Boxing
has been a part of my life ever since my grandfather first taught me how to
throw a punch. I grew up listening to
stories about fights and the fighters he loved – champions like Dempsey, Joe
Louis, Jersey Joe Walcott, Ray Robinson, Willie Pep, Sandy Saddler, and Rocky
Marciano. I used to shuffle around the
kitchen like I was Sugar Ray, flicking my jab at an imaginary Jake LaMotta
until my mother chased me outside (when I got older I turned into Smoking Joe
Frazier or Benny Briscoe – my favorite Philly fighters - but it didn’t matter
because she still chased me out of the kitchen). Saturday mornings were spent at the local
barber shop, studying the black and white pictures of fighters tacked to the
walls, reading Ring Magazine, and
listening to the old guys arguing about who was the best pound for pound
fighter they ever saw. Baseball,
football, and hockey were seasonal – boxing and the arguments about it remained
constant throughout the year. When I got
older I tried my hand at boxing in the local YMCA, and for years afterwards I
worked out on a heavy bag in my basement, still imagining I was Ali, Hagler, Mike
Tyson, or Bernard Hopkins. It was always
semi-comical to be sitting in a business meeting, dressed in a suit and tie,
with hands that were bruised, swollen, and scabbed over from too many brutal
nights pounding the leather.
I
owe it all to my grandfather. He
instilled in me a love of the sport and a deep appreciation for boxing that
showed me how no other sport offered what boxing did. It had (and still has) everything you could
ever want – at its core it is a simple contest between two opponents matching
skill, desire, strength, determination, and sometimes, a little luck.
But
boxing is more than that. It is about
passion and sacrifice - a sport for those who often come from nothing and risk it
all for a chance at greatness. Boxing provides
the opportunity to achieve immortality for guys who have no other way to find
it. I was always fascinated by the sport.
By its purity. By the dedication
and self-discipline it took to be successful.
By what was needed to rise against the odds. And by the loneliness of each fighter’s
existence - in the end, it was always about the fighter getting in the ring alone. For a kid who grew up by himself, even though
he was surrounded by friends, it struck a chord somewhere deep inside that
still resonates today.
In more concrete terms, boxing is about rising from the
canvas when you’re knocked down, holding on when you’re being pummeled in the
corner, and surviving to fight another round. It is about fighting with everything
you have, all your heart, all your skill, and all your ability, and then
embracing your opponent when it’s over because he has done the same thing. In
boxing you battle more than your opponent – you battle yourself and the hand you
were dealt. You battle adversity. You
battle critics and people who tell you that you’ll never make it. You battle
your size, your intelligence, your speed, your age, your character, and most
importantly, your will.
Boxing is just like life. It takes all that was good, bad, noble, and awful,
and puts it in the center of the ring. No other sport demonstrates that the
ones who are great in life aren’t always the ones who win, but those who fight the hardest to win. It proves that skill,
money, and talent can only go so far, and that the true measure of success is
in the size of your heart and the strength of your will. It is the ultimate
test of man against man, and man against himself. Greatness, like failure, is
always just one punch away. It is the
ultimate in competition.
Maybe
I didn’t get all of that from my grandfather – not in those words, but that’s
what it turned into. For a kid like me,
it was about beating the odds when nobody believed in me and everyone told me I
could never win, no matter how hard I tried.
Boxing was about proving everybody wrong.
