Attn: Very Good Article ~ Resurrecting a Boxing Identity By Brett Conway

Resurrecting a Boxing Identity By Brett Conway Early in her book “On Boxing,” Joyce Carol Oates writes of two four-round fighters sleep walking their way to a draw. The decision being announced, the two fighters put their hands in the air, saying in effect, “I made it; I matter; people know who I am.” The catcalls and hisses of the Madison Square Garden crowd whipped past them like a breeze. Now, they were fighters: they had an identity. Boxing often revolves around the question of identity. A man who wins the belt becomes “champion.” A guy on a knockout streak becomes a “contender.” A one-time champion losing one, two, three bouts in a row becomes an “opponent” and if his misfortune continues, a “tomato can.” But those labels are precarious, fleeting, and never ever permanent. They vary from fight to fight and maybe even round to round. Bernard Hopkins, “Ring” magazine’s number one pound-for-pound fighter, was untimely torn from that top-ten after losing a close decision to Jermain Taylor. Boxing films have often dealt with this question of identity and lack thereof. “Raging Bull” had Jake La Motta bemoaning his fate as a middleweight contender when he could, somewhere, somehow, defeat the great Joe Louis and be known as the heavyweight champion. Later he defines the fate of boxing champions: “it’s a peak you reach and then it’s all downhill.” There is Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront” saying “I could’ve been a contender instead of the bum that I am.” Or Mountain in “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” insisting he was once ranked in the top-ten but now doesn’t “fit in any of the holes” society offers. The boxer never wants to be what he is. A “contender” doesn’t want to be thought of as a contender. He is a champion in waiting just needing his shot at the champ. A “tomato can” feels he can win that big fight, with just the right training, with the right management, with the treatment granted to other champions. And “champions” aren’t just champions. They tearfully tell us they are greater than Sugar Ray Robinson. But champions don’t’ just elevate their own position. Others are tearing them down. Their position is always being questioned by potential opponents, by the fans or by the prognosticators. The champion, one day, will no longer be champion. It’s just a question of when. One might think Floyd Mayweather is bound to lose to Baldomir or De La Hoya or (coming soon) Ricky Hatton or fill-in-the-blank. The list of top-ten opponents might wait until they get their chance to expose the champion as not worthy of a title. Some of these contenders might even go as far to call themselves the real champion. If the great Bernard Hopkins can do it after losing to middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, others can, too. So once a fighter has the belt, his doom is already foretold: it’s just a matter of when and it’s a matter of the boxer accepting his fate whether as “champion,” “contender,” or “tomato can.” If the fighter can’t, the fighter may not just sleep walk through his fights but through life itself. A recent movie deals with this very issue. Called “Resurrecting the Champ,” it tells the story of a newspaperman writing about a homeless man insisting he is a one-time contender named Bob Satterfield. This man, picked on by some but called “champ” by others, has taken his big moment, a fight against Satterfield which he lost by second round knockout, as a means to create an identity. He is now not just the opponent who has knocked out by Satterfield, but has become that fighter instead. He is no longer a mere name on a record of a near-great fighter, but as if in a dream, he becomes that fighter himself. Late in the movie, “the champ” explains how he got to be Satterfield. After that fight, he quit boxing and went to work in a horse stable. A fight manager spots him and begins to promote him under a new identity: Bob Satterfield. After a loss, the fighter is left not with money but the name “Bob Satterfield” which he takes on permanently. It is an identity that replaces that which was taken away. It is an identity, he feels, that gives him the respect of his son and his wife. On the surface, this may seem strange, but in boxing, this is actually common. Many real fighters have done the same. Joe Frazier wrote an autobiography that seems to be more about Ali than about himself; Trevor Berbick was obsessed with Larry Holmes and blamed him not just for his declining career but also for his financial ruin; Mitch Green, who went the distance with knockout happy 1980s Mike Tyson, became the guy always calling out Tyson long after he or Tyson or both mattered in the heavyweight division. And George Foreman, for many years, became spiritually lost as a result of his defeat to Muhammad Ali back in 1974, a loss that resulted in his losing the label “heavyweight champion.” He later turned to religion in part to cope with that hole in his identity. Boxers’ moments in the ring -- more intense than almost anything else in their lives (months of training, years of mental preparation leading to that big fight that will last at most 36 minutes) -- can define their lives. Some fighters are remembered as being “champion,” “contender,” or “tomato can.” Others are remembered as being “the loser to Ali,” “the loser to Holmes,” or “the loser to Tyson.” But some fighters twist these names and these fates around. Foreman insists he was poisoned before the fight with Ali; Frazier says look at Ali now and tell him who really won their fights. Or as in the case of “Ressurecting the Champ,” the loser doesn’t just be the loser but becomes the very person who beat him. Boxing is a sport to be sure and its violence is beyond the pale of everyday living. Unless a boxer retires to become a bouncer, throwing that perfect left hook will be of no use when the ring career is over. That is why for the boxer, perspective is needed. That is why boxers must remember that above all, the sport is an enterprise to get money, not an identity. Many great fighters of the past – Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, Barney Ross and Benny Leonard – knew this and got out before they got hurt and before their label in the ring as champion got the better of their psychology, making them feel they have to fight for an abstraction they can never achieve or own permanently. Instead these fighters fought for the concrete; they fought for money. And when you hear about many of the old-time fighters, sitting around gentle as pot-bellied Buddha’s it’s because they have no need for that abstraction of “champ” or “contender.” It was about money and about getting out before they got hurt. It was about Jim Braddock getting 10% of Joe Louis’s future earnings; it was about Carmen Basilio taking on a career as an athletic instructor; it was about Jose Torres becoming a writer. A boxer who hangs on to that label of champion or who continues to search for that missing moment of greatness will just hang on to his boxing career too long and get hurt as many have. Meldrick Taylor once fought and lost to Julio Cesar Chavez with 2 seconds left on the clock. Well ahead on the cards, Taylor was halted after being knocked down and on wobbly legs was deemed unfit to continue by referee Richard Steele. An HBO documentary about that fight argues that Taylor hung on to his boxing career too long after that because he lost his defining moment that night: he lost the chance to be identified as the victor over the undefeated Chavez. The great performance he put on was taken away by Chavez and maybe a referee who jumped in too soon. He never became the guy who won a decision over Chavez by giving him a boxing lesson; instead he became the Laurent Dauthuille of the 1990s: the guy Koed with a fight well in hand. What happened to Taylor that night became his white whale and for the rest of his career he fought to recapture that moment, a moment that would never be again because time can never be regained. “Resurrecting the Champ” deals with such issues. A man who once was known but never made it tries to be someone else until it becomes who he is. It is a warning to all those -- fans, writers, athletes -- involved in the sweet science. It reminds those of us covering the fights, watching the fights, or even participating in the fights that what goes on in those four ropes is a dream world. It is a measure of an athlete but not a measure of a man. For both “the champ” and for the newspaperman writing his story in the movie, family is the measure of a man. The fighter can sleepwalk in the ring as the two four-round fighters in Oates’s book do but in life, sleepwalking in an illusion just makes us all tell the world we are our own versions of Bob Satterfield. It’s better to get on with living, instead.