OMAHA

The ex-fighter known around here as the Butcher, affectionately, has a signed photograph of Joe Frazier that he keeps like a laminated Mass card in his wallet. He has other personalized mementos, too, including a couple of scars on his fist-dented face, the handiwork of Smokin’ Joe.

The Butcher knew Frazier as well as anyone can in the public intimacy of a boxing match, where exhausted men hold each other in sweaty, slow-dance clinches. But he did not go to Frazier’s funeral in Philadelphia on Monday, attended by boxing’s elite. Among other reasons, the Butcher drives a school bus now; he had to make his rounds.

Besides, Frazier is forever with the Butcher. It has been this way for nearly 40 years, since May 25, 1972, when Frazier, the heavyweight champion of the world — the world — came to Omaha to fight an obscure long shot from the neighboring Iowa city of Council Bluffs: a challenger with a steel-driving punch and a penchant for bleeding by the name of Ron Stander, also called “The Bluffs Butcher.” Or, simply, the Butcher.

“If,” the Butcher says, past bridgework that he often pops out with his tongue as a joking but startling reminder of his brutal past life. His hair is gray, his gut is pronounced, and his mind is sharp enough to know the toll that the Butcher has taken.