The Sweet Science - A. J. Liebling [52]
Charles II
Pierce Egan, the Sire de Joinville of the London prize ring, characterized the immortal Tom Cribb as “placid, condescending, and obliging.” “If not possessing the volubility of an orator,” Egan wrote, “the CHAMPION, in company, is facetious, and endeavours to render himself pleasant and sociable to those around him, with a modest and unassuming deportment.” Dr. J. L. Moreno, described by the Associated Press as a noted psychiatrist and author, visited the training camps of Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano before their recent fight at the Yankee Stadium, and gave Marciano even higher marks. Marciano, like Cribb, is a forthright, outgoing type in the ring. “He has poise, charm, sensitivity, imagination, a remarkably retentive memory, and a rugged handsomeness,” Dr. Moreno wrote in the second article of a series of three sent out to all A.P. member papers, but, unfortunately, not used by any of the New York dailies. I was wised to Dr. Moreno by a member of the staff of the Newark Evening News, which had better editorial judgment. “He is friendly, warm, winning, and appeals to women, especially when he smiles,” the analysis continued. Dr. Moreno is not a woman, but he took his wife along to the training camps to supply feminine reactions. “Marciano has presence of mind,” he wrote. “That is a most important thing—a most decisive factor in the ring. Absence of mind is most devastating to a pugilist. Marciano has the ability to concentrate immediately on the crisis … . He is not calculable. His concentration is intense … . Unlike Ezzard Charles, Marciano has no inhibitions. Charles is the dreamer type.”
I suppose the A.P. sent a psychiatrist to the two camps because when Marciano and Charles fought for the first time, Charles, who was in the estimation of the fancy a timid fighter, stood up to the champion for fifteen rounds, thus confounding the lay analysts who hang out in Stillman’s gymnasium. It was the general opinion of these unlicensed practitioners that Charles’s brave fight had been a temporary flight from reality, or fugue, which was not to be expected in the return match. “That kind of beating stays with a guy” was how one of them explained his prognosis.
The schema, or main idea, of the training-camp series was that Dr. Moreno would visit Charles and analyze him in his first article, visit and analyze Rocky in his second, and then, in his third article, for release on the day set for the fight—Wednesday, September 15, 1954—tell who was going to win. But for an old psychiatric buff like me, that line about inhibitions blew the gaff. I knew a day in advance that Dr. Moreno was touting Marciano. It was not a highly negotiable piece of information, because so was everybody else.
From the first article, however, I could see that Charles was really the one who interested Dr. Moreno. He probably wished he had had time to work on those inhibitions before they calcified. An inhibition is a challenge to a psychiatrist, like a leaky faucet to an amateur plumber, and, seeing Charles on the rubbing table, Dr. Moreno must have felt tempted to get out his notebook and have a try, even at the eleventh hour. “Charles is a dreamer,” he wrote. “In his dreams, he is a mighty, invincible fighter, who sweeps all before him in a reckless, savage, destructive fashion. In the ring, however, he loses the spontaneity he has in his dreams.” It was almost a miracle, he went on, that Charles had got as far as he had in the ring. “Can a ‘miracle’ happen again?” he asked himself point-blank. “Yes,” he answered himself. “If Charles can wipe out his inhibitions in a frenzy—for just thirty seconds—if he is as spontaneous as he is in his dreams, he might knock out Marciano or anyone else. He would be irresistible. He would be like a tiger fighting for his mate. If the dream man can loose the tiger from within him, then Marciano had better watch out. There are several mental blocks, however, that