The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Fighters and Writers: Difference between revisions

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 who see meetings between nearly naked and practically unprotected combatants as simple and straightforward pursuits of victory through the unmediated imposition of their wills.Writers like to see them as symbolic of their
 own lonely quests after the elusive truth. In the blue corner are those who see
-fights as far more complex endeavors fraught with meaning and metaphorical possibilities. Rather than immediately comprehensible physical contests,
+fights as far more complex endeavors fraught with meaning and metaphorical possibilities. Rather than immediately comprehensible physical contests, fights are primarily mental challenges. Far from being basic and true, boxing involves trickery and deception. In one camp, boxing is free of artifice;
-fights are primarily mental challenges. Far from being basic and true, boxing involves trickery and deception. In one camp, boxing is free of artifice;
 in the other, it is full of it.
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 s and early 1960s, distinguishes between “the ruffian approach” and that
 of “the reasoner inside the ring.”
+Part of boxers’ “culture,” in the view of Torres and his fellow thinkers, is
+the ability to lie successfully. As Jeremy Campbell notes in his so-called history of falseness, A Liar’s Tale,“when winning is the important factor, deceitfulness is a kind of ethic....” From a technical standpoint, Ali did plenty
+“wrong,” but excelled nonetheless because of his cleverness, his ability to con
+his opponents. He perfected the liar’s ethic.
+Of course, eventually Ali did meet opponents who could beat him, but
+even then his genius was evident. Sting Like a Bee ends with Ali’s first
+bout with Joe Frazier, which Ali lost. Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, told Ali’s
+biographer, Thomas Hauser, that Ali still successfully tricked his fighter
+during the bout: “Joe should have knocked him out in the eleventh round,
+but Ali conned him out of it. We teased Joe about that later, because he
+didn’t realize at the time that he was being conned. Ali was in trouble.
+He got hit with a left hook, and was hurt very badly, and he exaggerated the
+fact that he was hurt like he was clowning. He gave Joe exaggerated moves,
+and Joe walked casually to Ali all the way across the ring. We call that ‘The
+Long March.’ It gave Ali extra time and kept Joe from scoring a knockout.
+By exaggerating, Ali made Joe think that he was fooling. He conned him
+good.”
+Ali did eventually regain the championship, and he did so by again digging into his bag of tricks. He prevailed over George Foreman by fighting a
+very different fight than most expected. Rather than dancing around the
+ring, using his speed to outmaneuver the famously hard-hitting Foremen, Ali
+positioned himself on the ropes, allowing Forman to tire himself out throwing punches. While the “rope-a-dope” might not have been a good practice if concern for long-term health had been a primary concern, it was a successful tactic that morning in Zaire. Looking back on “Rumble in the Jungle,” Foreman conceded that Ali had him fooled.
+The sport, as Ali so skillfully showed, shares elements with confidence
+games. In The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man, David Mauer
+observes that such deceptions are not as simple as unscrupulous exploitation of the naïve. Con men prey not on the gullible and good but on the
+devious. A mark must have more than money ready for the taking. As Mauer
+puts it, “he must also have what grifters term ‘larceny in his veins’—in other
+words, he must want something for nothing, or be willing to participate in
+an unscrupulous deal.” The delicious irony of this is that con men are themselves susceptible to swindles. They have the very trait, the “thieves’ blood,”
+that they try to exploit in others.
+Confidence games would not be so compelling if they were as simple as
+taking candy from a baby. Cons, whether big or small, take some ingenuity;
+otherwise they would be mere thievery. Con men and their targets navigate
+a world in which not everyone is honest and not everything is as it appears.
+Thus, confidence games have provided artists such as Herman Melville and
+David Mamet with material because they entail questions of practical epistemology: Who can you trust? How do you know your information is reliable? And how can you use it to your advantage?
+The same is true with boxing at its best, at least according to one way of
+looking at it. Boxing is much more than two brutes beating up on each other.
+It is also more complicated than one fighter tricking an unprepared dupe:
+mismatches may be a part of the game, but they are boring.When the fighters are well matched physically and also shrewd strategists, with each seeking to exploit the other’s desire to find an opening, an advantage, a
+weakness—then the sport rises to the level of art.
+An art with very real consequences. As Mauer observes, a confidence man
+“cannot fool his associates for long. Either he takes off the scores or he
+doesn’t, and he stands or falls in his profession by the record he makes for
+himself.” The importance of cunning in boxing doesn’t lessen the very real
+physical perils. Boxing is not professional wrestling; the violence is real. The
+sport’s mental aspect, which Torres so prizes, comes into play when physical abilities are comparable. Ali, the “Louisville Lip,” was able to back up his
+bluster, even if he did so with an unorthodox style.