Lost: A Desire to Care About Boxing By Sean Newman, (Aug 25, 2011) Doghouse Boxing - Tweet
You
may not remember me. In fact, for the vast majority of you, I’m
sure that is the case. I never made a big mark as a boxing writer.
Oh, I had my moments, but most of those can best be described as
personal triumphs, the proverbial feathers in the cap. But believe
it or not, I was once one of the most prolific writers at Doghouse
Boxing for a period of a little over two years. To those few who
remain from my posting peak at the Dog Pound message board, I am
better known as Zeke, short for Ezekiel2517. Every now and then, one
of them will ask me why I never write anymore. My purpose here is to
try and answer that question, while giving a little background about
myself and seeking to determine whether it is more a lack of interest
in writing, boxing, or both, that keeps me from doing what I used to
love. I do not expect many boxing fans to wish to know who I am.
This is a diary for those who do, who care, or who just like to read
about strangers, for whatever reason.
I
became an obsessive fan of boxing in 1990, with the release of the
film Rocky V and the ascendance of Tommy “The Duke” Morrison. Of
course, I had been aware of the sport for my entire life, as my
father and grandfather were avid fans who never missed a match on
television. As a child, my brother and I used to dread my father
accidentally running across a fight on the satellite, for then we
knew any programs we might wish to watch were out of the question.
Gradually, though, as Mike Tyson began tearing through the division
and I familiarized myself with Rockys one through four, my interest
in the sport grew. Then onto the scene came Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out
for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. I continued to root
against Tyson in reality while whipping the likes of Piston Honda,
Bald Bull, Soda Popinski, and Mr. Sandman on my way to challenging
him in the world of video games. (Side note: somehow a friend got
that code that goes straight to Mike Tyson. You know, 007-373-5963?
So I actually ended up beating Tyson before I ever beat Super Macho
Man, and screw you if you think that’s cheating.)
Finally
came the glorious evening of February 10, 1990 (it was actually the
morning of February 11 across the globe). Dad was fed up with Tyson,
convinced that he could not be challenged by the “primitive skills”
of any “mere mortal.” He refused to even watch Tyson’s
foregone conclusion of a fight against James “Buster” Douglas,
choosing instead to watch something else in my bedroom. After two
rounds, I hurriedly ran to tell him how well Douglas was performing.
He wasn’t interested, dismissing Douglas’s chances as the fight
continued. As the rounds and the dominance of Douglas mounted, he
finally came to the living room. Hopes were quickly deflated and
Douglas written off as Tyson caught Buster with a right uppercut in
round eight. Douglas would get to his feet, as would my entire
family when Tyson came crashing down in the tenth.
Fast
forward to 1991. By this time I was buying and subscribing to every
boxing magazine I could get my hands on. We didn’t have any such
thing as internet back in the old days, so I worried the hell out of
Steve Farhood at The Ring. I even got a couple of handwritten
letters in return, wherein he critiqued my juvenile writings. “Stay
away from clichés,” he said. Thanks, Steve.
I
lived and died with the career of Tommy Morrison, but at the same
time, I could quickly rattle off the names of all 51 champions (less
vacancies) of the WBA, WBC, and IBF. At the time, I disregarded the
WBO and any other alphabet organization, as any sane person would do
now. In 1994, I began traveling two to three times a week to a town
fifty miles away just to be a part of a boxing gym. Ultimately, I
had only one amateur fight, being technically knocked out in about
thirty seconds. It wasn’t that bad, though. I caught the guy with
a thumping right hand just before his overhand right caught my left
arm in an extended follow-up jab, dislocating my shoulder.
Back
to Morrison, he would have his ups and downs, as I later would, and
my interest in boxing never waned. My best friend and I would
ceaselessly annoy our classmates and others at our small rural school
with frequent news on “The Duke’s” career, as well as posted
countdowns of the days to his fights. That all ended in 1996, when
Morrison tested positive for HIV. Guess our classmates had the last
laugh there.
So
I made it through college in 2001, had a child out of wedlock in that
year, and started law school in the fall. Now that I had e-mail, I
began pestering Nigel Collins, who was the editor-in-chief at The
Ring following Farhood. His critique? My writing was “dry.” I
appreciated the input, and though I have tried to moisten my work, it
still goes down about as well as a handful of sand down the
esophagus.
In
early 2004, I saw an advertisement on Doghouse Boxing’s website
that announced that writers were wanted. This was it! This was what
I always wanted to do! I wrote a sample piece about Muhammad Ali’s
legacy and submitted it to the resident editor of the site. His
remarks were encouraging and I was taken on as a writer.
I
wrote incessantly, covering every topic I could think of. I had
diarrhea of the keyboard, yet remained so full of crap that I was a
Disney World resort for flies. See? That’s what I’m talking
about…terrible metaphors. I kept reading everything I could,
trying to improve, but my editorials left something to be desired.
My
best work, in fact, is that which I cannot take credit for.
Interviews with guys like Dave Tiberi, Skipper Kelp, Alex Garcia, and
others of the 1990s were fascinating because of the quotes of the
fighters, not the words written around them. I can (and am about to,
thank you very much) boast of having interviewed fighters like
Bernard Hopkins, Arturo Gatti, Evander Holyfield, Ken Norton, Floyd
Mayweather, Antonio Tarver, George Foreman, and many, many others,
but two stories in particular stand out to me. One was my interview
with Michael Bentt, along with his subsequent moving tale about his
relationship with Herbie Hide’s late brother Alan, and the other
was the saga of “Jesse” James Hughes. Look them up sometime and
let me know what you think…about the stories, not my writing. What
the hell, everyone’s a critic. Go ahead, let me have it.
Personally,
I began the practice of law, got divorced, and developed an addiction
to alcohol, not necessarily in that order. It was around this time
in 2006-2007 that I began losing interest in boxing and my writing
fell off a cliff. Let’s take a look at what happened.
Like
many of us, I’ve always been especially fascinated with the
heavyweights. I spent most of my time writing about boxing in the
hunt for guys from the 1990s like Michael Moorer, Alex Stewart, Carl
“The Truth” Williams, Ray Mercer, Joe Hipp, Razor Ruddock, etc.,
etc. Once most of those guys, including Lennox Lewis and Riddick
Bowe, were essentially gone from the picture, the division became
mundane. You had the Klitschkos (although Wladimir was still having
hiccups), and then you had everyone else. That scenario remains in
place today. The rest of the divisions contained widening gaps in
talent. There were, and are, superstars like Manny Pacquiao, Floyd
Mayweather, and Bernard Hopkins, but there just didn’t seem to be
the same level of fighters coming up as prospects. More and more,
HBO and Showtime took on what would formerly be ESPN or USA Network
caliber fights, and any “good” matchup was presented on pay per
view at an exorbitant cost.
In
my personal life, I floundered like the heavyweight division in the
absence of the Klitschkos. Whereas in the past my problem with
alcohol inspired me to at least a modicum of creativity and ambition,
now it killed those very traits. I sat in a trailer park, alone in a
city of several hundred thousand in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, lost in a sea of self-pity and paddling with my hands
against an angry current, with nothing to do but try to kill myself
with liquor.
Then,
in late 2007, I got a promising new job, moved back to my rural
hometown, and met an old high school friend, a wonderful woman who I
married just seven weeks after our first date. On paper, everything
was great, but in reality I still had a long way to fall. I lost the
job and spent a year unemployed, still drinking for most of that
time. I didn’t know how to stop. Boxing just didn’t seem like
anything worth focusing, and writing about it sounded too much like
work.
Facing
losing my wife (who swears she was never even considering leaving me
over the drinking) and my soon-to-be born son, I finally stopped
drinking. Cold turkey. Since November 13, 2008, I have been sober.
So,
why didn’t I start back writing then? That answer is easy. By
then, the desire was gone. I searched and searched for a fighter to
get excited about, and though I still enjoy watching the BIG fights,
more frequently I have never heard of let alone seen most of the
fighters going at it on HBO and ESPN these days.
There
you have it. A tale of how booze, laziness, and the decline of a
sport left one man with the inability to write a sentence about that
sport, except for why he doesn’t write about it. There has to be a
point to me writing this to begin with, otherwise I could have just
posted it on the message board. I enjoy the good ol’ days of
boxing, and the fighters who went along with them. By “good ol’
days,” I mean any time from the bare knuckle era to around 2005.
So what I want you, the reader, to do is this: If you have an idea
about something from those days that you would like to see me
research, send me an e-mail and share it. Do you have a fighter that
you’ve wondered about and haven’t been able to find anything on,
or would like to find out something new about? Let me know, and I’ll
try to track him down. My e-mail address follows this article, as do
some links to the Hughes and Bentt stories. Hope to hear from you,
and until then, I will leave you with this question to ponder:
i
know it wouldnt of suited his style but did prime tyson have the feet
to be fleet footed , to get up on his toes and dance around the ring
like ali ? .
