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August 08, 2005
Mad Respect
Guys like me who are into boxing allatime wanna turn it into some allegorical cthonic ballet kinda deal, which impulse I can still dig even as I look askance at it since I hate people who love the romance of (say) baseball more than the sheer infinite mathematical beauty of the game. (Not that I'm a stats guy. Nothing against stats guys but I know for sure that I don't wanna be one. If I had been Gregor Samsa, on the dread morning of my transfiguration I would have awakened to find myself calculating slugging percentages.) Big-time typewriter-monkeys like Oates and Hemingway hem and, er, oat their way though essays that'd have boxing stand in for man's struggle against himself and all that kinda composition-class hoo-ha, and I love the comp-class hoo-ha too but I usually think it's misplaced when it comes to the sweet science. Only then I open up the new issue of The Ring, and I grin from ear to ear, because some guy name of Mike Greenhill opens his profile of up-and-comer Lamont Peterson by quoting...who? Ali? Liebling? Mencken, maybe? Naw, Jack. Gil Scott-Heron.
Go get 'em, Mike. Morrissey will work your corner.
Posted by jd at 10:27 PM