A new book called bouts of mania, has just been released. Bouts of mania, about ali, foreman, frazier. Read it yesterday!
It still sells despite covering old ground. A lot of it now is going to be hearsay and some good pics I imagine.
No doubt you're sarcasm is on the money but} How many copies of a book about, say Billy Petrolle would an author sell? I don't think Adam makes anything out of his series on the heavyweight champs,it's a labour of love subsidised by his practice work.
Amazon blurb on Bouts of Mania: The fights resonate still: The Fight of the Century, Down Goes Frazier!, The Rumble in the Jungle, The Thrilla in Manila. And the fighters, too—MUHAMMAD ALI, JOE FRAZIER, GEORGE FOREMAN—three complicated and competitive men who happened to be vying for sport's biggest prize when boxing was still a national reassurance and its champion a cultural resource. They fought five times for that title, from 1971 to 1975, ranging across the globe, and their struggles, triumphs, and defeats echo through the years as well. At the time, however accidental their convergence, it was an irreproducible pandemonium. Three of them? At once? Those fights made for a roiling and convulsive tournament, all the more striking against a backdrop of national dysfunction. Their competition—fighting each other in every possible combination, on nearly every possible continent, to nearly every possible outcome—mattered as much for the country's confidence as it did for deciding the titles at stake. In fact, their heroic efforts—global spectacles that offered brief glimpses of clarity and confidence—may have been the only thing that made sense back home during the social and political morass of the 1970s. This golden age of boxing reassured a shattered country that such fundamental, if sometimes elusive, qualities as courage and determination still mattered. And when it was all over, neither the contenders nor the rest of the word would ever be the same. In Bouts of Mania, longtime Sports Illustrated writer Richard Hoffer evokes all the hopes and hoopla, the hype and hysteria of boxing's last and best "golden age."
Hoffer is one if the worst "boxing" writers ive ever read. back in the 1990s when he ran sports illustrated's boxing coverage into the toilet i often wondered if he even like the sport he seemed to be grudgingly covering.
The guy writes like hes absolutely disgusted with boxing. The 90s had a lot of things wrong with boxing but it also had a LOT right. There were some great fighters, fights, and personalities around that made for a pretty colorful decade punctuated by some low points. This guy only ever focused on the low points and the controversy and it didnt help the sport any in my opinion. Sports Illustrated is a mainstream magazine that could have been used as a platform to bring in crossover fans to the sport and strengthening its base. Instead Hoffer dwelled so often on the negative aspects of the sport at the expense of the positives that the 90s witnessed a massive exodus of crossover fans and increasingly sparse coverage in the magazine. I wouldnt contribute a nickel to this guys writings.
