I Love the Sweet Science

My father introduced me to boxing when I was 5 years old, first taking me to the National Golden Gloves tournament and then to Sugar Ray Leonard's WBC Middleweight Title victory over "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler at Caesar's Palace. Since then, I've been hopelessly drawn to the most brutal of sports. Foolishly, many believe that boxing isn't an athletic competition but a showcase of barbaric corruption that brings the masses to that primitive place in their souls and feeds their lust for bloodsport. But boxing is the closest any athletic contest comes to purity. It is a nasty reflection of life, full of pain and failure, greed and hate, dishonesty and corruption. For the worthy, it offers pride and grace, honor and nobility, but the worthy are few and far between.

All my love for soccer, football, baseball, and basketball does not change the fact that boxing has always been my favorite. The sport has declined in recent years but it remains a beautiful display of determination, durability, and power that demands constant training of both the body and the mind. Miss a workout, skip some roadwork, waste some time partying and chasing wool, and you'll be exposed in the ring. Unlike team sports, where ineffectiveness and laziness are rewarded by a teammate picking up the slack, all a fighter has is himself, and no matter how badly he's losing, he's still in the game. If a team is down by three touchdowns with 3 minutes to go, they need four, Peyton Manning, and some help from God. But in boxing, a fighter can lose 9 straight rounds but only needs one punch, that knockout blow, to shift the tide. How can you not love that? The footwork, the dips, slips, bumps, and pushes... The sweet science is poetry in motion and there's nothing better in sport than watching two professionals with a true understanding of their trade putting on a show. And tomorrow, my dad and I are going to Atlantic City to watch Arturo "Thunder" Gatti put his Super Lightweight Championship on the line when he challenges boxing's best pound-for-pound fighter, #1 ranked contender "Pretty Boy" Floyd Mayweather.

I'll be in the 7th row, just far enough away to avoid flying sweat. This will be a beautiful fight to watch.