Some Thoughts on Last Saturday's Bare Knuckle Fights
I took the plunge last Saturday and watched the first legally-sanctioned bareknuckle fight to take place in America in over a century. It’s tempting to do the usual musing about the decline of Western Civilization, bread and circuses, brutality, and so on, but anyone who knows a little about boxing (that is, with padded gloves) knows how and why bareknuckle fighting can be both more brutal and yet less dangerous than boxing, as paradoxical as that sounds.
The writer George Plimpton, when he was practicing his “immersive” style of journalism with sports eventually got around to boxing, and eventually stepped into the ring. Very few people like getting hit in the face, although some (like Librado Andrade) find it energizing. Literally no one likes getting punched in the body. A shot to the liver can be quite debilitating, and it is a way for a boxer well behind on points to change the tide in his favor if he can find a way to land that one well-placed crippling blow.
That aside, when Mr. Plimpton was studying the sweet science (as it’s known) the menacing boxer Sonny Liston was dominating the heavyweight ranks. If you want to know more about Charles “Sonny” Liston, check out the great bio, The Champ that Nobody Wanted. All you have to know for the sake of reading this blog entry, though, is that “Iron” Mike Tyson claims that Sonny Liston was the most intimidating boxer of all-time, himself included.
George Plimpton mused that getting knocked out by Sonny Liston would feel much like being tucked into bed by a sweet old mammy. It’s a strange statement, prima facie absurd for people who don’t follow boxing, but it’s also accurate. A related old saw is that nothing is quite as merciful as an early knockout. George Foreman used to say, “If he gets hit with that big shot, he’s gonna wake up in his locker room.” To be a victim of a brutal, highlight reel-worthy knockout might be a blow to the ego (and might cause a concussion), but the sensation is that of being there one second, and then … poof…you’re gone.
The fatalities in the ring that I can remember come when one fighter is totally outclassing another boxer over the course of a fight, and is breaking his opponent down, yet lacks the one-punch knockout power requisite to put his man quickly to sleep. Death usually comes when the attrition rains onto the head of a stubborn man who refuses to acknowledge he is outclassed, and finally refuses to acknowledge he’s hurt and alas only human.
I would hardly encourage you to look up on YouTube fights in which men are killed, but it is at least worth researching the bout which is responsible for changing matches from 15 to 12 rounds, which is that which took place between Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, and Korea’s Deuk Koo Kim. It’s a sad story all around, but a lot of great stories are tragic.
I also don’t want to talk (or blog) your ear off about brain injuries in fights, so suffice it again to say that many people who have studied repetitive trauma and pugilistic brain damage have concluded that using headgear and padding makes amateur boxing more dangerous (at least as regards head injuries) than boxing without guards in the pros. The Olympics have dispensed with headguards for their official boxing competition. I’m not sure what other amateur organizations like Golden Gloves have done, or will do.
The bareknuckle fights I watched last Saturday were five rounds in length, with each round being two minutes in duration (women in the pro boxing ranks also fight two-minute rounds).
The card was ten fights deep, and, as with almost any card, there were some clunkers. There was at least one scrap between ill-conditioned, pudgy men wheezing their way through their paces and robbing the fans in Wyoming of their hard-earned dollars. There were also some brilliant scraps, including a one-punch, first punch knockout in which perfect boxing form and technique was demonstrated, as well as a late sub/alternate heavyweight match that sounded bad on paper, but turned out to be the best fight of the night.
The fight in question, between Joey Beltran and Ray Lopez, was a throwback bloodbath between two immovable objects. Beltran is a bald, bulbous-headed and tattooed fighter who was at least a head shorter than his opponent. Ray Lopez is a mountain of a man, with a nose in profile like Fritzie Zivic’s (google him). One caricaturist said Fritzie had a face whose line was so straight you could cut cans with it.
The first two rounds or so of this bout consisted of the smaller and more active Beltran pretty much assaulting his larger quarry at will, throwing closed fists that connected with meaty thuds and caused a spurt of blood to leak from the big man’s clayey face, matting his long hair in the process. By the third or fourth round there was so much blood comingling with Lopez’s long, raven mane that he looked like he’d survived a scalping. Then, thank God, the butchering turned into a fight, and for whatever reason, and however it sometimes happens, a switch went off in Lopez’s head or heart (or both) and he started giving as good as he got, backing up Beltran and breaking him down, making his opponent’s face as bloody as his own had been up until that point.
The crowd could sense something happening in that room, just as I could sense it at home, that magic, that high, that liftoff, the miracle that happens sometimes in fights. Calling it chemistry would be about accurate. Like certain musicians or certain lovers, certain fighters just somehow bring it out in each other. These kinds of fights typically happen between men who’ve exchanged some words in the runup to the fight and maybe don’t care for each other, although I’ve also seen great fights between men who have no out-of-the-ring animosity for each other.
Typically, even when the men hate each other going into the fray, they come out with a newfound respect for each other. It doesn’t always happen this way, but it did on Saturday. And after the red-knuckled wet work between these two men, the main event was anticlimactic.
Tony Lopez’s performance will stay with me for a while, as will his face, that hatchet nose, the same quality to those eyes and mug as Sonny Liston had, the bearlike scowl that looks menacing, perplexed, hollow, and yet somehow tender at the same time. If he likes you, you’re okay. If not, you’re in trouble.
Anyway, the pay-per-view was worth the $29.95.
The writer George Plimpton, when he was practicing his “immersive” style of journalism with sports eventually got around to boxing, and eventually stepped into the ring. Very few people like getting hit in the face, although some (like Librado Andrade) find it energizing. Literally no one likes getting punched in the body. A shot to the liver can be quite debilitating, and it is a way for a boxer well behind on points to change the tide in his favor if he can find a way to land that one well-placed crippling blow.
That aside, when Mr. Plimpton was studying the sweet science (as it’s known) the menacing boxer Sonny Liston was dominating the heavyweight ranks. If you want to know more about Charles “Sonny” Liston, check out the great bio, The Champ that Nobody Wanted. All you have to know for the sake of reading this blog entry, though, is that “Iron” Mike Tyson claims that Sonny Liston was the most intimidating boxer of all-time, himself included.
George Plimpton mused that getting knocked out by Sonny Liston would feel much like being tucked into bed by a sweet old mammy. It’s a strange statement, prima facie absurd for people who don’t follow boxing, but it’s also accurate. A related old saw is that nothing is quite as merciful as an early knockout. George Foreman used to say, “If he gets hit with that big shot, he’s gonna wake up in his locker room.” To be a victim of a brutal, highlight reel-worthy knockout might be a blow to the ego (and might cause a concussion), but the sensation is that of being there one second, and then … poof…you’re gone.
The fatalities in the ring that I can remember come when one fighter is totally outclassing another boxer over the course of a fight, and is breaking his opponent down, yet lacks the one-punch knockout power requisite to put his man quickly to sleep. Death usually comes when the attrition rains onto the head of a stubborn man who refuses to acknowledge he is outclassed, and finally refuses to acknowledge he’s hurt and alas only human.
I would hardly encourage you to look up on YouTube fights in which men are killed, but it is at least worth researching the bout which is responsible for changing matches from 15 to 12 rounds, which is that which took place between Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, and Korea’s Deuk Koo Kim. It’s a sad story all around, but a lot of great stories are tragic.
I also don’t want to talk (or blog) your ear off about brain injuries in fights, so suffice it again to say that many people who have studied repetitive trauma and pugilistic brain damage have concluded that using headgear and padding makes amateur boxing more dangerous (at least as regards head injuries) than boxing without guards in the pros. The Olympics have dispensed with headguards for their official boxing competition. I’m not sure what other amateur organizations like Golden Gloves have done, or will do.
The bareknuckle fights I watched last Saturday were five rounds in length, with each round being two minutes in duration (women in the pro boxing ranks also fight two-minute rounds).
The card was ten fights deep, and, as with almost any card, there were some clunkers. There was at least one scrap between ill-conditioned, pudgy men wheezing their way through their paces and robbing the fans in Wyoming of their hard-earned dollars. There were also some brilliant scraps, including a one-punch, first punch knockout in which perfect boxing form and technique was demonstrated, as well as a late sub/alternate heavyweight match that sounded bad on paper, but turned out to be the best fight of the night.
The fight in question, between Joey Beltran and Ray Lopez, was a throwback bloodbath between two immovable objects. Beltran is a bald, bulbous-headed and tattooed fighter who was at least a head shorter than his opponent. Ray Lopez is a mountain of a man, with a nose in profile like Fritzie Zivic’s (google him). One caricaturist said Fritzie had a face whose line was so straight you could cut cans with it.
The first two rounds or so of this bout consisted of the smaller and more active Beltran pretty much assaulting his larger quarry at will, throwing closed fists that connected with meaty thuds and caused a spurt of blood to leak from the big man’s clayey face, matting his long hair in the process. By the third or fourth round there was so much blood comingling with Lopez’s long, raven mane that he looked like he’d survived a scalping. Then, thank God, the butchering turned into a fight, and for whatever reason, and however it sometimes happens, a switch went off in Lopez’s head or heart (or both) and he started giving as good as he got, backing up Beltran and breaking him down, making his opponent’s face as bloody as his own had been up until that point.
The crowd could sense something happening in that room, just as I could sense it at home, that magic, that high, that liftoff, the miracle that happens sometimes in fights. Calling it chemistry would be about accurate. Like certain musicians or certain lovers, certain fighters just somehow bring it out in each other. These kinds of fights typically happen between men who’ve exchanged some words in the runup to the fight and maybe don’t care for each other, although I’ve also seen great fights between men who have no out-of-the-ring animosity for each other.
Typically, even when the men hate each other going into the fray, they come out with a newfound respect for each other. It doesn’t always happen this way, but it did on Saturday. And after the red-knuckled wet work between these two men, the main event was anticlimactic.
Tony Lopez’s performance will stay with me for a while, as will his face, that hatchet nose, the same quality to those eyes and mug as Sonny Liston had, the bearlike scowl that looks menacing, perplexed, hollow, and yet somehow tender at the same time. If he likes you, you’re okay. If not, you’re in trouble.
Anyway, the pay-per-view was worth the $29.95.
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