

The era of Joe Frazier was one when the heavyweight champion of the world really was THE champion of the world. The title was considered 'the richest prize in sport' and as such, brought with it not just monetary riches, but global recognition.

The heavyweight champion was an iconic figure in American life. Frazier fought in arguably the greatest era of heavyweight boxing: there were challenges to pit yourself against, with the greatest to grow against. Frazier was just as responsible for Ali's name, as George Foreman was for the other two renowned boxers.

Frazier, Foreman and Muhammad Ali – then Cassius Clay - had all triumphed as gold medallists at successive Olympic Games. It meant a conveyor belt of styles and characters looking to be the dominant alpha male in an American culture beginning to open up to liberalism. The trio – along with the likes of Ken Norton, and later Larry Holmes – had different blood. The blood of pure warriors.

Compare that to the current era, with the likes of Britain's own Audley Harrison emerging as a gold medallist from the Games, yet hapless in the ring. The heavyweights of today bare no comparison to the generation which bestrode the world.

Today, there isn't an American heavyweight worthy of comparison to any of the great American heavyweights of the late 60s and 70s. The titles are dominated by two Ukrainians by the name of Klitschko, and the big American athletes have long since moved into basketball and American Football, where they do not have to get hit in the face for a living.

The proliferation of titles, the dilution of what being 'a world champion' means has inured a global public to all but the biggest fights in modern boxing. Time was when the entire planet knew the name of the world heavyweight champion.

The Trilogy between Ali and Frazier captured the entire world's imagination at a time when television was being more widespread, and the characters in the sport were embraced as super-heroes. Boxing does not hold such standing today, either in the media, or in the public consciousness.

But Frazier's era was a special one, there is no doubt about that. Perhaps we are seeing in the ravages of certain of those individuals now in their sixties, and in the late, great Frazier, that what they gave then, cost them later in life.

The iconic images of that era will remain forever. And boy, were they men's men. RIP Joe.