Boxing books

Lucky guy! To have all those books.

Unlucky guy! Not having read them yet.

 

Even with the involvement of his son, Q21, the SRR book doesn't do him justice -- pedestrian prose that reveals nothing that hasn't been in countless books before it.

Big disappointment; I'd been lookin' forward to its publication.

 

"Tunney" was excellent. I rank it up there with "Unforgivable Blackness" in terms of research, context, and readability.

 

Tunney was a great read, very informative.

 

tunney was good but p4p wasnt that great i read another one that was better about him but cant remeber the title right now. i am reading sweet william at the moment anyone have any opinions on that one?

 

I have 'Sweet William, the life and times of Billy Conn'


Not got round to reading it yet.

 

TUNNEY BOOK was very good,i am now reading a book on dempsey ,does jeffries have any books about mainly him and not johnson,i heard a guy named adam pollack is coming out with one,or how about any other great body punchers or swarmers

 

Just plain good, modern reads: Dark Trade by Donald McRae and Ringside by Budd Schulberg.

Imformative, grounded and funny; real page turners.

 

all of adam pollacks' books.

 

I have came across this book and it's not long hit the shelves in the US and soon be be released in the UK.

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Reviews
A terrific story. With simple but profound insight Steve Marantz creates a smooth fable of two epic fighters who were defined by each other- Hagler and his bald bluecollar sincerity against the get-rich-quick celebrity of Sugar Ray, a scheming con man in pinstripes. Were we all in love with the wrong guy? --Ian Thomsen, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

In deft, terrific prose, Steve Marantz has laid out the itineraries for Marvin and Sugar Ray, leading up to one memorable night in the desert. The whole story is here, as exciting as it was the first time. --Leigh Montville, SPORTSWRITER, COLUMNIST AND AUTHOR


Boxing, perhaps more than any other sport, is fundamentally dramaturgical, an intersection of conflicting epics. And every fighter becomes, thus, a kind of document of his movement through a mosaic of collected stories. Strangely, however, these stories are often inscrutable to the fighters themselves. In his extraordinary new book, Steve Marantz explores the puzzling, secret narrative of Sugar Ray Leonard’s historic 1987 bout with Marvin Hagler and decodes, for us, the bout’s complexities which have, in the years since, alchemized into lore and fractured mythology. Sorcery at Caesars is a singular achievement, splendidly written and subversively inventive.
Marantz’s provocative thesis is that Leonard’s improbable victory was, in fact, the final turn in a carefully conceived, elaborately-staged performance of the Dark Arts. Indeed, we find in Marantz’s clever analysis a very real commitment to the idea of metaphysics in boxing: he fully understands the intricacies of psychological warfare, the centrality of ritualized display, and the magic of a counterintuitive sensibility.

That Leonard has now become one of boxing’s elder statesmen is, of course, a received view; but Marantz’s vision, far more radical and fascinating, reveals Leonard in his full range of coordinated contradiction. Tracing each fighter’s arc, as they curve inexorably toward a collision, Hagler emerges as the rogue parvenu and Leonard, the cool cosmopolitan. He is, at once, a creature of public consciousness, a confidence man, a worldly sophisticate but also a privately reflective student of the Self and its shifting identities. It is precisely this close attention to detail and the monastic ambience of his conjuration that distinguishes Leonard in his luminous moment. Marantz writes:

“Now materialized the specter of an outcome decided by three judges. Hagler’s inability to stop Leonard in the 9th diminished the likelihood of a knockout. Thoughts turned toward the three men with pencils [ ... ] Leonard’s willingness to hold and Hagler’s refusal to complain underscored the finesse gap between the two. Leonard’s finesse also was seen in the ebb and flow of his attack. [ ... ] Indeed, the 10th, essentially an even round, was ’stolen’ by Leonard.”

From the remote, Greek concept of the pharmakeus, mystery and magic have imputed their influence to boxing through the tradition of cut men. But with this remarkable, eminently readable, and prodigiously learnèd book, Steve Marantz has conceived a language for speaking about the deep modalities of the Sweet Science as a space for narratological representation and mystical experience. Sorcery at Caesars is a major contribution to the literture of boxing, intellectually rigorous, engaging, funny, and brilliantly imagined. The show and the trick, to be sure, were Leonard’s, but the sorcerer is Marantz himself. -BOXING INSIDER

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A prize fight that happened more than twenty years ago might not seem an especially promising subject for a book. But Steve Marantz makes a fine case for Sugar Ray Leonard v Marvelous Marvin Hagler as worthy of reconsideration.

Marantz writes as if he’s still disturbed by the outcome of the contest, after which two of the three judges scored the fight for Leonard, making him the middleweight champion. This encourages the reader to consider the event unfinished, even now. Marantz quotes Richard Steele, who refereed the fight, acknowledging that he sometimes reviews the video of Leonard v Hagler. “Every time I watch it,” Steele says, “it gets closer.”

Happily, doubts about the decision aren’t all that’s driving Marantz. He sees in the fight and the long road that led both boxers to the parking lot behind Caesars in Las Vegas twenty one years ago an opportunity to say a good deal about the strengths and vulnerabilities of each man. Both achieved wealth and celebrity, though it came earlier and more easily to Leonard. Having tasted success, both fouled up their lives and their families with drugs or alcohol. Each recovered, at least sufficiently to climb into the ring against the other. One, Hagler, recognized much earlier than most boxers do that there could be more to life than hitting people and getting hit. He retired with money in the bank, walking away from the opportunity to make a lot more.

The author also has plenty to say about boxing itself. Having mentioned the fate of Cleveland Denny, a lightweight who died seventeen days after being knocked unconscious in 1980, Marantz points out that between the end of World War II and Denny’s death due to ruptured blood vessels in his brain, “the sport had averaged 12.4 deaths per year.”

As Marantz writes, in 1982, “the British Medical Association called for boxing to be outlawed in England, where the sport was spawned in the 18th century.” About the only good thing to be said about the fact that boxing has not been ended there, here, and everywhere is that over many years a lot of people, Steve Marantz among them, have written very well about the alleged “sweet science.” - ONLY A GAME

 

A new Robinson book is out. It's written by Brian Hughes.

 

I'm a new member.
Amazed at the knowledgeable people on this site.
Thank-you Robbi for posting about my book. I hope everybody reads it and I'm happy to take questions about Leonard and Hagler. Won't surprise me if a lot of people on this board know as much or more about both fighters.

Steve Marantz