The Sweet Science - A. J. Liebling [22]
The films are especially insidious. During the last twenty seconds or so of the fight between Sugar Ray Robinson and Randy Turpin, for example, it seemed to me from where I sat, in the lower stand at the Polo Grounds, that Robinson hit the failing Turpin with every blow he threw—a succession of smashing hits such as I had never before seen a fighter take without going down. The films show that Robinson missed quite a few of them, and that Turpin, although not able to hit back, was putting up some defensive action until the last second—swaying low, with his gloves shielding his sad face, gray-white in the films. It was the face of a schoolboy who has long trained himself not to cry under punishment and who has had endless chances to practice, like an inmate of Dotheboys Hall. That’s the way I now catch myself remembering Turpin’s face in the last seconds, although I couldn’t see it at the Polo Grounds because Robinson was between us and both were a good distance from me anyway. The face isn’t gray-white in real life, but a kind of dun.
The films of the first nine rounds of the fight upset my original impressions in the same way. Those rounds seem exciting now, because I look for hints of what is to come in the tenth, which contained all the fight’s excitement. I forget that when they were being fought I saw them only as nine very bad rounds, almost a hoax on the 61,370 spectators, who, in the consecrated formula, had paid $767,630 for the privilege of watching them. All they seemed likely to lead to was six more bad rounds and a decision that would be sure to provoke an argument, since the boxers were going nowhere at the same pace. In the third, or maybe the fourth, round, the fans in the general-admission seats began to clap in unison, as they do at small clubs when two preliminary boys either can’t or won’t fight. I wondered if either Robinson or Turpin had ever before been treated so disrespectfully. Their styles seemed just made to reduce each other to absurdity. But years from now, when I reminisce about the fight, I’ll probably say it was tense all the way, and I’ll believe it.
I still think the referee, Ruby Goldstein, was right to stop the fight; no referee should take it upon himself to gamble on a man’s recuperative powers. One more punch like the ones Robinson was throwing might have ended the boxing days of any fighter—even Turpin, who is what Boxiana would have called “a prime glutton.” Boxiana is one of my favorite books, and, because of the international nature of the fight, I had a refresher glance at it before going up to the Polo Grounds.
On the night of the fight I started out early, in the true Egan tradition. In his time, the migration to a fight would begin days in advance, when the foot-toddlers (fellows who couldn’t afford horse-drawn transportation) would set out on the road for the rumored meeting place. Rumors were all they had to go on because in England at that time prizefighting, although patronized by the Prince Regent, was illegal. A day or so later, the milling coves and the flash coves (fighters and knowing boys) would set out in wagons or hackneys, with plenty of Cyprians and blue ruin (sporting girls and gin) to keep them happy on their way. The Cyprians counted on making new and more profitable connections later. Last of all, the Corinthians (amateurs of the fancy and patrons of pugilists) would take the road in their fast traps and catch up with the others in time to get their bets down before the fight. But blue ruin stopped many a wagon before it got there; milling coves and flash coves both were lushing coves.
Attendance at an old-time British fight was preceded, for all classes, by a