The Sweet Science - A. J. Liebling [3]
Over a century intervened between Liebling’s efforts and those of his beloved Pierce Egan; evidently, great boxing and great journalism come together only at rare intervals. Yet although the sport has become a part-time avocation for most, there is no danger that boxing will go extinct, or that writers will lose their fascination with it. Liebling took the long view: “ … the desire to punch other boys in the nose will survive in our culture … [Boxing] is an art of the people, like making love.”
Introduction
“Sweet Science of Bruising!”
—Boxiana, 1824
“I had heard that Ketchel���s dynamic onslaught was such it could not readily be withstood, but I figured I could jab his puss off … . I should have put the bum away early, but my timing was a fraction of an iota off.”
—Philadelphia Jack O‘Brien, talking, in 1938, about something that had happened long ago
It is through Jack O’Brien, the Arbiter Elegantiarum Philadelphiae, that I trace my rapport with the historic past through the laying-on of hands. He hit me, for pedagogical example, and he had been hit by the great Bob Fitzsimmons, from whom he won the light-heavyweight title in 1906. Jack had a scar to show for it. Fitzsimmons had been hit by Corbett, Corbett by John L. Sullivan, he by Paddy Ryan, with the bare knuckles, and Ryan by Joe Goss, his predecessor, who as a young man had felt the fist of the great Jem Mace. It is a great thrill to feel that all that separates you from the early Victorians is a series of punches on the nose. I wonder if Professor Toynbee is as intimately attuned to his sources. The Sweet Science is joined onto the past like a man’s arm to his shoulder.
I find it impossible to think that such a continuum can perish, but I will concede that we are entering a period of minor talents. The Sweet Science has suffered such doldrums before, like the long stretch, noted by Pierce Egan, the great historian of Boxiana, between the defeat of John Broughton in 1750 and the rise of Daniel Mendoza in 1789, or the more recent Dark Age between the retirement of Tunney in 1928 and the ascension of Joe Louis in the middle thirties. In both periods champions of little worth succeeded each other with the rapidity of the emperors who followed Nero, leaving the public scarce time to learn their names. When Louis came along he knocked out five of these world champions—Schmeling, Sharkey, Camera, Baer, and Braddock, the last of whom happened to be holding the title when Louis hit him. A decade later he knocked out Jersey Joe Walcott, who nevertheless won the title four years afterward. His light extended in both directions historically, exposing the insignificance of what preceded and followed.
It is true there exist certain generalized conditions today, like full employment and a late school-leaving age, that militate against the development of first-rate professional boxers. (They militate also against the development of first-rate acrobats, fiddlers, and chefs de cuisine.) “Drummers and boxers, to acquire excellence, must begin young,” the great Egan wrote in 1820. “There is a peculiar nimbleness of the wrist and exercise of the shoulder required, that is only obtained from growth and practice.” Protracted exposure to education conflicts with this acquisition, but if a boy has a true vocation he can do much in his spare time. Tony Canzoneri, a very fine featherweight and lightweight of the thirties, told me once, for example, that he never had on a boxing glove until he was eight years old. “But of course I had done some street fighting,” he said to explain how he had overcome his late start. Besides, there are a lot of unblighted areas like Cuba and North Africa and Siam that are beginning to turn out a lot of fighters now.
The immediate crisis in the United States, forestalling