Today in 1973, one of the greatest boxers of all time tried a different sport for a day… and it really didn’t go well.
Smokin’ Joe Frazier was taking part in a special for ABC Sports called “The Superstars.”
It was a two-day event that would air later in February of 1973 as a two-hour special.
They would bring together ten top athletes from a, well, wide world of sports, to compete against each other in a series of events that weren’t their usual sports.
So for that first competition in 1973, there was pro football great Johnny Unitas and basketball great Elvin Hayes.
There was Grand Slam tennis champion Rod Laver and future baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Bench.
And then there was Frazier, who, until about a month before the taping of “The Superstars,” had been the heavyweight champion of the world.
There was absolutely no question that Frazier was one of the greatest athletes on Earth, one who was in top notch physical condition.
But one of the events in which he competed was a 50 meter swim.
And not only was he not an accomplished swimmer, he didn’t really know how to swim at all.
As the three other athletes in the race took off after the starting gun, Frazer sort of flopped in the pool and struggled to make his way through the water.
The top finisher in the swimming event, racing driver Peter Revson, finished in just under 33 seconds.
The next two competitors came in right behind him, before Frazier had even dog-paddled his way to the halfway point.
He did finish, to the relief of people who worried he might drown, but it took him more than a minute longer than the third place finisher.
Afterward, a reporter wondered essentially whether Frazier didn’t know that he didn’t know how to swim.
To which he replied, “How was I to know I couldn’t unless I tried it?”
On this day in 1967, The Hobbs Daily News-Sun newspaper in New Mexico ran a short and unusual piece about Sylvia Ester, a swimmer in East Germany who broke a 100 meter world record.
Then she was disqualified because she, um, wasn’t wearing a swimsuit at the time.
Joe Frazier Almost Drowned On National Television 40 Years Ago Today (Sports Illustrated)
Sylvia Ester, World-Record Swimmer (Weird Universe)
