It is my distinct hope that I never find myself stranded on a deserted island. Trying to start fires by rubbing sticks together, killing wild boars for sustenance, talking deliriously to volleyballs — for an indoor cat like me, it all sounds miserable.
But as fodder for hypothetical discussions, I’m all about getting stranded on a deserted island. I love the thought exercise. I love the framing device for arriving at a list of favorites in a given category.
I love it so much that the instant British writer/podcaster Steve Hunt posted on socials that his next pod project would be called Desert Island Fights, I shamelessly reached out and pitched myself to be a guest.
As it turned out, I was his first guest, and the pilot episode posted Wednesday. The conversation centered primarily around five fights from boxing history that I would choose to take with me to a desert island — accepting that these would be the only five fights I could watch for the rest of my days.
I’m not going to spoil — at least not explicitly — my selections in this article. Go listen to the pod if you want to know what I chose.
What I will do in this article is provide some of the “why” — the personal philosophies that guided my desert island decisions.
There is, of course, no “right” or “wrong” approach. It’s a matter of perspective and taste and priority.
But if you’re doing it with proper attention to the parameters of the desert island thought experiment, you’re placing a premium on rewatchability. Which is to say, if you’re picking fights that you can potentially get tired of after a couple of viewings, you’re not putting yourself in the best possible situation for retaining sanity during your island alone time.
Here are three rules I tried to apply as I formulated my list:
Variety is essential
There are certain all-action fights from across the decades that a stranded fight fanatic can’t go wrong with, and surely it’s correct to put some of them in your five-pack. It’s probably right to have at least one Fight of the Year-level slugfest on your list. Maybe it’s best to include two of those. Perhaps even three.
But if every fight you bring with you looks like something out of a Rocky movie, you’re not checking enough boxes. We’re talking about years, maybe decades, stuck watching the same five fights over and over. Presumably, across all those long, lonely days and nights, you’ll experience an assortment of moods, and you’ll want fights at your fingertips that can satisfy those different moods.
Bloody warriors going Neanderthal with no defense is perfect for some moods, but not all.
You're going to get sick of eating coconuts three meals a day while you're stuck on this island, but that’s something you have no control over. You do have control of the fights you choose, and you don’t want them all to be coconuts. (Or two sluggers bashing each other’s coconuts.)
There will be times when you want to see the sweet science in all its magnificent, graceful glory.
There will be times when you want to be moved by some sort of triumph of the human spirit — especially when you have no actual contact with other humans.
And it’s not just the style of fight that you should seek variety in. To each their own, of course, but you probably don’t want all five to be heavyweight fights. Or all five to feature your favorite fighter, as much as you may revere him. Or all five to be black-and-white fights from the ‘50s, even if that era represents the peak of your fandom.
If we were talking desert island movies, would you pick five comedies? Or five horror films? No, you’d probably pick a hilarious comedy, a powerful drama, maybe a thriller or a musical or a slasher flick or whatever you’re into. Actually, come to think of it, one of your five is probably going to be a porno. Hey, no judgment.
Anyway, similar principles apply here. You have to hit a few different pugilistic genres. Being stranded on a desert island is an exercise in monotony. Variety in picking fights to watch is one way to ever so slightly diminish that monotony.
Quickie KOs need not apply
A bit of a spoiler here for my list on the Desert Island Fights podcast: Every fight I selected at least made it into the 10th round.
I certainly considered some that didn't. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't pause to think about Hagler-Hearns, or Foreman-Lyle, or Hamed-Kelley.
But those three classic fights add up to a total of 12 rounds of action. The action across those 12 rounds is mind-melting, I realize. But if I pick them all, I'm using up three of my five spots for one fight’s worth of content.
Could I have picked one shortie among my five? Sure. And I’m almost certain future guests on Hunt’s podcast will.
But for me, planning for this open-ended marooning, quantity matters.
Maybe that means I should have selected some 15-rounders, which I failed to do. But I was at least avoiding anything that was over in three, or four, or five. As spectacular as Hagler-Hearns is, you’re going to know every second of it by heart in a hurry on this island.
Shifting again to a pop culture example, if you get to bring five complete TV series to a desert island, Saturday Night Live is the ultimate cheat that you’d be a fool not to include — even if you think 95 per cent of the content SNL has aired over the years has sucked.
First of all, it satisfies that variety demand, as you’re getting classic comedy and two or more songs from nearly every relevant musical artist of the last 50 years.
But it's that “50 years” bit that is really critical here. You take the complete series of SNL to your island, and you'll never run out of things to watch.
The same trick cannot quite be pulled off selecting five boxing matches, but you at least have to do yourself some small favors and load up on rounds. My selections add up to 54 rounds — which isn’t the 75 rounds I could have hit with a quintet of 15-rounders, but it still serves me a lot better on this deserted island than including any wild wars that didn’t make it to the halfway mark of their scheduled distances.
Pick the fights you want, not the fights you want people to think you want
In other words, don’t be a hipster doofus, all concerned about your image.
You can do that to an extent with a Mt. Rushmore discussion, or whatever other random sports radio conversation stimulator format you like. But on a desert island, there’s nobody to judge you. There’s certainly nobody to pat you on the back for your brilliant obscure selection of a junior bantamweight club fight in Thailand from the ‘80s that nobody in the Western Hemisphere except you had seen before YouTube came along.
If you're stuck on this island with only five fights to watch for however many years you survive, you'd better make damned sure they’re five fights you actually love that will greatly entertain you and/or deeply mean something to you.
As I explained to Hunt in our podcast conversation, there was one fight I selected that was such an obvious choice that I initially went into the exercise planning to steer clear of it. Let’s face it: There's nothing “cool” about making the chalk selections. And at one point during this process, I found myself putting thought into looking “cool.”
But I talked myself out of that.
I included the fight in question because, in the end, I couldn't deny it was one of the five fights I'd most want to have at my disposal if stranded on an island.
And I trust that Wilson the volleyball won’t look down on me for being so predictable.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
