The newest offering by Christian Guidice, who penned earlier bios on Duran and Arguello, manages to steer clear of annoying things like personality, or much family history or any silly inconsequential details like life outside the ring. Well played, Chris. Instead, Guidice's work here has all the flair of a Boxrec career synopsis, but he managed to throw in a few factual errors for good measure. Either that or the publisher simply chose someone who doesn't know anything about boxing and was looking only for typos. Seriously though, this could have been a good book. Clearly Duran is the one true love of this man's life, because that biography was actually quite good as I recall and written with an excitement and sense of immediacy. The Arguello one was more brief and lacked the punch the Duran one had, and this one just sputters along on fumes, as if he owed the publisher one more book before he could make them go away. Totally uninspired, ignoring many personal aspects of what from all previous accounts I've read was actually a pretty interesting life. The book essentially ends with the Layne fight in 1986, never delving into the ups and downs Gomez has endured since that time. So much more could have been done too with how Gomez tried (unsuccessfully) to juggle his personal life with that of the ring. Also rather annoying was the persistent claim in the book that the only reason Sanchez would have had a prayer to beat him in 1981 was because Gomez chose to party and not take him seriously. Severe downplaying of Sanchez's own strengths to the point of exposing the author's own ignorance of the subject matter. A shame. He never should have bothered with this one.
I commend him for not writing a book that attempts to intrude, discuss or reveal aspects of personal life. But from what you've said it seems the book fails as a portrait of a boxing career too ?
But if you're going to go through the trouble of writing a full-length bio on someone, I think you have to commit to writing about the person, not just what they did in bland detail. I'm not interested in the lurid things like how many lines he snorted or how many hoors he banged, but something about the man would be nice, and frankly expected by most that would bother to pick up the book. If all you're looking for from this book is a general account of the more important fights in his career and a blow-by blow of those, then yes, it suffices. Even if he did think his fight with Cruz ended in the 12th. A small, completely inconsequential detail admittedly.
It's just uninspired. Based on how good the Duran book had been, I was hoping for at least what the Arguello book had been.
