Deji Olukotun
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Sunday, May 1, 2011 9:12PM
Writing about boxing...
"Two men raise their fists."
It's not a great sentence. But it's enough to demonstrate the tension inherent in the sport of boxing. Boxing at its best is high drama.
Boxing was once the U.S.'s most popular sport, with larger-than-life stars, and rivalries born out of ethnicities and color lines. Teams of writers around the country dedicated their lives to boxing. The Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight even presaged the coming second World War.
Yet today the sport of boxing has waned, drained of viewership and advertisers.
This was the most fascinating panel at PEN World Voices that I attended all week. The event took place at Mendez Boxing Gym, a New York boxing staple with a full ring under the fluorescent lights and paperboard ceilings. It featured four heavyweights in the business: Lou DiBella (businessman and promoter), David Margolick (writer of Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling), and Tim Struby (author of a lot of articles in sexy magazines, not including ESPN). And then Tor Hamer, a literal heavyweight, in that he is a professional boxer with charisma and brains.
Instead of describing his 2005 book at length, Margolick read a passage by now forgotten writer Richards Vidmer about one of Joe Louis's fights on the route to becoming heavyweight champion. The imagery smacked of eugenics and stereotypes, yet captured the athleticism and grace of a superior fighter. "I spent seven years," Margolick laughed, 'writing about a fight that lasted two minutes and four seconds." In preparing for his book, he also discovered a treasure trove of fantastic writers from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Katherine Brush, for example, was an accomplished writer who couldn't be admitted to the all-male battles, and somehow still penned some of the best writing of the period.
Writer Tim Struby described his in-depth reporting in which he trained for over a year to become an amateur pugilist and cover the sport with authority. He prefers to write about the journeyman fighters who never expect to really win big but who move from fight to fight to make a living.
Boxing is hard. It hurts and it can damage your brain. Yet, as Dibella explained, it is not as violent as mixed martial artists fighting, in which a fighter will bash his elbow into someone's face until he slaps out of the ring or loses consciousness. MMA is growing as a sport while the comparatively gentlemanly boxing (fists only) has been relegated to pay-per-view and premium television. The domination by a few shady businessmen, according to the stentorian DiBella, left the sport a 'rotting carcass'.
Real boxing gyms are closing, while boxing workouts are on the rise. Other countries celebrate the sport but in the U.S. our most vivid memories of boxing tend to be in black and white. (Ali, Louis, Jack Johnson.) However, recent hit movies such as "The Fighter" have shown that boxing films still appeal to mass audiences.
In other words, we are excited about the fantasy of boxing but not the real thing.
There aren't any full-time boxing writers anymore. The panelists also seemed to agree that today's writing about boxing is poor quality schlock. It would have been nice for them to back up these words with a few examples. I personally don't see why online writing is inherently bad, and I feel that since the internet is presently a democratized space, it's possible for there to be SOME good boxing writers. Perhaps they just don't have enough hits.
Moderator Christopher Isenberg moved the conversation along and tried to reign in the feisty DiBella, who tended to talk over anyone else who had anything to say. The problem was that what Dibella had to say was pretty damn interesting. He spoke authoritatively and wistfully about trends in entertainment and the sport itself.
This panel could have gone for another hour. As I headed for the cramped little elevator of the Mendez gym, it was hard to walk by the ropes without dreaming of one day throwing my hat into the ring. But maybe I'll go watch a movie about it instead.
--Deji Olukotun
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