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Boxing is a guilty pleasure
Whether it's Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Leonard, boxing is fascinating to watch. But then came the Mancini-Kim fight. By John B. Amos
Date published: 1/6/2007
ISHOULD HAVE turned the TV off. But I didn't. Instead I just sat there, mesmerized. The year was 1982, a cold, gray Saturday afternoon in November. I'd finished grading papers and didn't have anything better to do. Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini was fighting a Korean boxer named Duk Koo Kim at Caesar's Palace, and so I watched. It was not a pretty fight. No fight with Mancini was ever pretty because he cut so easily. He usually won, but afterward his doughy face always looked as though it had been run through a meat grinder. Pretty or not, the fight thrilled. For 13 rounds a bloodied Mancini pummeled his opponent and got pummeled in return. Both fighters, though small, pounded each other with blows that might have leveled a heavyweight. In the later rounds Kim suffered terrific punishment, and I remember thinking, "How much more can he take?" I silently wished he would just go ahead and fall. Toward the end, with Mancini hitting him almost at will, Kim staggered to the right side of the ring but still didn't go down. The announcer mentioned, rather matter-of-factly, that in a press conference before the fight the Korean kid had vowed to win the title or "die trying." Then, it happened. A vicious, compact hook from Mancini in round 14 hit Kim flush on the temple. He crumpled and dropped to the canvas. I thought to myself, "That's it. He won't get up now." Less than a week later, Duk Koo Kim died in a Nevada hospital. Seeing a man killed in the ring should have put me off the sport for good. Certainly, that fight made continuing as a boxing fan hard to justify. But vicarious violence is addictive; and so I still watched, occasionally, though never again in quite the same way. Boxing is a guilty pleasure. After this fight, watching yielded far more guilt than pleasure.
Date published: 1/6/2007
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