The Sweet Science - A. J. Liebling [8]
I can think of nothing more to say in favor of the Present Extension of the GREAT HISTORIAN’S Magnum Opus.
A. J. LIEBLING
Paris, 1956
The Big Fellows
Boxing with the Naked Eye
Watching a fight on television has always seemed to me a poor substitute for being there. For one thing, you can’t tell the fighters what to do. When I watch a fight, I like to study one boxer’s problem, solve it, and then communicate my solution vocally. On occasion my advice is disregarded, as when I tell a man to stay away from the other fellow’s left and he doesn’t, but in such cases I assume that he hasn’t heard my counsel, or that his opponent has, and has acted on it. Some fighters hear better and are more suggestible than others—for example, the pre-television Joe Louis. “Let him have it, Joe!” I would yell whenever I saw him fight, and sooner or later he would let the other fellow have it. Another fighter like that was the late Marcel Cerdan, whom I would coach in his own language, to prevent opposition seconds from picking up our signals. “Vas-y, Marcel!” I used to shout, and Marcel always y allait. I get a feeling of participation that way that I don’t in front of a television screen. I could yell, of course, but I would know that if my suggestion was adopted, it would be by the merest coincidence.
Besides, when you go to a fight, the boxers aren’t the only ones you want to be heard by. You are surrounded by people whose ignorance of the ring is exceeded only by their unwillingness to face facts—the sharpness of your boxer’s punching, for instance. Such people may take it upon themselves to disparage the principal you are advising. This disparagement is less generally addressed to the man himself (as “Gavilan, you’re a bum!”) than to his opponent, whom they have wrong-headedly picked to win. (“He’s a cream puff, Miceli!” they may typically cry. “He can’t hurt you. He can’t hurt nobody. Look—slaps! Ha, ha!”) They thus get at your man—and, by indirection, at you. To put them in their place, you address neither them nor their man but your man. (“Get the other eye, Gavilan!” you cry.) This throws them off balance, because they haven’t noticed anything the matter with either eye. Then, before they can think of anything to say, you thunder, “Look at that eye!” It doesn’t much matter whether or not the man has been hit in the eye; he will be. Addressing yourself to the fighter when you want somebody else to hear you is a parliamentary device, like “Mr. Chairman …” Before television, a prize-fight was to a New Yorker the nearest equivalent to the New England town meeting. It taught a man to think on his seat.
Less malignant than rooters for the wrong man, but almost as disquieting, are those who are on the right side but tactically unsound. At a moment when you have steered your boxer to a safe lead on points but can see the other fellow is still dangerous, one of these maniacs will encourage recklessness. “Finish the jerk, Harry!” he will sing out. “Stop holding him up! Don’t lose him!” But you, knowing the enemy is a puncher, protect your client’s interests. “Move to your left, Harry!” you call. “Keep moving! Keep moving! Don’t let him set!” I sometimes finish a fight like that in a cold sweat.
If you go to a fight with a friend, you can keep up unilateral conversations on two vocal levels—one at the top of your voice, directed at your fighter, and the other a running expertise nominally aimed at your companion but loud enough to reach a modest fifteen feet in each direction. “Reminds me of Panama Al Brown,” you may say as a new fighter enters the ring. “He was five feet eleven and weighed a hundred and eighteen pounds. This fellow may be about forty pounds heavier and a couple of inches shorter, but he’s got the same kind of neck.