FUNDAMENTALS By Dom Farrell
Book: The Tao of Muhammad Ali by Davis Miller Muhammad Ali’s
Documentary: The Miscast Champion While Ali fight nights gave Davis Miller something life-
were easy to spot – Mitchell could hardly miss them as Murray waded repeatedly into the pocket. But he held his nerve and backed up his skills with the same superior hand speed and defensive smarts that had befuddled a hammer-fisted Breidis Prescott a year and a half earlier. Murray remained a headhunting threshing machine, foregoing trainer Joe Gallagher’s instructions to target the body, and a cut and swollen right eye toward the end of Round 5 spelled trouble. Esteemed cutman Mick Williamson also had to stem the flow from Murray’s nose, but it was Mitchell with the red rag in what had become a bull and matador affair. A peach of a Mitchell left hook, followed by an uppercut, had Murray staggering around before the bell at the end of Round 7. He was slow off his stool for the eighth, and Mitchell tattooed his disfigured features with crisp shots. Another peach of a left hook all but settled matters, dropping Murray heavily before he went out on his shield under Mitchell’s merciless follow-up. In the aftermath, it emerged that Murray had indulged in a drinking binge three weeks before fight night, a tale that felt more likely to come from the Mitchell camp beforehand. Legal problems prevented Mitchell from fighting Brandon Rios for the WBA lightweight title that December. Rios instead faced Murray, who fought competitively but was ultimately pounded to an 11th-round stoppage. Today, it is Murray who has fallen foul of the law as he serves a three- year prison sentence for assaulting his ex-partner and striking another woman. Mitchell never did scale the mountain, suffering brave losses to Ricky Burns, Jorge Linares and Ismael Barroso before hanging up his gloves.
affirming to hang onto, they were moments of dread for Michael Bentt. The London-born New Yorker would sit down with his Jamaican father and watch Ali fights, feeling scared of the violence unfolding on the television set. Dad demanded that young Michael pay attention so he could be the next great heavyweight. This is the jumping-off point for The Miscast Champion , part of Netflix’s “Losers” mini- documentary series. It tells the story of an abusive father who forced his son back to the boxing gym after Bentt concluded he absolutely did not like getting punched in the head. It turned out he was good. Very good, actually. A four-time New York Golden Gloves winner and five-time national champion. But this yielded neither a love for the game nor confidence. “When I was fighting my top fights as an amateur and a pro, I’d have this thought that’d flash through my mind,” he explained. “‘I hope this town gets hit by either a massive blackout or a fucking tornado. Because I don’t want to go in this fucking ring.’” He turned pro and instantly experienced the sporting equivalent of a natural disaster,
deeds in the ring inspired a literary canon that could rightly be dubbed “the greatest of all time.” From Norman Mailer’s unforgettable Manila dispatches to Thomas Hauser’s superbly exhaustive His Life and Times and the brilliant and evocative journalism of David Remnick’s King of the World . Davis Miller’s The Tao of Muhammad Ali might not swing with those heavyweights, but it is an absolute gem of a book. Not because it tells us anything revelatory about Ali, in the way those mentioned above do, but because
Forgotten Fight: Kevin Mitchell TKO 8 John Murray (2011) T here is no great, wider narrative to this fight between two gifted British lightweights who too often proved to be their own worst enemies. It could have been the start of a timeless rivalry, but there was no rematch. There was no immediate world title fight for the winner; perversely, there was for the loser, only for a battering to hasten his demise in the sport. But for 22 minutes and 46 seconds in Liverpool’s Echo Arena at the height of summer, Kevin Mitchell and John Murray gave everything they could summon for our entertainment. Their combined record heading in was 62-1. Murray (31-0) had the longest active undefeated record in
British boxing, while Mitchell (31-1) was fighting for the first time in the 14 months since his world came crashing down against Michael Katsidis. On that night, on the cusp of a world title shot, Mitchell was battered to a one-sided defeat inside three rounds at a stunned Upton Park. Shambolic preparations and personal problems had left the home fighter a condemned man on his ringwalk. Considering Mitchell’s ordeal against Katsidis, Murray’s marauding, foot-to-the-floor style felt like another potential nightmare. The Dagenham man picked some nice uppercuts and body shots during the opener but was steadied by a long Murray right in Round 2 and retreated under fire, forced to cover up in the neutral corner as the Mancunian bashed away with both hands. The pattern repeated in the third, with Mitchell looking slick and in control before Murray clattered home a right to the temple and flipped the script. Parallels with the Katsidis defeat
knocked out inside a round of his debut against Jerry Jones. After almost two years away, Bentt decided to box on, fueled by a desire to prove his father wrong and escape his shadow. He did this with a shock KO win over Tommy Morrison to win the WBO title. Roll credits and ride off into the sunset? No, there’s
Miller captures perfectly what happens when a fighter or any sports person means something to us, how utterly captivating that is and how transformative it can be. Miller was a sickly, depressed kid who’d suffered dreadful loss in his young life. But watching a prime Ali on television and the routine he built around those fight days filled him with electricity. The author’s story of obsession with his idol reaches dizzying extremes as he meets Ali, first at his Deer Lake training base for a sparring exhibition as a young adult, and
Herbie Hide ended Bentt’s boxing career.
then in early middle age. Then, a hero became a firm friend. That almost fantastical element to a story brilliantly told is a thrill for the reader. But the power of Miller’s book is that it vividly outlines how vital sport can be when it lifts us out of our own gravity to somewhere magical. And who was more magical than Muhammad Ali?
a one-sided defeat to Herbie Hide (whose punching power was like “taking a goddamn knife, sticking it in an electrical socket and holding it”), a brain injury and a remarkable post-career. Many fighters speak of only boxing giving them purpose; Bentt’s tale of only finding purpose once he could escape it is utterly captivating.
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