If you write an article on a boxing internet site which is even somewhat complimentary of a fighter, a promoter, a manager or a trainer, you run the risk of getting labeled.
You?re on your knees.
Suckup.
Riding so and so?s ?jock.?
Or worse. The critics, usually anonymous night writers, will say you?re licking some guy?s testicles.
It makes me yearn for my newspaper years when cranky critics had to telephone their rants in or send them by letter. I got more than share of them during my eight years at The New York Post, believe me.
The cretins who slap you as a nuthugger are a one-way street. You can write one positive story about any fight figure and then do nine rip jobs on the same person.
You never hear from the nuthugger accusers when you go negative on someone they hate.
I guess it?s always been so and it?s just the forms of communication which have changed.
The year was 1978 and I was about to escape The Las Vegas Sun to work for The Post. They held a big dinner in honor of the great Joe Louis at Caesars Palace. The Old School gangster Ash Resnick made sure I got two tickets at the great affair and I even got to write a column about ?The Brown Bomber? in the official program.
As I recall, it was a month or so before the Louis soiree when I was strolling with my girlfriend, Judy, through Caesars. I spotted big, burly and loud Don King across the casino floor. He was sucking on a cigar and chatting with some of his toadies.
I was a little apprehensive about what King might say in front of my lady given the fact that I was continually breaking his cojones in my boxing column every Monday. At the time, King had corrupted The Ring magazine and put on the phony baloney US Boxing Championships on ABC.
King was on such a roll that he had even corrupted Sports Illustrated?s master writer, Mark Kram. If you think fake war hero Pat Putnam was an excellent boxing scribe, then you should read some classic Kram.
Putnam was good, a solid reporter and wordsmith. Kram was biting, caustic and acerbic.
But King got to Kram with the usual bait, filthy lucre, and Kram wrote an atypical glowing article in SI (which had an incredible 16 million readers as I remember) about King and his ?wonderful? tournament.
(Somehow, some way, SI caught and Kram was quickly sacked.)
So, as my friend and I passed within earshot, King shouted out in his best Foghorn Leghorn voice.
?That?s Mike Marley, y?all, he harpoons me like a whale!?
Judy did not miss a beat. She looked over at DK, who was weighing in at about three bills then, and said:
?He could stand harpooning. He looks like a big whale.?
I don?t think King heard the rejoinder and we kept on walking to a restaurant.
Through later years, I ripped King whenever I felt he was in the wrong. I also wrote some positive columns about both he and his archrival Bob Arum.
Permit me one more days of yore story which relates to nuthugging.
I wrote a column in The Post in which I referred to Jimmy Jacobs and Bill Cayton as ?managers of the century.?
A few months went by and I guess ripped Jacobs, Cayton or both of them on some issue. Cayton called up Post assistant sports editor Greg Gallo and whined about how I was unfair to Mike Tyson?s managers, about how I never gave them a fair shake in print.
Gallo asked me about it. I showed him the ?managers of the century? column.
Gallo laughed and told me Cayton?s complaint was headed for File 13 meaning the nearest wastebasket.
I really wasn?t concerned since we all reported to the colorful Jerry ?Blackie? Lisker, a tabloid master who loved hardhitting stories and commentary.
One night basketball scribe Harvey Araton had some scoop about Red Auerbach possibly leaving the Celtics to take over the Knicks.
At the time, we had a morning paper and an afternoon edition. Araton never followed up in the later edition and Lisker noticed.
?Great story, Harvey,? Lisker growled with his Rhode Island accent, ?but where is the follow up??
Calmly, Araton said he let the story stand because nothing had changed.
?Harvey,? Lisker said, ?this is war, between us and The Daily News. You?ve got to bomb them in the morning and then bomb then at night.?
Nuthugging was not permitted in the midst of a tabloid war.
Excuse me, if you will, I?ve got to get back to Pacman?s sack. Or was it Oscar de la Hoya who I am supposed to be sucking up to now.
So many many nuthuggees, so little time.
