Armed with my boxing news, particularly when I am wearing a suit, people look quizzically at me as if I am some strange oddity.  They may as well have a mega-phone shouting “why do you follow such a barbaric sport?”  I’ll tell you why, it is one of the purist sports of all...”No-where to run and no-where to hide” springs to mind.  "As much as I love boxing, I hate it. And as much as I hate it, I love it." Boxing is a rough sport, which may explain why it is used so often as a metaphor for life. It requires being able to move forward, take blows, and rise from the canvas.  It demands acute self-awareness and respect for others.

 

From play-ground scraps to Madison Square Garden and beyond it attracts attention like ‘moths to a flame.’  It is down to the pugilists to get it right at what ever level they operate.  Quite simply there is nothing like it.  So very strange it is, this sweet science, that all any of us can do is gather round to watch.

 

It seems a riddle, this boxing, but perhaps it’s no more strange than the very idea of the sport itself – two men enter a ring on guts and guile alone, intent on bashing each other’s faces in and leave with a closer bond than even the best of friends could forge together.

 

It is a science; don’t let anyone tell you different.  Find the meanest, toughest guy you can find on the street and have him head to a boxing gym.  He’ll learn quickly the importance of method and approach.

 

It is also an art; some leave us spellbound and speechless by fistic brilliance like the great Sugar Ray Robinson and Leonard.

 

Some like Aaron Pryor have the brilliant embodiment of weaponized aggression that make you shudder at the piston like precision of his ferocity.

 

Then you have the defensive mastery of the likes of Willie Pep and Pernell Whitaker who slip and slide and hardly get hit cleanly.

 

Boxing isn’t just a combat sport it is more than that.  Boxing is savage poetry.  It is music infused with fire, spit and blood.  It’s teeth and tenacity bolstered by artful repose.  Boxing is all that and more.  It is a gentleman’s agreement to tactically engage in the rhythm of souls brought together by a mutual intention to dole out punishment on each other’s bodies for the simple reason each man exists....or maybe it’s just a fist fight for money; I can never tell. 

 

Boxing isn’t for the faint of heart it is for those full of heart.

 

I remember the first fight I ever saw, don’t we all?  I was a boy of ten years of age when the ‘fight of the century' was taking place.  Despite Frazier being the heavyweight champion the role of invincibility lay squarely on Ali’s shoulders.  His hiatus meant nothing in the psyche, it was as if Liston had morphed into his victor.  The strange thing is that despite his record, paradoxically he has never lost.

 

It is perhaps too ambitious to transmit all that boxing means to me in something as silly as words, but maybe, like boxing, the reward isn’t always in the result, rather than the undertaking.  I dedicate my website to everyone who has, or ever will have, a link to boxing.