Yeah, I read that around the same time. I liked it but it's been fifteen years so I can't remember anything about it. She wrote well, I remember that much, but narratives have always stuck in my memory better than most non-fiction. So I was much more into Jack London's short story "A Piece of Steak" about an aging prize fighter who'd already spent his purse and couldn't afford a meal before meeting a young prospect in the ring. Or Hemingway's "Fifty Grand" about the fighter having trouble training who agrees to throw a fight. I read a little bit of Mailer, but I couldn't really get into him. That whole boxing as a shared creative experience though, I got a lot of that from Hemingway. He wrote a lot more about bull fighting in stuff like "Death In the Afternoon" or "Undefeated" but a lot of what he said there also applied to boxing. I've always framed Robinson vs LaMotta conceptually as the matador vs the bull type fight, terminology which I think owes a lot of it's popularity to Hemingway. When Lomachenko was doing his matador holding a cape impression in front of Sosa, I immediately thought of that. But Hemingway didn't just think of violence, bulls, or boxing in terms of simple confrontation and machismo. He was a Catholic and so he thought of it like a mass, a sacred ritual where the boxer is both priest and sacrifice, where suffering is both ennobling and purgative. You can see the same kind of thinking going on in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull. When LaMotta is trapped on the ropes being pummeled by Robinson his arms are out like Christ crucified, asking Ray to hit him again, while the ropes drip the gore of redemption. In that movie, you can see that the ring is where LaMotta is repenting and atoning for the sins he commits in his private life. Aside from the ritualism, Hemingway also talks about boxing like it's a theatrical play where people take on archetypal roles like in a Greek tragedy to achieve a sort of catharsis.
My step grandad took me to a closed circuit of the 1st Ali vs Liston fight. I was hooked. Mesmerized by Ali's boxing ability and persona. Been a fan of boxing ever since.
My step grandad took me to a closed circuit of the 1st Ali vs Liston fight. I was hooked. Mesmerized by Ali's boxing ability and persona. Been a fan of boxing ever since.
When I was young I was small and weak, and I was always afraid of getting into a fight. I decided that I had to fix that problem, not because I wanted to street fight, I hate streetfighting, is the dumbest thing ever and I never do it, NEVER (well, only once, and never again because after that I realized I could have ended in jail), but because I didnt like the feeling of living afraid of something. I went to a gym, boxed for like 7 years, and I fell in love with the sport forever. If you are curious I was an average amateur boxer. Average national level amateur bum. I like to think that I was a little bit better than average, but not good enough, let's say just average to say the truth. EDIT: the routine, oh god, I miss the training routine even 20 years later. It kept my mind in peace.
Watching the Gillette Friday Night Fights in my Dad's lap as a child. First sport I watched on television.
The first fight i saw was Holyfield-Valuev. I was amazed that a 40 something year old was beating this Russian giant. And then he got robbed!
Tried boxing not knowing anything about it at Ingle Gym and got to meet some influential people in Brendan, Junior Witter etc! Then my first fight I saw was Junior Witter v Bradley where Witter lost and since then I followed occasional fights, It wasn't til last 3 years or so where I tried to follow as much of the sport as possible
My first interest in boxing came in 1990 when I was 7. I went to my uncles to watch the Benn vs Eubank fight. I only watched parts of the fight at the time, but I remember the excitement around the fight and the build up mainly. That was the event that got me into boxing, but Mike Tyson was the first fighter that got me taking serious interest in the sport around that 1990/91 period. Then around 1992/93, Prince Naseem came along and that was that. I've liked the sport ever since.