Chad Taylor

Mundine vs Sullivan, Auckland, Feb 1, 2003

Should boxers avoid being hit? If you are Anthony Mundine, the answer is 'yes'. The Australian ducked and stalled through 12 rounds at the ASB Stadium before being awarded a win by a surprising number of points. A lot of people had turned up to see punches being thrown but apart from a few shots from Sean Sullivan in the early rounds that sent a fine plume of sweat spraying off his opponent's bullet head, not a lot seemed to connect. The fine art of hitting other people, hard, is difficult to judge from ringside: many of what looked like glancing blows would have been enough to stretch a normal person. But on the relative scale of things Sullivan did most of the work, or at least created it for Mundine who seemed to be treating the matter first as an exercise and later as a confusing problem.

Mundine was defending his Pan Asian Boxing Association super middleweight title as part of a lead up to an International Boxing Federation rematch. He needs to prove he can box past the early rounds, so his initial inaction - taking blows, keeping Sullivan in a huddle, dancing around - may have been a strategy to test himself and demonstrate to all interested parties that he has some puff.

In contrast Sullivan brawled into each round after crossing himself at the opening bell, shoving Mundine through the ropes at least three times and once bringing him to his knees with a low blow. Mundine winced in pain as he struggled to collapse in the far corner - the one where the television camera crew was standing. By round 12 Sullivan's nose was bloodied while Mundine smiled and chatted at the referee, copping annoying little poses to amuse the crowd, so his sense of humour was intact. But Sullivan was still on his feet. Sean Sullivan was paid $30,000 for the match: Mundine got an estimated $300,000. If Mundine is 10 times better than Sullivan, why couldn't he get through his gloves?

Boxing as a metaphor

The romance between boxers and writers has been going on for a long time. Fighters want to be poets and poets want to be fighters despite the fact that neither party is equipped to deal with their respective aspirations. Fighting is a direct method of problem-solving at odds with the shaded ruminations of literature. Writers don't like being punched in the face.

The messy affair has continued nevertheless. Ernest Hemingway belonged to a boxing generation, making his well-publicised dalliance with the sport less of a cliche than it seems now. In Cannibals and Christians, Norman Mailer - who also fancied himself with the gloves - describes a 1929 bout in which El Papa was knocked down at the end of a round that lasted four minutes instead of three. The nominated time keeper, F. Scott Fitzgerald, had become so distracted by the spectacle that he forgot to watch the clock. At least, that's how Norman tells it. Like most boxing anecdotes, the story has probably been jazzed up a little.

The wiry French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus, a contemporary of Hemingway, fought until tuberculosis ended further participation. James Ellroy writes about the sport with almost weary expertise although he's only ever put in hours as a golf caddy, as far as I can tell. Less famous authors, but two of the best to chronicle the experience are Timothy Mo (Sour Sweet) and Pete Dexter (Brotherly Love). When Dexter describes the worn gloves and stinking wraps his prose has the chime of someone who's actually done some fighting instead of just watching it. The author photo also provides a clue: his nose is slightly to the right of where you would expect it to be.

The instinctive analogy between the closed fist and the moving hand, the fighter's punch and the keyboard's click has survived into the computer age. Writers are attracted to boxing because it is a solitary craft: a vehicle for justice and a release for pent-up frustration. Surveys have shown that writers engage in more useless feuds than professionals working in other creative fields: logically, it would help if they let off steam. Andy Warhol mused about setting up a ring in Madison Square Gardens where Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote could scrap it out. Consider how long the recent Kidman / Grimshaw feud would have lasted if both had consented to some regulated biff. The photos alone would have put some zip into the literary section.

If there is an uppermost reason for non-fighters' fascination with the ring it's that boxing is a source of great stories. The associated corruption only makes it more so. A fixed fight is more exciting than the real thing, as the saying goes, rendering its true moments as plangent glimpses of a greater, ongoing tragedy. The simple bravery of a bout is so apparent that the intrigue piled up around it becomes disproportionately amoral and complex: an ongoing car wreck of greed, shadows and fools. It was not for nothing that Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull portrayed Jake La Motta as Christ-like: bloodied and arms outstretched as the crowd bayed for more. By reversing the image - the saviour as brutalised fighter - Mel Gibson's Passion merely returns the compliment.

Beyond the arts, it is intriguing to contemplate the extent to which boxing is employed as an everyday metaphor. You don't need to be a poet in order to step into the ring, throw in the towel, box clever or roll with the punches. At some time or other we have all taken it on the chin, stood our ground or been saved by the bell. With further conversational effort we might have taken the purse, thrown the fight or retired to the corner. Businessmen in particular love the the metaphor of "one man left standing". Comparing oneself to the winning fighter lends takeover bids and market contests a ruthless, gladitorial flavour.

In boxing, none of these sayings are sayings. They are descriptions of what actually happens. "Taking it on the chin" means a big fist bringing your teeth together so hard that the the conscious self shuts down for measurable seconds. A "knock out punch" is an impact that it shakes the brain in its bone and liquid pouch hard enough to cause permanent damage. Going "out for the count" means the difference between millions and zip. If you are the one man left standing, the other man will be bleeding on the canvas. Actual blood, actual canvas. Boxing is not a metaphor. Boxing is real.

My generation came with Muhammed Ali pre-installed as champion. Growing up square-eyed in the suburbs, I vividly recall two televised events: the 1969 manned moon landing and the 1971 Ali - Frazier World Heavyweight title. Both spectacles were strangely weightless. If contemporary technology struggled to convey the immediacy of the moment with their bobbing, black & white images and rasping commentary, it likewise ordained them as iconic. Armstrong walked on the moon and Ali danced in the ring: they were complimentary, monochrome heroes.

My childhood impression of the Ali - Frazier bout was that it went on forever. As an adult, I realise it lasted somewhat longer. Their first contest went 15 rounds; the 1974 rematch went for 12. The third - "the nasty one", as a boxing friend nicely put it - was stopped in the 14th. Ali opened with a range of combinations early on. Frazier dominated the middle rounds with what one critic called "the most vicious body punches seen in heavyweight history." Ali could barely return to his corner after round 10 but had closed his opponent's left eye by the 13th. In round 14 Frazier's trainer, Eddie Futch, called it off. "Joe would have been hit by a car and he wouldn't quit, so I had to do it for him," Futch said.

That's merely a summary. To watch the fight nowadays is to witness unheralded savagery. Consider also that the Manila fight took place in an absurd heat and that Ali, we now know, had made weight by taking drugs that shed body fluid, including the waters that rimmed his cerebral cavity. Stripped of this protection, the Manila fight was slow murder.

No matter who the fighter, we all know how the story ends. Sugar Ray Robinson: Alzheimer's. Joe Louis: dementia and paranoia. Joe Frazier watches over his North Philly gym through corneal implants. In his professional days his sight was so poor he would memorise eye charts for the pre-fight medical. Equally, we ourselves have become blase about Muhammad Ali's struggle with Parkinson's. When a British journalist commented in a 2000 interview that the ex-champ could tie his shoes unassisted, it was intended as a compliment, not an irony. Seated ringside for a bout starring his daughter Talia, Ali was also able to shut his eyes and turn his head away to avoid the sight of his daughter being hit. As numb gestures go, it said a lot.

The ongoing peril of boxing was highlighted by Beethoven Scottland, an obscure last-minute substitute who stepped into the ring to face a taller, heavier opponent in New York in 2001. As the fight progressed, the imbalance became obvious both to the television commentators and also to Bee's wife, Denise, who screamed from her ringside seat for it ton be stopped. The referee and fight doctors stopped nothing. Bee was not the man left standing. He went down in the tenth. The first attempt to revive him lasted 15 minutes. He died in hospital six days later.

After Scottland's death the calls to reform and regulate the sport grew louder. Journalists suggested a national commissioner to set standards for health and safety; a league and schedule of events. To this day, however, the standards float and the lawyers sting. Each match remains a separate deal. The sanctioning bodies that rate fighters force champions to pay huge sanction fees for the right to defend their titles. Evander Holyfield's bill is conservatively estimated at $20 million.

The sport sees no conflict of interest between managing and promoting a fight. The fatal Scottland bout was promoted - legally - by the opponent's manager. Don King's fighters say they are not permitted to hire their own lawyers or accountants. These legal circumstances are the air and water that has allowed Don King to become the monarch that he is today. His levy is the broadcasters' and fans' pay for view. For newcomers to the sport, King is the guy with the Bride of Frankenstein hair-do grinning at the camera and waving an American flag like a puppeteer trying to entertain a simple child.

The fans are not stupid. They accept the corruption. If you earned four million dollars, you wouldn't need to pull out a calculator to know that you would have to pay tax. By a similar rule, you know most of a champion's purse won't be going to the champ. Mike Tyson has declared bankruptcy. David Tua is filing for what he earned. Anyone who watches boxing, myself included, is party to this bad situation. This is the real reason that fans look for a champion with the primal rage. We are all frustrated and guilty of sins that can only be absolved by someone who can cut through the bullshit and rage at how unfair the sport has become.

This is the real reason for the furore over the ear-biting incident between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield at the MGM Grand Garden in 1997. Holyfield had been dragging on the young street-fighter, trying his patience, wearing him down. Tyson decided - if not planned in his corner - to discourage the clenching by biting his opponent. "A little bit of the ear came rolling over toward us," blinked Showtime analyst Ferdie Pacheco. "It was sick, inhuman, despicable!" But the media's hollering were the cries of an audience hating themselves for getting what they really wanted: a fighter with teeth. We saw the same flash in the eyes when Tua met Hasim Rahman in their equally frustrating 2003 fight. Sensing a win by decision, Rahman raised his gloves in celebration seconds before the final bell. You just don't do that to boys from South Auckland, and Tua went for Rahman like he was going to kill him. Really. To paraphrase what fans said of Sonny Liston, these moments are the difference between boxing and, you know, a fight.

Women also box, now. There are well-regulated Olympic contests with head gear and of short duration, and Sylvester Stallone played a boxer in those movies but frankly - honestly - it's not the same. There is no civilised alternative to two men smashing each other in the face and chest because hitting each other, by definition, is uncivilised. There's simply no polite or fair way to go about it. People cite the Queensbury Rules in the same way that armchair militarists cite the Geneva Convention but if you've ever read the Queensbury Rules pretty much all they say is: two corners, a certain number of rounds, the bell stops the fight, and well, yeah - hit each other all you can. Hit. Hit. Hit. May the best man win, and may you both pee pink for the following week.

In writing this, in the process of digging out all the dirty facts, I have to ask myself why I watch boxing. The easy out is that its fatefulness mirrors humanity's own. Boxing gives you brain damage just as alcohol destroys your liver and smoking causes cancer and driving fast kills: there are just as many "lifestyle choices" that are as dangerous and corrupt. Why, in the Middle East alone, nations are conducting an experiment to test the relationship between civilisation and spilling blood. And there you have it. Even writing it down, the analogy between boxing and larger moral issues is difficult to avoid. You cannot begin to debate the paradoxes of the sport without naturally segueing into a larger debate about violence & culture; the individual & society; the whole shebang. Try it at the dinner table. You'll come to blows in minutes. No, on second thoughts: don't. Leave that to the guys in the ring.

What do the fighters have to say about it? Plenty, most of it practiced in front of a mirror beforehand. Lennox Lewis's power is unquestioned but when he talks about being a "pugilist specialist" the rap is embarrassing and inauthentic. So most of the talking is left up to the writers: the sports hounds, and the poets. This is a poor second. Writers don't write about boxing: they write about watching boxing. Big difference.

When I looked for what boxers have actually written about boxing, I found the piece that moved me most on a Christmas card to Sam Eveland, the 1950s Golden Gloves champion who shared a cell with Sonny Liston in the Missouri State Penitentary. After leaving jail, Liston went on to fight as one of the most convincing champions the world has seen, closing down opponent after opponent with his big hands before falling to Ali's "phantom punch" in 1964. What happened in that fight is a sad story. Sadder, however, are the contents of the card, dated December, 1961. Liston's words to his former cell mate were his own: Sonny Liston. Unschooled, illiterate and a world champion, he had finally learned to sign his own name.

I think if you wanted to nail the character of boxing you have it right there. For the reader, the simplicity of Liston's missive expresses all about the sport that is grave and pathetic; heroic and tragic; sentimental and grave; noble and wasted. Liston, of course, would have found no pathos in it. His name was not a metaphor. Liston was a boxer. He boxed.

(Originally published in the Sunday Star Times, 2004)