The Sweet Science - A. J. Liebling [95]
“But he gotta knock him out,” said right-ear voice. “If he don’t knock him out, they’ll give it to Patterson. Joe gotta use his right.” Joe was already using it, to protect his poor, battered noggin, but left-ear voice and right-ear voice were relentless.
“Hey, Joe, trow your right, huh?” yelled right-ear voice.
“Connect wit’ one, Joe, will ya?” concurred left ear.
And they began to chorus, “Trow your right, Joe! Trow your right!”
The sixth round was more of the same. When Patterson, reverting for a moment to his old habit, whirled around in a clinch and, in throwing Gannon out of it, turned his back on him for a split second, right-ear voice yelled disconsolately, “Joe! You didn’t take avantage!” But Joe, disregarding their incitements to murder, continued to box correctly—feinting, though Patterson didn’t follow; jabbing, though it didn’t throw Patterson off balance; taking each smack on the chops unblinking; and holding his right high to pick off punches, which usually arrived from another direction. It was such a one-sided fight that Patterson’s problem, patently, was to end it with a flourish. Gannon’s mere survival would be a reflection on the Wunderkind’s Eastern Parkway education.
Then, in the seventh, Joe reckernized the voices, or else had got bad advice in his corner. He trun rights. Unhappily, one of them connected. Maybe several of them did, but they were of a force incommensurate with their purpose. Patterson reacted with acerbity. He is a vain fellow—a great asset in a fighting man. (Abe Attell, the illustrious featherweight champion turned boulevardier, once said, “I never seen a good fighter who wasn’t a conceited son of a bitch.”) His temperament is not evil, but he craves admiration. As long as Gannon acted like a man trying to avoid destruction, Patterson had difficulty igniting what Colonel Stingo calls the driving inflatus. Live conspicuously and let live inconspicuously is Patterson’s motto. He accepts the fact that others raise their hands against him, but when a fellow like Gannon raises his right hand, a fellow like Patterson feels himself belittled. He went straight after Gannon, and Gannon, intoxicated by success or else knocked silly already, disdained to get back on his motorcycle. At the end of the round, right-ear voice was ecstatic. “I tol’ him trow da right!” he thundered. “He’s got um!” howled left-ear.
The eighth was a case of assaulting an officer. Patterson was punching for keeps, raising the tempo to the point at which he used to fight in the gymnasium in the People’s House. It is safe to assume that his handlers had been teaching him to pace himself, but with only three minutes left he didn’t have to think about that. Poor Gannon moved like a gull on a wave. Now he was in that distressful state when every evasive move brings new disaster, until it seems to the boxer and his public that he is ducking into fists, circling into fists, slipping into fists. His nose was a red circle on his face. But one row behind me he was still winning. “Trow da right, Joe!” the voices were yelling in chorus. “You’re in front!” I looked, at shorter and shorter intervals, at the clock dial on which a hand indicates the progress of the round. For the ex-cop’s sake, I was glad it was nearly over. Then, as I turned from the clock for one last look at the ring, Patterson hit Gannon with a left hook, and, following him as he staggered across the ring, hit him with five more punches, of which the last, a blow with all the finesse of a pickax, smashed into Gannon’s face as he stood straight up with his back to the ropes, where the preceding volley had carried him. Gannon came right on through the ropes, landing flat on his back on the ring apron, out, and the bell rang.
Right-ear voice said, “Well, howdaya like that?”
Left-ear voice said, “It’s all over, huh?”
And a minute later, when I turned around, the seats behind me were empty.
Great-and-a-Half Champion
The fighter who dethrones