Not crap this sweet science...

nihil wrote:I long for a modern day Sugar Ray Robinson, Ali, Roberto Duran, etc. Intelligence, guts, strategy and stamina, along with the one on one drama, are very appealing to me.

It seems that all I see these days are morons brawling. This is not so appealing.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

You're definitely not far wrong.

And even if you aren't totally right, I don't really think it's worth a $49.95 pay-per-view feed to see any of the handful of current boxers who meet your criteria.

Although it is heavily weighted toward Ali (which of course isn't really so bad, except when it's Chuck Wepner or something) and Mike Tyson, ESPN Classic continues to air a shit-ton of incredible fights from the various golden ages of the sport. Watch the listings and you'll get lucky with Dempsey-Tunney or Ezzard Charles-Joe Louis every now and then.

i'd be a boxer if i wasn't so afraid of getting my nose broken.

burun wrote:I love photographing it.

I recently purchased a book called A Pictorial History of Boxing in an antique book store. Neatly preserved between the pages was a mint copy of this photograph of a very young Cassius Clay:



Apparently, the idea for this photo came from Clay, and he talked the photographer into it. NOT CRAP.

Sunlore,

Was it this edition:



Before I got into music, boxing was my rock n' roll. Aged about eleven I'd pore over this book which I'd take from the shelves of the rural village library where my mum worked. I was understandably obsessed with the glamour of the big 70s Ali fights but the mid 1980s were a great time to watch fights too - me and my brother would stay up to watch Hagler every time he fought. I had a weird obsession with Sonny Liston.

Lord! how it all comes back, Primo Carnera The Ambling Alp.

I mean, in how many other sports do the competitors threaten to eat each others' children?

Besides Olympic child-eating, of course.

Boxing: Not Crap.

Ultimate Fighting Championship: Crap

I was introduced to UFC because the patrons at a bar insisted on all the TVs tuned to it, which they glued their eyes to the screen like it was the World Series or something. It seemed vaguely homoerotic, and was extremely boring. I was amazed at how seriously these people took it.

cjh, no, mine is this one, from '64:



And yes, I have the feeling that this book came to me a little too late in life. Though I learned a lot about the sport from both my dad and my uncle, who were amateur boxers during their twenties.

There is a great site that offers a shitload of torrents of great fights here:

http://fights.worldboxingvideoarchive.com

You need to register, but it's totally worth it. Let it all come back, cjh.

nihil wrote:I do not like violence. But I really appreciate good boxing.

I share this with you in full. I detest violence, but find boxing fascinating. Makes no sense, but there you go.

And yes, the sport has declined, but only in the heavyweight division. Lighter weight divisions are still loaded with skillful fighters that exemplify great boxing.

sunlore wrote:Apparently, the idea for this photo came from Clay, and he talked the photographer into it. NOT CRAP.

Yeah! He wanted to be in LIFE magazine, and he knew that this photog (Flip Schulke) had been shooting a lot of underwater stuff. So Ali made up this story about how he trained underwater when Flip came to shoot him.

Later on, Flip discovered it was all a put-on, so Ali could get covered by LIFE.

Both of them recount the story in a really good doc about sports photography, that was on HBO. I can't recall the name offhand but pretty much everyone was in it: Neil Liefer, Walter Ioss, Flip Schulke. Basically, every photog whose images I gaped at when I was a kid reading Sports Illustrated.