Joe Frazier died of liver cancer in 2011, at age 67. He never lived to see his likeness on a statue, or his name on a street sign, or any other grand gesture from the place that shaped him. That bothered his family and friends. What bothered them even more was the city’s decision to embrace its fictional son before its adopted one. “Rocky was good in the movies, but he wasn’t real,” said Frazier’s nephew Rodney. “You’ve got a real champion, who did things that you saw in the movies, but you don’t give him his props?” The story of Rocky Balboa was based in part on Frazier’s life. He would run through Fairmount Park and jog up those same steps at the Art Museum. When Frazier first trained at the PAL, he worked as a cowpuncher at Cross Brothers Meat Packers, a slaughterhouse in Kensington. His most famous fights came against a brash, loud, Black man, who many believe inspired the character of Apollo Creed.The Rocky statue was donated to the city in 1982. Frazier didn’t get his own until 2...