Sunday sports musings….BOXING – a mad game occupied by mad people

Sep 14, 2008 Sports

---

Caesar Barrow Ever since I started boxing I have been told that the game is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

By Michael Benjamin
It took longer than expected but after more than three decades of boxing, I am fully convinced that boxing is either designed for lunatics, or unwittingly attracts people of such distinct pedigree. When one thoroughly examines all the facts, it becomes even more obvious that boxing is a mad sport for mad people. How else can one describe the crazy contradictory occurrences in this sport?

Have you ever wondered why boxers attach such weird, or sometimes, demeaning sobriquets to their names. Simple, it is a part of the game plan to conquer their opponents. It is one of the oldest tricks in the books. Name yourself after fierce animals like ‘Lion,’ ‘Tiger’ or ‘Black Panther’ and the watch the naked fear in your opponent’s eyes. Fight half won!

Check it out, Cecil ‘Koker Dawg’ Alfred, Leon ‘King Kong’ O’Neil and Leon ‘The Lion’ Gilkes, just to name a few. Now these sobriquets are meant to drive fear into your opponent and soften him before the actual fight. Think about it, if you are a boxer and sign a contract to fight opponents that carry such sobriquets, would you not ‘dodo’ your boxing trunks even before the first bell rings?

That is why I really sympathize with a certain boxer who God blessed with Six Heads but unfortunately forgot to put sense in at least one of them. What a waste of good resources! This nuff head banna signed a contract to fight a boxer who carries a sobriquet ‘Deadly’. Of the three encounters, the second outing was the most interesting. This bout was a total mess. Well, not really a mess, ‘Six’ decided to call it a day (or night) just before the situation reached messy proportions. He later claimed that it was a milk shake, not the ‘Deadly’ uppercuts that he received to his midsection that triggered off embarrassing eruptions and caused him to quit on his stool. 

Boxing fans were just settling down for an action packed encounter. Instead, they got a ‘Six’ for a nine. It was around that time that the nuff head man felt the first ‘Deadly’ eruption. He decided not to wait around. He simply quit on his stool. The fans bawled murder. They were also dealt a deadly blow. They appealed to the authorities for justice. It was then that the Boxing Board decided to take Control. They summoned ‘Six’ to a five o’clock meeting.

Now, I would have given one of my heads to listen to the questions that members of that August body asked the former champ during the enquiry. If I were in charge I would have only asked just one question. I do not think that there was need for a lengthy interrogation. Just one key question could have convicted or exonerated the ex-champ. “After you quit on the stool, how did you get to the dressing room? did you (a) casually walk, (b) rushed, (c) sprinted, (d) slid, or cantered?” Now, if ‘Six’ had admitted that he had casually walked to his dressing room after exiting the ring, I would have debunked any claim to urgency so my verdict would have been ‘guilty’. Members of the disciplinary committee could have reasonably concluded that the situation could not have required the kind of urgency to cause him hurriedly to quit on his stool and then strolled to ‘the other stool.’

 If I were the ex (rated) champ, I would have employed all ‘Six Heads’ to outwit the committee and set them up nicely. With a straight face I would have said, “Gentlemen, I did not walk, run nor jog to the dressing room. I slid.” I would then wait for the follow up question that some smart aleck was bound to ask, “What did you slide on?” then I would have zoomed in with the killer. It was certainly not the rasum (a substance used by boxers to prevent the them from slipping nor sliding on the canvass). 

Maybe, it is incidents of this nature that has caused the attendance at boxing matches to drop considerably. Any ardent boxing buff reminiscing on the crowds of yesteryear and compare it with the present attendance will shed bitter tears.

Long ago promoters used to budget for those that entered the arena in unconventional style. (The popers) Poping was a tradition in boxing. Were it not for poping I would not have been able to witness some of the great fights of yesteryear. Nowadays fans are not even interested in free admission through the gates much less risking the destruction of shoes and clothing to enter the arena the unconventional way. So, the promoters decided that to return to the status quo they had to be innovative.

The late Andrew Murray organized a card and decided that a sideshow with models would have done the trick. In between bouts, several skimpily dressed models paraded before boxing buffs, valiantly attempting to capture their interest. The boredom of the crowd was evident.

Another promoter thought he knew the answer. He decided to reduce the price of admission. That ploy failed to produce the desired effect of bringing out the crowd.

The fans reasoned that anything that was so cheap could not be good, so they stayed at home. Finally, the Mighty Dinga discovered the solution to the problem. Without even bothering to announce it he staged an impromptu bout with one of his former charges, Murray.

That bout took place just outside the ring before the commencement of the main bout of the real card. The action took place a few feet from where His Excellency President Jagdeo, sat. The bout lasted for a mere 20 seconds but there was a lot of action in that small space of time. The local Don King did manage to chip in with a stiff uppercut and a left hook.

Dinga had the height advantage. Murray attempted a left hook to Dinga’s jaw but found out, much to his chagrin, that he was not tall enough to reach the lanky promoter’s jaw. Instead, he only succeeded with a well timed straight rights to his opponent’s knee cap. Up to the time of writing, members of the jury were still tallying the score to determine the winner.

Boxers build a reputation on bragging. It is another ploy to drive fear into their opponents. Just listening to them at post fight press conferences would make any pundit dig out their last dollar to be in the arena. The actual fight tells a different story. I remembered in the gym one day a certain fighter while preparing for a major encounter, bragged incessantly that he would win his bout easily.

“I can beat him with my eyes closed!” he declared when asked to comment on his game plan. On the night of the fight it was a different story. By the end of the fifth round, the braggart had received such a licking that both of his eyes were well puffed up. He returned to his corner during the one minute respite and complained to his trainer that he wanted to quit because he was blinded by the blows he had received. His coach remained adamant that he return to the fray. “You said that you could beat the man with your eyes closed. Go out there and prove it!” his coach instructed.

If you think that the fighters are funny, you need to see the coaches in action during training sessions. The late Caesar Barrow was a terror. Many fighters baulked at the very thought of training under Barrow. Caesar had a way of whipping his charges into shape in no time.

If Caesar was your coach, you can rest assured that you would be well trained. He was a no nonsense person. I remembered one morning when Caesar was especially rough during sessions. We had completed about six miles of arduous running and were extremely exhausted. We eventually arrived at the Cultural Centre tarmac, for the final phase of our sessions which consisted of calisthenics and light exercises. It was then that Caesar got into his ‘rickatics.’

He would put us through another rigid session that sometimes lasted for forty five minutes to an hour. Some of us groaned in exasperation while some muttered incessantly.

When the going got extremely tough with no hint of respite on Caesar’s part, a member of the squad would pipe up. “Man Caesar, Rome wasn’t built in a day!” Caesar would remain unruffled and replied, “That’s because I was not the contractor.” He would continue, “I am not asking for much, I just want you to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” One of my colleagues boasted to Caesar that he had hidden talents. Caesar looked at him and replied, “Apparently, it is so well hidden that no one has been able to find it.”

Caesar employed shrew tactics to boost his fighters’ morale. One day one of his charges was at the receiving end of vicious uppercuts, left hooks, overhand rights, you name it. He returned to the corner badly needing some encouraging words. “Okay champ,” Caesar said, “You are looking great, this guy is not even hitting you.” The boxer, eyes swollen declared, “Look Caesar, I want you to keep an eye on the referee for me because someone out there is sure beating the stuffings out of me.”

The referee is a strange fellow. One is never certain what he wants. He advises you to protect yourself at all times and when the blows are too much and you decide to hold onto your opponent’s hand to protect yourself, the very referee deducts a point from your total. He then instructs that you ‘Obey my commands!’ and ‘When I say break, you must break! I swear I heard the referee shout ‘break’ so I broke the other boxer’s nose. I was disqualified for hitting on the break.

Many people underrate boxers. They do not give us credit for being intelligent but boxers employ shrewd and unconventional ways of thinking through situations. One day we had a spelling bee and the teacher decided to start with small concepts and then move up to the complicated ones.

After several weeks of intense work, she decided to test our aptitude. ‘Michael,” she said, fill in the blank for me. Old MacDonald had a ———. Excitedly I replied “farm.” I beamed as my colleagues applauded loudly.

When the applause abated, Miss asked another boxer, “Can you spell the word “farm?” With confidence befitting that of a scholar, my colleague replied ‘E I E I O.’

Notwithstanding all the negativities attached to the sport, it is still a wonderful game. It is a game that produces many records. For example, Daurius Forde was a ‘Sixteen year old schoolboy’ for four years. Robin Davids received a left hook to his right ear and walked back to his corner. The referee waved the fight off and awarded the decision to Davids’ opponent.

Davids cried foul claiming that he heard the bell. An inquiry later revealed that Davids had in fact heard his ear bell ring after receiving a right hook. After winning a fight Wayne Harris was asked, Now Wayne, where do you go from here? To which Wayne responded, “I will catch a bus and head home for some richly deserved rest.

All of these occurrences make boxing a great game. I was reminiscing on these events while in the gym one day when a certain boxer’s mouth guard fell to the ground. 

Holding his hands up he asked for a minute to retrieve the equipment when his coach, a former boxer shouted, “Request denied! In my days it was not mouth guard that used to fall, it was teeth and we never had a chance to retrieve it!

I guess things have changed somewhat but what certainly has not changed is that the game continues to produce crazy people, doing crazy things. The sordid truth is that if given another chance I would be a boxer all over again.

---

---