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1. When a microphone gets shoved in the face of a fighter fresh from the contest, you never know what you’re going to get. It might be religious rhetoric (from Evander Holyfield or Naseem Hamed) or platitudes (from Oscar De La Hoya), but it’s just as likely to feature unintentional hilarity (Mike Tyson heading off into “bolivion”), a fight over the microphone (Lennox Lewis versus Larry Merchant), or sincere emotion (Buster Douglas sobbing after beating Tyson). Football? The same clichés and inanities from every thick-neck: “We took it to the next level,” or “every guy out there gave 120 percent.” Snore…
2. Generally, round-card girls wear less clothing than do NFL cheerleaders. This is a good thing (unless, judging by what we saw on ShoBox last week, you’re in Hinckley, Minnesota—yikes). Of course, you only know this if you attend live cards, since most of the networks, while happy to air men bashing in one another’s brains (in high-definition, super slo-mo if you like) draw the line at comely women in short-shorts.
3. The last two minutes of a fight doesn’t last a half hour. It lasts two minutes.
4. You will never see a high-level prizefighter squirm around on the canvas and have to be helped to his corner because he’s got a spasm in his back or a cramp in his big toe.
5. No female broadcasters! With the exception of Karen Bryant, who has on occasion served as a roving reporter on Showtime Championship Boxing—and left me hoping she’d rove out into traffic—the Sweet Science is happily devoid of women in the broadcaster’s seat. And that’s the way it should be. On the other hand, you can’t watch an NFL game without seeing some skirt chasing after Tom Brady or some such chin strap when he’s trying to get into the locker room at halftime, just so she can get his brilliant analysis (“We’ve got to get every guy to give 120 percent,” etc.). Let’s be honest: The suits hire women to work NFL games because they know guys like to look at them. But isn’t that what the cheerleaders are for? If the female broadcasters in the NFL are hired for their brilliant football minds, why do none of them look like Janet Reno or Bea Arthur?
6. On the whole, boxing doesn’t know if any of its participants are into dog fighting. It doesn’t want to know. It doesn’t really care.
7. It’s becoming less frequent and the networks hate when it happens, but during a prizefight you can hear men talk the way men talk. Not so with football. You can watch every NFL game from now until doomsday and you will never hear anything as entertaining as you did the time HBO’s microphones picked up every syllable in Norm Stone’s wonderfully profane rant that so upset referee Jay Nady that Nady ejected him from John Ruiz’ corner. (If all the cursing in boxing bothers you, let me know and I’ll send you the address to which you can write to get tickets to a taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.)
8. A football coach rarely, if ever, carries giant Q-Tips behind his ears in case he needs to shove one so far up his athlete’s nose that the guy starts hallucinating.
9. Prizefighters are still allowed to be controversial and to say controversial things. They take heat for it—see the way everyone came down on Bernard Hopkins for his, “I’ll never lose to a white man” comment—but they can say it. Guys criticize Ricardo Mayorga for his rants, and still can’t get over Mike Tyson for saying he wanted to eat Lennox Lewis’ children. No one will forget what Larry Homes said about Rocky Marciano, or what Floyd Mayweather said about HBO’s “slave wages.” But they were allowed to say it. Nobody censored them. The NFL simply doesn’t allow that level of honesty from its athletes. What’s the most outrageous thing a football player can say—that the quarterback’s being distracted by his girlfriend? And even that gets an apology.
10. Football players fight like girls.
11. It is highly unlikely that you will ever turn on a boxing match and say, “Hey, that’s the meat head jock from high school that used to beat up the geeks and give everyone wedgies! I hate that guy!” Sit through an entire football game and you might say it four or five times.
12. Halftime shows suck. Boxing? No halftime shows.
13. Any screaming, beer-guzzling, head-shaving, body-painting lunatic can be a football fanatic. It takes a special kind of miscreant to take delight in getting splashed with blood at ringside or to pay $50 for a pay-per-view card that guarantees maybe one good fight.
2. Generally, round-card girls wear less clothing than do NFL cheerleaders. This is a good thing (unless, judging by what we saw on ShoBox last week, you’re in Hinckley, Minnesota—yikes). Of course, you only know this if you attend live cards, since most of the networks, while happy to air men bashing in one another’s brains (in high-definition, super slo-mo if you like) draw the line at comely women in short-shorts.
3. The last two minutes of a fight doesn’t last a half hour. It lasts two minutes.
4. You will never see a high-level prizefighter squirm around on the canvas and have to be helped to his corner because he’s got a spasm in his back or a cramp in his big toe.
5. No female broadcasters! With the exception of Karen Bryant, who has on occasion served as a roving reporter on Showtime Championship Boxing—and left me hoping she’d rove out into traffic—the Sweet Science is happily devoid of women in the broadcaster’s seat. And that’s the way it should be. On the other hand, you can’t watch an NFL game without seeing some skirt chasing after Tom Brady or some such chin strap when he’s trying to get into the locker room at halftime, just so she can get his brilliant analysis (“We’ve got to get every guy to give 120 percent,” etc.). Let’s be honest: The suits hire women to work NFL games because they know guys like to look at them. But isn’t that what the cheerleaders are for? If the female broadcasters in the NFL are hired for their brilliant football minds, why do none of them look like Janet Reno or Bea Arthur?
6. On the whole, boxing doesn’t know if any of its participants are into dog fighting. It doesn’t want to know. It doesn’t really care.
7. It’s becoming less frequent and the networks hate when it happens, but during a prizefight you can hear men talk the way men talk. Not so with football. You can watch every NFL game from now until doomsday and you will never hear anything as entertaining as you did the time HBO’s microphones picked up every syllable in Norm Stone’s wonderfully profane rant that so upset referee Jay Nady that Nady ejected him from John Ruiz’ corner. (If all the cursing in boxing bothers you, let me know and I’ll send you the address to which you can write to get tickets to a taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.)
8. A football coach rarely, if ever, carries giant Q-Tips behind his ears in case he needs to shove one so far up his athlete’s nose that the guy starts hallucinating.
9. Prizefighters are still allowed to be controversial and to say controversial things. They take heat for it—see the way everyone came down on Bernard Hopkins for his, “I’ll never lose to a white man” comment—but they can say it. Guys criticize Ricardo Mayorga for his rants, and still can’t get over Mike Tyson for saying he wanted to eat Lennox Lewis’ children. No one will forget what Larry Homes said about Rocky Marciano, or what Floyd Mayweather said about HBO’s “slave wages.” But they were allowed to say it. Nobody censored them. The NFL simply doesn’t allow that level of honesty from its athletes. What’s the most outrageous thing a football player can say—that the quarterback’s being distracted by his girlfriend? And even that gets an apology.
10. Football players fight like girls.
11. It is highly unlikely that you will ever turn on a boxing match and say, “Hey, that’s the meat head jock from high school that used to beat up the geeks and give everyone wedgies! I hate that guy!” Sit through an entire football game and you might say it four or five times.
12. Halftime shows suck. Boxing? No halftime shows.
13. Any screaming, beer-guzzling, head-shaving, body-painting lunatic can be a football fanatic. It takes a special kind of miscreant to take delight in getting splashed with blood at ringside or to pay $50 for a pay-per-view card that guarantees maybe one good fight.
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