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would spend three years in four-, six-, and eight-round bouts in small clubs before attempting ten. Amateur experience has only a limited relation to serious boxing, since amateurs go only three rounds. Twelve rounds, I should estimate roughly, impose sixteen times as much strain as three, and the transition used to be managed gradually. Patterson, as I have indicated, has had better luck. Two years after turning pro he was being asked to go only eight rounds. But the majority of the fighters who come up under the aegis of the peddling business are not only incompetent, but bad actuarial risks in the bargain.

Copyright © 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956 by the Estate of A. J. Liebling

Foreword copyright © 2004 by Robert Anasi

All rights reserved

Originally published in 1956 by The Viking Press

First North Point Press paperback edition, 2004

The text of this book originally appeared in The New Yorker.

North Point Press

A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

www.fsgbooks.com

Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott

eISBN 9781466801868

First eBook Edition : September 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Liebling, A. J. (Abbott Joseph), 1904—1963.

The sweet science / A. J. Liebling ; foreword by Robert Anasi.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-374-27227-2

ISBN-10: 0-374-27227-1

1. Boxing—United States—History. I. Title.

GV1125. L5 2004

796.83’0973—dc22

2004049509