The new Premier Boxing Champions series is part of an effort by Al Haymon to bring mainstream prominence back to the sport of boxing?
?Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio??From Mrs. Robinson, Simon and Garfunkel?s 1968 No. 1 hit
?Every man?s memory is his private literature.??Aldous Huxley
?I think the nostalgia that suffused last Saturday?s telecast was not just for a time when boxing was a mainstream sport but for the very idea of a mainstream, exemplified by the quaint notion of an event on network TV on Saturday night that everybody would talk about on Monday morning.??Carlo Rotella
According to sportswriter and columnist Steve Rushin, nostalgia was coined in the 1680s by a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer, and it originally described a medical pathology?a painful longing for home. However, a 2006 study shows that a good visit to the past can alleviate depression and make one feel less alone.
I readily admit to having the pathology suggested by Hofer but not to the point of going back beyond the early 1940s. For example, I can alleviate my depression by recalling Adolph ?Dolph? Shayes making a long two-handed set shot and then raising his hand in triumph. As for boxing, I handle being out of the pod by writing and reading about the sport only within a context of having been alive during the applicable period. Recalling Ray Mancini and Arturo Frias going at it like two bantam roosters in 1982 does wonders for me when I?m feeling down.
However, I note in amazement that for some it?s almost like, if you don?t have Bob Fitzsimmons?a fighter who died in 1917?in your top 10 list of greatest fighters, you don?t really know much about boxing. Huh? Who was even around when Fitzsimmons fought? Some young scribes (and the operative word is ?young? though it could be arrogant or na?ve) seem to take pleasure in flaunting their knowledge of fighters from the past, suggesting that those who aren?t as interested or knowledgeable aren?t serious fans. Others, with forced moral outrage, criticize the barbaric nature of boxing while continuing to get paid for writing about it. Now that?s pathology.
Back in the decades of the ?50s and ?70s, the writing was crisp with an on-the-beat reporting style. There was no false melodrama or flamboyant overwriting; there was no need to create literary prose that bordered on poetics or to flaunt rewritten history. The fights of the ?50s and ?70s spoke for themselves and offered up more than enough real drama for the truly great scribes like Red Smith, Cannon, Kram, Kimball, Putnam, Schulian, Izenberg, Hamill, Liebling, Fleischer, Remnick, etc., who never forced their thoughts into a story to create dramatic scenarios. Unlike too many of today?s writers, they felt no need to package their work in some kind of Creative Writing 101 noir in order to collect an award from other writers who can?t write a lick and who form a loathsome self-congratulatory circle that is the laughing stock of those who can.
Enter PBC
The new Premier Boxing Champion?s (PBC) series is part of an effort by Al Haymon (everyone?s subject of a lawsuit) to bring mainstream prominence back to the sport of boxing. It has already begun airing Saturday night cards on NBC proper?and another bunch on Saturday afternoons. There will also be nine primetime cards on NBCSN, the all-sports cable network that competes with ESPN and Fox Sports. As Sugar Ray Leonard says, ?It?s what boxing needs. There?s talent out there. But the exposure factor has diminished significantly.?
NBC?s ongoing plan might just be the tonic to help the sport regain some of the mainstream popularity it once enjoyed. NBC?s last televised prime bout was Larry Holmes vs. the late Carl ?The Truth? Williams way back on May 20, 1985, and, with a nod to outstanding writer Carlo Rotella, this brings to mind two eras in which boxing enjoyed such a popularity; namely, the 1950s and the 1970s. I know them (and other eras) well and can write about them comfortably with the knowledge and confidence of having been there and of having kicked the tire.
1950s
?Look Sharp/Be Sharp March??Mahlon Merrick
?Because boxing in our time is permanently imbued with a throwback feel, harking back to some dimly remembered prelapsarian age when men were good with their hands and less likely to sue when concussed, it encourages nostalgia of all kinds. Mere mention of the ?Friday Night Fights,? for instance, inspires in people of a certain age vivid memories of their father watching the free fights on TV.??Carlo Rotella
In addition to the great boxing writers, the 1950s evoke memories of when NBC?s ?Gillette Cavalcade of Sports? was the real ?Friday Night Fights.? It ran from 1942 to1960 suggesting that many who claim they watched it with their fathers are fibbing because they were not yet a gleam in their parents? eyes. Featured were such greats as Carmen Basilio, Bobo Olson, Tony DeMarco, Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pep, Archie Moore, Sandy Sadler, the Fullmer brothers, Issac Logart, Kid Gavilan, Ezzard Charles, Rocky Marciano, and many others.
Back then, there were no commentators spewing out metaphors. Names like Stillman?s Gym, Whitey Bimstein, Fred Abatello, Arthur Mercante Sr., Artie (counting at the bell) Aidala, Johnny Addie, Don Dunphy, Jimmy Powers and Ruby Goldstein resonated with those in the know. Watching LaMotta beat Laurent Dauthuille with just 13 seconds left was as spine-tingling as it could possibly get, and Davey vs. Vejar was as close to a blue-collar/white-collar class struggle as boxing could feature. Moore vs. Durelle may have been the greatest fight of all time.
1970s
?Sure the fight was fixed. I fixed it with a right hand.??George Foreman
The 1970s featured Ali, Lyle, Patterson, Shavers, Frazier, Quarry, Norton, Foreman, Holmes, and other notables of the heavyweight golden age and they often did their concussive work on ABC?s ?Wide World of Sports?? to the nasal and curious accompaniment of Howard Cosell?s love/hate blow-by-blow calls. Like the ?50s, these men fought each other in an incredible, albeit unofficial, fan-friendly round robin.
On the West Coast, smaller men like Bobby Chacon, Chucho Castillo, Rafael ?Bazooka? Limon, Ruben Navarro, Mando Ramos and others fought with uncommon fury and made a name for the non-heavyweights. Of course, the great Carlos Monzon was preeminent. Making Saturday afternoons memorable and something to talk about at work on Monday at the coffee machine, the great Roberto Duran and the ultra-exciting Danny ?Little Red? Lopez thrilled fans on free TV.
The pleasure of watching free boxing blended well with the other aspects of the pleasure-oriented decade of the ?70s. Much of this pleasure was taken for granted and would not be enduring, but now, thanks to free boxing on TV, the same possibility exists.
Fast Forward
This stirred up nostalgia is all about getting back to an approximation of where we once were without the ever-present pay-per-view determining what we watch. This is the kind of ?pathology? I can embrace.
Ted Sares is a member of the Ring 4 Boxing Hall of Fame (New England) and a member of Ring 10 (New York). He is one of the oldest active powerlifters in the world and competes in the Grand Master Class.
