A SLICE OF BOXING
names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden.” Rice also authored a poem titled “Alumnus Football” that closed with the oft-quoted lines: For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes not that you won or lost, but how you played the game! As for “pound for pound” … Bob Fitzsimmons was the first man to win world titles in three weight classes. In 1891, tipping the scales at 150½ pounds, he knocked out “The Nonpareil” Jack Dempsey to win the middleweight crown. Six years later, he claimed heavyweight honors with a 14th-round stoppage of James Corbett. Then, in 1903 at age 40, he defeated George Gardner for supremacy in the light heavyweight division. Fitzsimmons died in 1917. Celebrating his life, Rice eulogized, “Jeffries and Johnson at their best may have been harder men to beat than Bob Fitzsimmons was. They had the big bulk which Fitz lacked. But the main test of a fighting man should be inch for inch and pound for pound. Under this arrangement, there isn’t any question but that Fitz was the greatest fighter that ever lived. Pound for pound, he stood above them all as a fighting machine.”
minutes, thinking four moves ahead before he
Richie was engaged to Tony’s sister, Janice. But Janice ended the engagement by shooting Richie in the head and chest. What does that have to do with boxing? In Season 2 of The Sopranos , former middleweight champion Vito Antuofermo played a mob associate in an episode titled “House Arrest.” It was a small part. But as filming
Bob Fitzsimmons was a pound-for-pound great.
makes one. And he does the same thing in the ring. He thinks too much.” But Lennox added, “The thought processes in chess are similar to boxing. You look at an opponent and what he does and then you devise a strategy to beat him. The first round of a fight is like the first move in chess. It’s about
Heavyweight legend Lennox Lewis enjoys winning on a small scale also.
who has control of the board. The bell rings and it’s a struggle until you know what you can and can’t do and everything comes into place.” Lennox still plays chess. “It’s like boxing,” he says. “There’s always a challenger. I play with Rohan Marley [one of Bob Marley’s sons] and with guys in the park. I play kids a lot. And I play online every day before I go out and before I go to bed. Speed chess, quick games where each side has five minutes to make its moves for the whole game. Some of the people I play with online know it’s me and others don’t.” Does Lennox have a wish list of people he’d like to play against? “Barack Obama, definitely,” he answers. “Barack is a jock. He’s got a competitive mind. And I’d like to play King Charles, because chess is a king’s game. But anybody that plays chess, I’ll challenge them.”
began, Vito was a nervous wreck. Sensing Antuofermo’s insecurity, Proval walked over to him and said: “Hey, Vito. You got nothin’ to be nervous about. Take a look around at everyone on this set. Do you think there’s anyone here who could go 15 rounds with Marvin Hagler? Relax and have fun with this.”
wallet to pay him. “I cannot accept money from you, sir.” Then he looked at Muhammad and said, “I have admired you my whole life. To have you in my car is my greatest honor ever.” “Take the money,” Ali told him. “It would be against my religion.” Muhammad nodded. Then he gestured for me to give him the pad and pen that I had with me and pointed to the driver identification card posted on the divider between the front and back seats. “Spell his name,” he instructed. I did. Ali wrote “for” followed by the driver’s name on the pad. Beneath that, he drew a small heart and inscribed the words, “The heart is a net where love is caught like fish.” Then he signed his name, tore the page off the pad, and gave it to the driver. “I will treasure this forever,” the driver told him. He said it like he meant it.
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It’s common for fighters to thank God when they win. Fighters who think that God has more important things to do than decide the outcome of a fistfight tend to be silent on the subject. John L. Sullivan – America’s first mass-culture hero, boxing’s first gloved heavyweight champion and the most idolized athlete who had lived up until his time – wasn’t silent. “The world is all a con,” Sullivan proclaimed. “They talk about religion and heaven and hell. What do they know about heaven and hell? They were never there, and no one ever came back and told us what they were like. I think when a guy croaks, he just dies and that’s all there is to him.” Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – a classic detective tale titled Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. Rutledge – is available at Amazon.com and other platforms. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Fistic Nuggets By Thomas Hauser
Lennox Lewis learned to play chess when he was 15 years old. “I grew up playing chess,” he reminisced during a conversation we had in late summer. “And it helped me a lot when I was fighting. It was a release from the pressure and boredom of training and helped me to strategize in my head.” Emanuel Steward (Lewis’ trainer during the glory years) felt differently about the matter. “I honestly don’t like him playing chess,” Steward told me two decades ago. “I see him sitting there for 10
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Every now and then, I’ll remember a moment I had with Muhammad Ali and say to myself, “I don’t think I’ve written about that.” Recently, I had one of those flashbacks. Muhammad and I were in a taxi going to my apartment. The driver, judging by his turban and beard, was Sikh. And he was nervous. He kept looking in the rearview mirror – presumably at his famous passenger – and was shaking a bit. When we reached my apartment, I took out my
N at Fleischer (the founder and first editor of The Ring) is widely credited with inventing the phrase “pound for pound” to extol the virtues of Sugar Ray Robinson. But pound for pound predated Robinson by decades. Absent an earlier source, let’s credit Grantland Rice for its introduction. Rice was one of America’s greatest
and most storied sportswriters. Describing Notre Dame’s victory over the mighty Army football team at the Polo Grounds in 1924, he famously wrote of the Fighting Irish backfield, “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real
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David Proval has been praised for his work in movies like The Shawshank Redemption and Mean Streets . But he’s best known for playing the sadistic, violent Richie Aprile in The Sopranos .
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