Bloody Good Show

Two things you ought to know about boxing: It isn't sweet, and it's no science. The oldest, cruelest major sport is a lousy way to earn a living—most fighters make fast-food wages—and nine tenths of its science boils down to stick and move. Technique serves a savage purpose: to create chances for sudden ferocity, for the quick shot that shuts down a man's brain and dumps him on the canvas. Even agile boxers take so many punches that their brains tend to shrivel. You'll find baseball's old-timers on golf courses, while too many former boxers go to nursing homes. But boxing isn't just cruel. It's corrupt, too. Promoters and sanctioning organizations compete to see who can screw fighters and fight fans first. Then there's Showtime and HBO. They sign the big names to exclusive contracts and keep the best bouts from happening—the cable turf war is one reason we never saw Mike Tyson fight Lennox Lewis when both men were in their primes. So why care about the champs and the chumps in Everlast trunks? Because every guy needs to be able to talk boxing. If he can't, he'll be left out when the alpha males snarl and shadowbox at the local watering hole. So tape your hands, crack your neck, reach for your shiny robe and get ready to rumble. Here's a crash course on the state of the fine art of smackage.

8 Count

Eight Things Every Fight Fan Should Know

Aflurry of fact and attitude from Doug Fischer, who is editor of MaxBoxing.com, the best website on boxing:

(1) Mike Tyson is washed up. He's done. Homie turned pro in 1985 and hasn't exactly led a spartan lifestyle since. Although he hasn't gone 12 rounds or beaten a real contender since 1991, Tyson still sells tickets in Europe. But he can't beat a guy who can stick him and avoid his haymakers for five rounds. He'll get knocked out by a monster puncher like Lennox Lewis, who knows how to use his height and reach and who isn't intimidated by the (continued on next page) former ring terror. Here in the U.S., Tyson still commands attention from the media and the curious, but only for his latest tirade, his latest press-conference scuffle or his latest sexual-assault allegation. The truth about Tyson can be summed up in four words: His legs are gone.

(2) There's more to boxing than the heavyweight division. Talent abounds right now between 147 and 160 pounds. The potential exists for an all-star round-robin reminiscent of the Eighties, when Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and Benitez got it on to the delight of hard-core and casual fans alike.

The winner of the Oscar De La Hoya-Fernando Vargas Jr. middleweight grudge match could take on Felix Trinidad, who is seeking a rematch with middleweight king Bernard Hopkins, who would love a payday with golden boy De La Hoya, who still wants to avenge his loss to Shane Mosley, who demands a rematch with new welterweight champ Vernon Forrest, who, along with junior middleweight champ Winky Wright, is willing to fight any of them. Get the picture? Add Floyd May weather Jr. at lightweight and Marco Antonio Barrera at featherweight, and what we have is a new golden age of boxing.

(3) Fights aren't fixed. Well, not as much as you think. Who needs to fix a fight when you can employ creative matchmaking and influence incompetent judges?

(4) De La Hoya is no mere media creation, and he hasn't been protected by his handlers. No one who fights Pernell Whitaker, Ike Quartey, Trinidad and Mosley and is preparing for a showdown against Vargas should be accused of being protected. De La Hoya won the Olympic gold in 1992 and has kept his image reasonably clean for 10 years. He's earned his limelight and the right to make crappy CDs.

(5) The golden age wasn't that golden. Sure, Sugar Ray Robinson and Archie Moore were fabulous, Eight Count (concluded on page 145) Why We Love Boxing (continued from page 73) Eight Count (continued from page 72) but a lot of guys who fought from the mid-Forties to the late Fifties were merely tough (as the children of dirt-poor immigrants who grew up in the wake of the Great Depression tended to be). Truth is, there was better talent from 1975 to 1985. That's right: Roberto Duran, Carlos Monzon, Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Larry Holmes could have beaten the best of any era.

(6) Don King is not the living embodiment of evil. He's a shrewd and sometimes cold businessman just like Bob Arum, Cedric Kushner, the Duvas, Frank Warren, Mat Tinley, Dan Goossen and the rest of the world's successful boxing promoters. Hey, all business is ruthless. If it weren't, we wouldn't need lawyers, would we?

(7) There's more boxing on TV than ever. It just ain't free. HBO will air more than 35 major fight cards this year. With bouts broadcast on Showtime, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, Fox Sports Net, Univision, Telemundo, Galavision and the new Telefutura, determined fans can catch at least three shows a week.

(8) Roy Jones Jr. is not history's best fighter. Jones may be the best pure athlete ever to lace on a pair of gloves (so what? I wouldn't pay to see him play basketball), but he still doesn't rate above hall-of-fame light heavies Billy Conn, Archie Moore, Bob Foster and Michael Spinks—guys who didn't just talk about fighting heavyweights, they did it!

Tale of the Trite

Scribes of the sweet science stalk the squared circle like punch-drunk pugilists, firing off clichés in flurries, if not fusillades. Can you match the boxing cliché to its real meaning?

What they say:

(1) Date with destiny, as in, "After 10 years of working his way through the ranks, Pumpsie Molloy has earned this date with destiny."

(2) Heart, as in, "He's got to have a whole lot of heart to endure a beating like this."

(3) Pound for pound, as in, "Pound for pound, Vernon Forrest might be the best of them all."

(4) Promoter, as in, "Love him or hate him, he's one of the most colorful promoters in the annals of the fight game."

(5) Puncher's chance, as in, "He may be clumsy, nearsighted and diabetic, but with that big left hand of his, he's got a puncher's chance."

"What they mean:

(a) Chin—He might have a chin made of cast iron but his brain is rapidly turning into Silly Putty.

(b) A nice way of saying, "He can beat up guys his own size, but any halfway decent heavyweight would pound him into a mound of mashed potatoes."

(c) Date with a mouthful of canvas.

(d) This palooka can knock you out if you happen to drive your face into his fist, but other than that, he really doesn't have a chance in hell.

(e) Crook, as in, "Moi, a crook? I resent, reject and rescind the implication of your imputation, Your Honor."

Answers: let 1c, 2a, 3b, 4e, 5d

He coulda been the greatest

Trainer Kevin Rooney, cut loose by Mike Tyson in 1988—back when Team Tyson ruled the world—reflects on what might have been:

"What went wrong with Tyson? He forgot where he came from, that's what happened. Don King fed his ego, and his ego got out of whack. King's a great thief. Tyson sued him for $100 million. Don King—that guy could have done a lot for boxing, but Don King sure did a lot for his own pocket-book. If Mike had stayed with Bill Cayton and Kevin Rooney, the people Cus D'Amato put on the team, it could have been different.

"The Mike I knew was on the road to breaking Rocky Marciano's record. I used to say that Tyson could go 100–0. He had style and power and, contrary to what everybody says, intelligence. Tyson's not educated educated, but he's smart. And the key is that nobody could hit him. If we're fighting and you're throwing punches at me and you can't hit me, what happens? You stop throwing punches. Now all of a sudden I'm in your face—Bing! Boom! Bing bing! That was Mike Tyson. Speed, power. He could have gone down as the greatest heavyweight ever."

These Cards are Marked

Boxing judges often make $5000 or so for a major heavyweight bout, and you can't beat those ringside seats. "But a guy in the 20th row can evaluate a fight as well as the judges," says Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission, which judges the boxing mecca's judges. A judge's task isn't simply to count punches, Ratner says, but to "reward effective aggression. One fighter may be landing a lot of jabs, but the other guy hits harder and controls the round. You go for the one who controls the round." In the standard 10-point-must system, that guy must be awarded 10 points for winning the round. His opponent generally gets nine unless he hits the canvas. A knockdown brings a 10–8 score that's basically worth two rounds to the victor. Thus, a fight scored 120–108 isn't a close decision—it's a wipeout.

Add up all of your round-by-round scores at the end, hand in your card and—if at least one of the other two judges saw things your way—watch your guy's glove raised in triumph.

Like a baseball umpire, a good judge is consistent. Bad judges don't see much of anything. After blowing the call in Lewis—Holyfield I—the most infamous card trick in recent heavyweight history-judge Eugenia Williams griped that she'd had a lousy view from her ringside seat.

Hype Club

Got your DVD player handy? Plug in the Brad Pitt-Edward Norton slug flick Fight Club, which got one thing right-the primal rush of hand-to-chin combat. But for all its blood and bruises, Fight Club romanticized the hell out of bare-knuckle boxing. Every fan knows boxers wear gloves to protect their hands, not their foes' chins. There is little self-discovery in real fighting, which is mostly about self-preservation. That was true 113 years ago, when John L. Sullivan outlasted Jake Kilrain at an illegal fight club in Mississippi—the last big bare-knuckle title fight, a bloody spectacle that went 75 rounds. Today's boxing commissions would never permit such a war, but the goal is still to knock the other man senseless, and there's still nothing romantic about being the knockee.