WASHINGTON — Occasionally, I indulge in guilty pleasures, and boxing — especially big, showy, hyped fights — is one of them. More often than not, I feel like some sucker who got taken in a sidewalk game of three-card monte. You’ve got a better chance of seeing a sapphire-bellied hummingbird than seeing a great prizefight for 50 bucks on pay-per-view. But I keep paying.
The truth is, I don’t think much of boxing as sport, and yet I’m easily seduced by it. I was introduced to boxing through the incomparable Ali. Before it was possible to watch, I listened — sat with my father by the radio, imagining a floating butterfly who stung like a bee, heard the man who was then Cassius Clay shock Sonny Liston in ‘64. I have a cousin who was one win away from making the U.S. Olympic team and another cousin who had a brief pro career. Many of my friends also took stabs at pugilism, some for the workout, some to gain confidence, some to stay out of trouble.
In my Prince George’s County neighborhood, boxing was, for some, the athletic equivalent of the Army — an opportunity to jump-start one’s life. I admire that part of boxing’s legacy. As boxing historian Bert Sugar told a congressional panel recently, the sweet science has long been for those on the margins "a social staircase out of the mean streets that formed their limited existences, with first the Irish, then the Jewish, Italian, African American and Latino boxers attempting to gain full fellowship into our society by the only means of escape they possessed: their fists."
A bit dramatic? Perhaps. But then, boxing and hyperbole are inseparable. I have a running debate with one of my best friends, Barry Fletcher, who maintains that fighters are the top athletes in the world — the best-conditioned, the most courageous, possessing the greatest combination of skills. I tell him he’s nuts — there are more bums in boxing than in any other professional sport. You can be a sack of blubber, have a face like putty from taking too many punches, be eligible for senior citizen movie discounts — and still, somewhere in this country, you can get a license to fight.
Congress has been known to go on deep-sea fishing expeditions, but its efforts to reform boxing over the past six years — setting, for instance, minimum health and safety requirements — seem like time well-spent. The latest piece of legislation, now pending in the Senate, would create a federal regulatory body to oversee the boxing industry.
When I rail to Fletch about boxing’s shortcomings — its Mickey Mouse local commissions, its international sanctioning bodies with their suspect rankings, its shady promoters — he tunes me out. After all, he watches boxing as if it were "Masterpiece Theatre."
It was not until our most recent debate, however, that Fletch explained what boxing had done for him. As a 24-year-old, he fought well enough to make it to the semifinals of the local Golden Gloves competition, but "my moms encouraged me to find something else to do," he recalled. That something else turned out to be hairstyling, a career in which he earned worldwide recognition and a roster of celebrity clients from Halle Berry to Tina Turner. But it’s boxing he credits.
"I got into boxing because I was a shy person who needed to come out of my shell," Fletch said, "to have the intestinal fortitude to pursue something without a great certainty of success." Getting in the ring in front of friends and family, risking humiliation, he added, steels you for life’s disappointments and breeds confidence. "After I got out of boxing, I wasn’t afraid to speak in public … I was not afraid anymore."
I concede boxing’s link to self-esteem. I once watched my friend Milton Lucas battle a 14-year-old Sugar Ray Leonard to a draw. They fought on gray wrestling mats at a local recreation center, back when Leonard was just a neighborhood up-and-comer. Leonard went on to win an Olympic gold medal and five world titles; he has probably forgotten most of his rec-center bouts. But when I ran into Milton Lucas many years later, he beamed at the memory of that day he fought Leonard evenly.
Last month, I plopped down $54.95 for the HBO/Showtime broadcast of the Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson mismatch. I did it knowing the fight would probably be a disappointment. Tyson had fought but 19 rounds in the last five years. It had taken him six rounds last fall to stop a doughy slug nicknamed "the Danish Pastry." But there I was, sitting in my family room, having endured weeks of prefight histrionics, wondering if an epic bout was in store. I was just plain curious, lured partly by nostalgia and partly by the same scent that draws carnivalgoers to the bearded-lady booth. And I got suckered.
Again.
Kevin Merida’s e-mail address is meridak@washpost.com.
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