Bedtime Story
Recently I traveled to a distant city to report a story. I spent the day and evening going around asking questions, watching people do what they do, filling up a couple of pocket notebooks. Among other places, I visited the dog pound, a place of grimness even though--or because--the people who work there seem gentle and well-intentioned. All those pitbulls, muscled up with nowhere to go, flexing as you walk past on the other side of the bars. They're desperate and accommodating, and they know that something is wrong. They can smell all the dogs that came before them. Where have they gone?
Around midnight I retired to my dingy hotel. It had been a long day and evening, with drinking at the end of it. The pitbulls were on my mind. I don't have much use for dogs but I kept coming back to the sight of those animals lined up in their cages, going all rigid and alert and eager to please when visitors came by. They had thought something was going to happen, even if they didn't know what it might be, but it didn't happen. Life would go on like that for a while until, I guess, some were adopted and some were taken out and killed, and then other dogs would take their place, and soon it would be the new dogs' turn to win the lottery or die.
One thing to do in a dingy hotel is to watch dingy TV. There was lots of it--tedious sports shows and talk shows, unfunny comedies, dumbass celebrity updates, bad movies of the 80s, a charnel house of shitty writing and unfresh ideas. I ran aground for a while on an off-brand show or movie or something about the crew of a rocket ship who go around fighting space vampires. The heroes dashed from here to there shouting fakey jargon and toting futuristic weapons that looked like the weapons we have now with nonfunctional molded-plastic appendages glued to them. The vampires glowered, hissed, and suppurated. It kind of ruins the space-opera magic to wonder what the actors' parents think when they seem them on the screen, but that's what I usually wonder about. The talented darling who starred in school plays, municipal musicals, and expectant local fantasies back in Elk Grove Village or Mamaroneck or wherever is now wearing fangs and slathered in gory makeup and being blown unconvincingly in half by a plasmoid megablaster. I picture the parents thinking, "Well, at least he _is_ on TV."
The lameness of it all caught me just right--in that end-of-day, far-from-home, buzzed-from-work mood--and laid me low. Deep gloom descended.
I went through the channels a few more times, only growing more despondent, until I happened upon round one of the middleweight title fight between Marvin Hagler and John Mugabi--held 22 years before, almost to the day. Hagler had his hands full, but he knew what to do about it. He was settling in to cope with Mugabi's strength and power by taking him deep into the fight, wearing him out over the long haul and finishing him late. Mugabi, a blowout artist, had gone ten rounds just once and six only twice in his 25 fights, all wins. The turning point would come in the sixth round, when Hagler, having blunted the force of Mugabi's early-round assault, would take over the fight by giving his man a spine-jellying pounding, then settle in to finish him inside the distance, KO'ing him in the eleventh.
All of a sudden I felt a lot better. I turned down the sound and put out the light. On the screen, Goody Petronelli, Hagler's trainer, radiated calm and ease as he talked to his fighter between rounds. Everything was going to be fine; Petronelli's every gesture said as much. His main task was to pour oil on the waters for one minute out of every four, to create a recurring pocket of serenity to which Hagler could retreat between hard-fought rounds for rest and reflection. Demonstrating a for-example combination he wanted Hagler to throw, Petronelli moved his own hands as if arranging flowers. Let's just fix a couple of little mechanical things, he was saying, and it's your fight. Doesn't matter how strong the other guy is. Doesn't matter what he's done before this or who he's done it to. We know how to beat him. We know how to beat everybody. Hagler wasn't exactly looking at his trainer and he didn't exactly nod, but he heard him.
I put my head down on the pillow and was dreamlessly asleep before either fighter struck a blow in the next round.
posted by Carlo Rotella @ 9:54 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Good Story, Carlo. You touched on two things close to my heart, Dogs & Boxing. Your description of the Pitbulls in the pound was explicit, and your recap of Hagler-Mugabi was accurate.
One thing I remember about the Sixth round was, Hagler hit Mugabi with everyting he had, and at the end of the round he was almost as spent as Mugabi. Had there not have been Hagler-Mugabi, there wouldn't have been Hagler-Leonard. Hagler started to show signs of erosion that night, and Leonard was sitting ringside taking notes.
That sixth round was a lesson in extremity. Hagler really did seem to be giving him everything with both hands, and Mugabi appeared to be eating it up and giving it back to him. But what stands out for me in my memory of watching the fight is that Hagler, despite being in there with a freakish glutton with anvils for hands, and perhaps despite beginning to realize (as you say) that he had slipped a little or was beginning to slip, looked like he was now very sure of how the fight was going to turn out. He looked almost jolly in there. He was like a guy who has his foot run over by a convertible and, instead of flopping around and shrieking in agony and screaming "MY FOOT! MY FOOT!," is saying to himself, "Hey, it's just a foot, and when the guy in the car ran me over he made the mistake of getting close enough that I can reach him with this axe I've got here in my hand." One thing to admire in fighters like Hagler--and Marciano radiated this, too--is how they'll be in a situation that almost anyone else would regard as dire beyond utterance and they'll suddenly start looking very pleased with how nicely it's all working out. What I admire in it is the ability--even when hotly engaged and taking serious fire--to see the fight whole, to see themselves and their opponent for what they are, and to understand without sentiment or self-delusion how it will play out.
I wonder if that made a guy like Duran, although both too small and well past his best when they fought, more worrisome for Hagler than either Mugabi or even Hearns had been. Against the latter two, Hagler's biggest advantage was his ability to endure. There's got to be a point very early in the fights when even he isn't entirely sure how many of their bombs he can take. But then there's a subtle change; the biggest detonations ease off just a little. And that's the point where Marvin can start to smile: "Okay, he's done his worst. It's gonna be okay." But, with Duran, there were always sneaky little tricks. Hagler wasn't getting hurt and he could tell that Duran was getting tired five or six rounds in. It must have been terribly disconcerting to realize that maybe those things weren't going to be what determined who won or lost.
Carlo,
Your Bedtime Story was splendid. There is, indeed, something heartening and reassuring in the experience of watching good boxers and capable cornermen doing their work, especially when one comes across them unexpectedly amid the jittery, low-grade despair of a late-night solo hotel room.
Many's the grim Marriott midnight when, toggling between, say, an almost-amusing Reno 911 rerun and the giggle-inducing wretchedness of To Catch a Predator, I would have hollered with joy at a fight far less compelling than Hagler-Mugabi. You captured that feeling wonderfully.
Speaking of Hagler-Mugabi, by the way, I watched that fight on closed-circuit at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. Tommy Hearns stopped James Shuler in one round on the same card. It was 11 months after Hagler-Hearns, and before the Hearns-Shuler bout, they showed a tape of Hagler-Hearns. After the first round ended, the crowd in the Beacon stood and cheered. Everybody assumed the night's card was a prelude to a rematch. But, of course, Ray Leonard was, as Frank points out, was on hand, taking notes.
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