Boxiana Volume 1 , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - G. Williams Luke

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

91 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Boxiana: Volume 1 is an anthology of never before published boxing writing and takes an in-depth look at the sport's past, present and future. Original, startling and thought-provoking, Boxiana examines pugilistic themes, characters and issues ranging from the personal to the universal, combining exclusive interview material with meticulous research. The book's fresh approach will both intrigue and delight all serious followers of boxing. Featured in Volume 1: comic book legend Trevor Von Eeden analyses the significance of Jack Johnson; Mario Mungia tries his hand at amateur boxing; Ben Williams uncovers his grandfather's bareknuckle boxing career; Matthew Ogborn considers the issues boxers face on retirement; James Hernandez catches up with Jon Thaxton; rising light heavyweight Chris Hobbs recounts his life in the military and the ring; Rowland Stone recalls a heady night in 1992; Corey Quincy attempts to solve the Wladimir Klitschko conundrum and Luke G. Williams examines the meteoric rise of Deontay Wilder and the under-rated career of Chris Byrd. No other boxing anthology can match BOXIANA's eclectic range of subject matter, or its in-depth examination of issues and characters from boxing's past, present and future. Boxiana will appeal to fans of adult boxing and sports, as well as students of sports and boxing history.

Sujets

Boxing

Xian de Boxing

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 novembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781784627287
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

BOXIANA
VOLUME 1
AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW BOXING WRITING
EDITED BY LUKE G. WILLIAMS
Copyright 2014 Luke Williams (Editor) and individual authors.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador 9 Priory Business Park Kibworth Beauchamp Leicester LE8 0RX, UK Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299 Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277 Email: books@troubador.co.uk Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1784627 287
Cover art by Trevor Von Eeden Illustrations of Jack Johnson, Deontay Wilder, Wladimir Klitschko and Chris Byrd by Trevor Von Eeden Photograph of Len Sparrowhawk courtesy of Ben Williams
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To my father, who taught me the importance of sport
CONTENTS
Round 1: Introduction by Luke G. Williams
Round 2: Pugilistic Comic Books Come Full Circle by Luke G. Williams
Round 3: The Story Behind The Original Johnson by Trevor Von Eeden
Round 4: A New Hope by Luke G. Williams
Round 5: The Klitschko Conundrum by Corey Quincy
Round 6 A Night At The Fight by Rowland Stone
Round 7: Invisible While Standing Still by Luke G. Williams
Round 8: This Boxer s Life by Chris Hobbs
Round 9: Diary Of A Fight Novice by Mario Mungia
Round 10: A Boxing Afterlife by James Hernandez
Round 11: For Whom The Bell Tolls by Matthew Ogborn
Round 12: Bare-Knuckle Grandfather by Ben Williams
Contributors
Acknowledgments
ROUND 1
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the first volume of Boxiana ! Well, that s not strictly true, for long-time fans of the pugilistic arts will recognise that the title of this new boxing anthology is shamelessly cribbed from Pierce Egan s Georgian journalistic masterpiece, the popularity of which did so much to immortalise the feats of early fistic heroes such as Tom Cribb, Bill Richmond and Tom Molineaux and establish organised bare-knuckle combat (the forerunner to modern boxing) as a social and sporting phenomenon.
This modest volume could never hope to scale the immortal heights reached by Egan s meisterwerk , which pretty much invented sports journalism. Instead my aim is to present readers with a mixture of interesting and insightful writing, focused on any area of boxing that someone feels passionately enough to write about. This volume, as well as planned future volumes, will aim to give a voice to as many talented and passionate writers as possible. The only entry criteria for Boxiana is that you have the cojones and talent to send a proposal or piece of writing that I like - the more original and creative the better!
What then inspired the publication of this volume? Truth be told, the main reason is slightly egotistical; it has quite simply been a dream of mine for many years to edit my own boxing anthology. During six years as a professional sports journalist, I all too infrequently got the opportunity to cover the sport that I love above all others and, in the ten years since I left full-time journalism to pursue a teaching career, a nagging regret has festered in the back of my brain that I had perhaps missed out on my true vocation (see, I told you this was egotistical ) Boxing was always a sport that excited my imagination as a child; when I think back to those halcyon bucket-and-spade days, it is boxing that often serves as a prompt for my inexorably decaying memory For example, I cannot recall much else that happened to me in 1986, but I can still distinctly recall the excitement in my father s voice when he entered the living room early one morning to inform me that Lloyd Honeyghan, who lived in our area of south London, had beaten Don Curry ( the best boxer in the world, and an American at that! ) to become World Welterweight Champion. That Honeyghan so frequently referred to the Walworth Road, where we did our Saturday morning fruit and veg shopping, only added to my excitement. (By the way, I tried every week to spot Lloyd wandering down the Walworth Road and never did, although my dad claimed he saw him in the betting shop once).
Similarly, I can still recall my utter incredulity when I discovered that Mike Tyson had been knocked out by James Buster Douglas in February 1990. The pre-internet age meant that anyone who missed the news late on Sunday night or early on Monday morning was utterly unaware that such a seismic event had taken place. I remember several of my friends at school refusing to believe the small group of us who told them that Tyson had lost. The matter was only settled when we snuck out of the playground at lunchtime and got our hands on an early edition of the London Evening Standard in order to confirm that Tyson had, indeed, been humbled. I think there was even a photo of him fumbling for his mouth-guard which ended up being snipped out of the Standard and excitedly passed around the back of the class.
However, childhood reverie to one side, it was not my attachment to boxing as a child that instilled in me the ambition to be a boxing writer or editor. No, that ambition actually came later, during my teenage years when I discovered a volume of boxing writing that simply blew my mind Mailer s The Fight ? I can almost hear you ask. Liebling s The Sweet Science ? The aforementioned Egan s Boxiana ? Sorry, but it was none of these - instead it was a paperback volume that the majority of boxing fans have probably never encountered, entitled Champions of the Ring by Gerald Suster, published by Robson Books in 1994 which consisted of a series of biographical essays of the most significant heavyweight champions from John L. Sullivan to Lennox Lewis. Suster, I later discovered, wasn t always the most accurate of authors. For example, his claim that Ezzard Charles was the boxer on the cover of Sgt. Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band once lost me a pub quiz, to the chagrin of a Beatles-loving friend, who had maintained it was Sonny Liston, only to be over-ruled (incorrectly) by me. Nevertheless, there was something in Suster s excitable and vivid prose that captured my imagination; the pithy phrases he coined to describe the fistic heroics of the likes of Ali, Johnson and Dempsey stuck in my mind and that of my best boxing friend from school, James - we would wile away hours studying and reciting passages from the book until we knew them by heart: Jack Johnson was, in Suster s estimation, a flawed man of his flawed times; but ... what times! And what a man! , while Primo Carnera was perfectly summarised as the innocent immigrant, fractured freak and crying clown . Even today, when discussing matters related to boxing (or indeed, matters relating to anything ), James and I will pepper our conversations with a Suster-ism or two; of a strange or puzzling friend or acquaintance we might remark scratch a paradox and you find an enigma (Suster s description of Jack Sharkey), while we often find ourselves affixing Suster s pithy assessment of Mike Tyson ( what a waste! ) to all manner of situations.
During the years when Champions of the Ring was effectively my Bible, the mental image I created of the mysterious Suster, of whom there was very little information and no photographic representation in the pages of the book itself, was of a bespectacled Harry Carpenter/ Reg Gutteridge-type figure, sat in a suburban home sipping from a mug of cocoa while watching old fight videos. Imagine my surprise then, when I read an obituary of Suster, who died in 2001, and discovered that, aside from boxing, his other literary efforts mainly focused on the occult. He was even once the victim of a News of the World expos entitled Devil Teacher which ruined his teaching career by publicly revealing his interest in the dark arts (Suster duly sued the newspaper for damages to his livelihood, winning costs and damages).
I had to re-think my mental image of Suster after that, but my admiration for Champions of the Ring remained undiminished. Indeed, my own first book, a snooker tome entitled Masters of the Baize (which I co-wrote with Paul Gadsby) was, in part, a loving homage to Suster s work, with snooker players substituted for heavyweight boxers, and a few allusions to Suster thrown in along the way (unsurprisingly, not one reviewer noticed this - heathens!)
As well as my passion for Suster, and all forms of writing related to boxing, Boxiana was also born, I will admit, out of a fair degree of frustration with the modern mainstream print media. Despite its inherent appeal to a wide and varied audience, boxing has slowly but inexorably been forced into the margins and news in brief ghettos of most sports pages in the last decade or two. Few sports editors of national newspapers in the UK or USA seem to value the sport, or give it the column inches it deserves. At the same time, the growth of the internet has opened up new opportunities for many writers, without doubt a positive development, but it has also led to a disturbing trend which I have labelled the content for free revolution, whereby many writers labour hard and for long hours to produce work they never receive payment for.
Boxiana may not have a wealthy Roman Abramovich-style backer to pay lavish fees to contributors, but I do hold true to the principle that every writer must be paid a fee for their work, while 50 per cent of any profits made from this volume will be distributed among my team of loyal and enthusiastic contributors - after all, without them there would be no content in the first place. As a further point of principle, Boxiana will also endeavour to reply t