THE RING OPENS THE RABBIT HOLE
time, the quality of the archive will mean that it will never
four different trips. As we went through the archives, we found that there were a number of issues missing. We had bound sets where obviously the collectors at the time could take their monthly magazines and put it into a binder and then put it on the back of their bookshelf.” Equal care was given to the pages in-between the editorial content: “Some of those advertisers aren’t going to be around anymore, but there’s a social archive – there’s a history of what soap and what deodorant and what boxing gloves were being sold in the ’40s and ’50s. It makes for interesting reading. That’s the whole history.” Coleman’s team took the time to find the best material to archive. “We had about probably four or five copies of each magazine that had been sent over to us for scannings. We chose the best quality one for the scanning. Everything was done using nondestructive scanning. We’ve got specialized scanners so we were able to do book scanning without passing off the spine, without putting any wear and tear on the magazines. The great quality of the magazines when they left us were in exactly the same quality as when they turned up.” Currently, the online archive features the back issues of the magazine, special editions, U.K.-exclusive issues and a library of the once- celebrated annual Ring Record Book and Encyclopedia . Asked
like the “big fight color specials” from the 1990s or books published under Ring’s banner, Coleman was optimistic, based on what archives continue to be made available. The archives also feature an effective search engine, giving users the ability to search for their favorite fighters and writers. “What you have on the Ring archive now is the SDS solution,” Coleman stated. “You can jump into any decade, go to any issue, and go and read a particular year. When you do a search for a name, you can search the whole name and it will show you where the name appears, using document excerpts, and it opens up the PDF file. On a very simple search, we can just do a search for Tyson, and you’ll find Tyson Fury or Mike Tyson. But if you just do a search for Tyson by itself, then the first Tyson was mentioned in about the 1920s. We have an advanced search that limits to looking in the 1960s or 1980s. We’ve even added on some editor fields, some author fields as well. As we understand and archive more, we look to see how we can annotate it and curate it.” Given so much history in one place, the biggest question for some would be where to start. The answer will be different depending on who is asking the question. Seasoned fans may have a particular era or fighter they want to go back and remember. Lapsed readers may want to find the issues that most reflect the time their fandom was highest. No sport is healthier than when it is welcoming new fans into the fold. For someone who just found a highlight reel of Naoya Inoue or happened to tune in to Netflix to see Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford and is suddenly bitten by the boxing bug, the rabbit hole could be calling. For them, the archive is a chance to dive into a new passion. Asked where he would recommend
any reader, new or old, begin with the archives, Fischer provided, “I would ask them what fighters do they have an interest in? What has got them curious about boxing? Who was their introduction to boxing? I think that’s how most of us start. That’s how I started. It started with Ali and the torch was quickly passed to Sugar Ray Leonard.” As Fischer continued, it was easy to see how quickly the rabbit hole deepens. “By following Leonard’s career, I learned about other fighters – mainly his rivals. So it’s Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran, Tommy Hearns, eventually Marvin Hagler. From there, you learn about all the guys they fought. It kind of branches off like that. At some point, you get bit by a bug in
have to be done again.” The archive as it stands
needs not be the end point. “We should build upon it,” Coleman continued. “We can use AI to do lots of interesting stuff. We can extract out of it. We can repurpose the editorial. SDS got the job because we were able to have that vision of making sure that it was done once properly, done professionally, and lay it out in a way that it was going to be as amazing for the fans as for someone writing a PhD on the history of boxing.” The process was time- consuming, taking up nearly a year. “There’s about 50 people employed in the SDS Group. On The Ring, we had about 12 people. That included a developer, graphics guy, people doing scanning – there’s the processing and then there’s the indexing, because we scan at high resolution.” Coleman noted the staggering volume by saying, “At the end of the project, we’ve scanned 150,000 pages, about 1,300 issues.” Asked how long each individual issue took, Coleman said, “The scanning of the issue is probably about a minute to two minutes per page. Then take it into Photoshop, rotating it, cleaning it up, saving it down. It can take a minute to save it. So with the average issue being 100 pages, let’s say two hours.” Gathering the archives was the first step for Coleman and his team. Once it was in hand, trying to capture the full essence of the material, including ads and covers, was part of the mission. “The archives came from all over the world. We got some from Saudi Arabia. We got some from the U.S. They came from different locations in about
a way where you want to learn everything about these people. It’s not enough to watch them fight. You want to know their history; you want to know their background.” For Coleman, the process of archiving The Ring has already added a fan to the sport from a person who was at best a casual fan when the process began. “I’ve become a big boxing fan now, as you can imagine, but I grew up with boxing. I listened
“You can jump into any decade, go to any issue, and go and read a particular year. When you do a search for a name, you can search the whole name and it will show you where the name appears, using document excerpts, and it opens up the PDF file.”
to it on the radio in the ’70s and ’80s, and I’ve always loved watching the heavyweights and the English boxers – when they [reached world level] – from [Ireland’s] Barry McGuigan to Alan Minter, to Frank Bruno, Lennox Lewis. The recent fight with Benn and Eubank was incredible. So I’ve become a big boxing fan. But I know there’s much better and bigger boxing fans than me out there. Come back and ask me that question in 10 years’ time.” One thing all can hope for: in 10 years’ time, that there will be 10 more years of The Ring archived and waiting for those who wish to explore. The rabbit hole only ever gets deeper, and The Ring’s been a substantial part of the rich history of boxing. It’s always worth falling in.
if the archives will continue to expand to include other Ring-related publications,
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