CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY INVITATIONS TO A FIGHT BY KATHERINE DUNN ou buy into “ B” time with your ticket to a boxing match. It’s another zone where all the gut wrench, tear trigger possibilities of a thousand bright- heart stories are distilled in high octane three minute doses. This sport penetrates sophistication and obliterates gloss. You forget everything but the intensity of this sometimes hilarious, always fearsome, and . beautiful drama. Wrestling in the pro ring is exquisite theater. The bad guys are vile and the good guys are boring until they get pissed off and aren’t so nice anymore. But wrestling is ritual melodrama with the stakes vague, and we only believe as much of it as is convenient. In the genre of lone endeavor the aesthetics of Tai Kwon Do or Karate are immediately apparent, and tangled up with their exotic origins. It’s not so easy to recognize boxing spirit strong and pretty. We get mixed up with playground beefs and barroom brawls. We get confused by plastic media violence. We wince and shudder and take offense, turning our backs on our own powerful core of tradition. But it’s still there. It will always be there. And boxing has it all, bizarrely untainted by media or the astounding money it spawns. The game is as real as it he’s available for regional matches and you f l Willie "The Cannon" Shannon o f Vegas up. announced ‘he floo f ul. In fo dear o f f h l s isey een land four unhe W a s r<>und that o f in a as blood, and the players are hungry and hard and scared. Every cliche begins in a moment of elastic truth, and we come to the source with a shock of recognition. I tell you there are Trans-Am blondes out there, wrapped in silver-lame, and knee deep in cowboys. The warrior on leave from his jack-hammer gives odds to the permanent gleam of the rent-a-tux. The corner man sweats love if his fighter has heart. Not a single face in this crowd could be convinced that a Parisian restaurant would be more entertaining than this bouncing hodge-podge of relentlessly genuine Americana. There are no average people at a boxing match. The ring is lit and the crowd catches the shine. For my money, professional boxing is the best show in town. The crowd comes in high and ready for anything. They never know for sure what they’re going to see. Fighters come in from all over the country, some with reputations and plenty without. Any promoter can tell you it’s hard to make matches. Some manager in Oakland wants a fight for his boy, he’ll tell you on the phone that this is the incarnation of Rocky Marciano. You get him up here to fight a good kid and it turns out it’s Marciano’s grandfather instead. Your boxer goes to sleep waltzing with him because he wouldn’t want to hurt an old man, and the crowd boos. Even a guy with a good record, 15 wins, no losses, 10 knockouts — you don’t always know who he was fighting — maybe that same elderly relation of Marciano’s every time. And it can go the other way, too. You got a nice boy wants to come in from the amateurs and build up slow, you book him with a guy you don’t know who’s only had one pro-fight and he lost. Turns out this character is a hyper-active cyclops and he eats your fighter alive starting at the toes. The crowd loves it but your very promising young fighter decides to enroll in welding school the following day. You get some stinkers where you’re promoting a good fight and something happens. Larry Frazier of Seattle, for example, is due to meet Vern Johnston of Forth Worth, Texas. Both proven fighters with very good records. And then Frazier hurts his back and doesn’t show. Now you discover that Frazier has a reputation for these disappearing acts. All you heard before was what a fine boxer he was. But you’ve got to whip in a substitute. “ Razor” Ramsey is around and he’s always good. Rumor has it that he’s been invited to fly to New Orleans to be a sparring partner for Roberto Duran. Unfortunately Razor Ramsey just got a job at Boeing and doesn’t want to give it up so he turns down the big chance. But fORTMND hursday, \ o v e y s Sn "■ P o o l e r H°?'a n d ‘ » - h e 7 7 k A ' ^ ^ 7 : * ^ Z Z Z a c "n c h Hf.ed i" -w i l l know Vincente Hernandez is doing the circuit right now so you make some phone calls and set up a match where each boxer has only two days to get ready. And the crowd knows all these things, or feels them, and likes the surprises. Because you get a lot of good matches and some that are so pretty you’ve got to shout. And this is where it all starts. Portland and Seattle and Boise, Fort Worth and Hoboken and Baton Rouge, all over the country in matches like these, in big BOXING HAS IT ALL, BIZARRELY UNTAINTED BY MEDIA OR THE ASTOUNDING MONEY IT SPAWNS. m D ’McNALi-YSSt tx Protessu EXPO dim halls like airplane hangars with hot dogs and beer and little kids jigging in the aisles, and a lot of laughter. This is where the records are built that take fighters to the higher, thinner air breathed by major contenders and champions. There might, on any “Pright. reel rounds M -0 ” *0 ‘b e deck i ^ 'n n ix Z S e c o n d d evelop i n „ P , , n l! up on the ^ i e d f ? ^ a n d bounced ’ h M , 1 n n i x was down t a r , y i n a "d a g o^ ^ ^ ' b Z f l Z ? H e * n r e ^ 8 ', , ‘he a n d W o" Z h r ° U n d o f a X r t T e d e d eeatherweigh, » , . ^ " e du le d six f a . S c heduled six r f s 'o n a 'debu t ‘ arlos Chevez ( » 2 ,1. “n d ef , f he 125 lb J 3 2 b s ‘ o f ■Junior . Weonib, against “ oseburg. 40 Photo by Steve Roden
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