Close Encounters with the Gloves off , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing Ltd - Tom Myler

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168 pages

English

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Close Encounters with the Gloves Off is a rollercoaster ride through boxing history in the words of the boxers themselves, as they recall their highs and lows, their greatest triumphs, the background stories and many shock revelations. Acclaimed boxing writer, author and historian Thomas Myler has interviewed every one of the pugilistic greats featured, during a career spent covering boxing; from the big names of the 'Roaring 20s' right through to boxing's modern era. Muhammad Ali, Jack Dempsey, Georges Carpentier, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano, Joe Frazier, George Foreman and modern greats such as Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Evander Holyfield and Ken Buchanan all feature. Myler has spent a lifetime around boxing and boxers and was once described by George Kimball, prize-winning author of the acclaimed Four Kings, as 'One of the world's best boxing writers'. Close Encounters with the Gloves Off pulls together that life's work to take the reader on a wonderful boxing journey which spans almost an entire century.

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Love

Love (disambiguation)

Xian de Boxing

Boxing

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 février 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785311727
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0000€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

What they said about Thomas Myler s previous books:
Sugar Ray Robinson: The Inside Story
Thomas Myler has written a gripping account of the life and colourful times of the original Sugar Ray in a lively, page-turning style.
Dublin Evening Herald
A must for any student of the sweet science. Robinson s story by the author is a fascinating read. Don t miss it.
Daily Star
It s all here, from Robinson s impoverished upbringing in Detroit and New York, through his rise to fame and fortune - and his eventual decline and death. A must read.
Boxing News
Boxing s Greatest Upsets: Fights That Shook The World
A respected writer, Myler has compiled a worthy volume on the most sensational and talked-about upsets of the glove era, drawing on interviews, archive footage and worldwide contacts.
Yorkshire Evening Post
Fight fans will glory in this offbeat history of boxing s biggest shocks, from Gentleman Jim s knockout of John L.Sullivan in 1892 to the modern era. A must for your bookshelf
Hull Daily Mail
Book of the Month
Lonsdale Sports
Myler s ability to dig deep, gather plenty of background information, coupled with his easy-flowing style of writing, paints a fascinating scene building up to the contests. We urge you to add this book to your collection.
Boxing News
Myler just doesn t deal with what happened inside the ropes but also provides a balanced overview of the controversies, personalities and historical contexts that make these fights worth reading about.
Ring
Boxing s Hall of Shame
Boxing scribe Thomas Myler shares with the reader a ringside seat for the sport s most controversial fights. It s an engaging read, one that feeds our fascination with the darker side of the sport.
Bert Sugar, author and broadcaster
Well written and thoroughly researched by one of the best boxing writers in these islands, Myler has a keen eye for the story behind the story. A must read for all fight fans.
Yorkshire Post
Ringside With The Celtic Warriors
This latest offering from this highly-respected boxing writer is well up to the standard we expect from him. Myler is really someone who has been there, done that.
Boxing News
Thomas Myler has come up with another gem. His credentials and easy, readable style make this a must book for fight fans.
The Sun
As a ring historian, Thomas Myler has few peers.
Belfast Telegraph

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2016
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Thomas Myler, 2016
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-122-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78531-172-7
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Sugar Ray Robinson
George Foreman
Rocky Marciano
Ken Buchanan
Joe Louis
Mike Tyson
Jack Dempsey
Sugar Ray Leonard
Earnie Shavers
Joe Frazier
Billy Conn
Muhammad Ali
Evander Holyfield
Jersey Joe Walcott
Georges Carpentier
Index
Photographs
To Betty, who was always in my corner, win or lose
Boxing is the ultimate challenge. There s nothing that can compare to testing yourself the way you do every time you step into a ring.
Sugar Ray Leonard
Acknowledgements
T HIS book would not have been possible without the help and kindness of many people who gave their time and energy to assist with the project. All of them are too numerous to be named individually but particular reference should be made of many.
The invaluable team at Boxing News , past and present, deserve special mention such as various editors over the years like Graham Houston, Harry Mullan, Claude Abrams and Tris Dixon who could never do enough, whether checking facts and figures, supplying photographs or publishing reviews and plugs for my books. Not for nothing is Boxing News called the world s best fight magazine.
Special mention must also be made of the Press Association news agency, Getty Images and Ring magazine for immeasurable assistance including supplying photographs. The Irish Independent and Dublin Evening Herald have to be mentioned in this context too, as does freelance photographer Aidan Walsh. Where, too, would writers and chroniclers be without the indispensable website boxrec.com, an invaluable source of information? Columnist, chronicler and author Bob Mee also lent his expertise whenever a fact needed clarification. My family too were always there to help.
Sadly, my dear and beloved wife Betty passed away before I started the project but she would have fully approved of the project, unquestionably.
Without the help and co-operation of the boxers themselves, this book in any event would not have seen the light of day. Their time and full co-operation was always evident and while many have sadly left us, they, and those happily still with us, deserve my heartfelt thanks and gratitude.
Last and by no means least, my sincere thanks to Pitch Publishing for having the foresight, dedication and care for getting the book into print. Credit here must go to publishing executives Paul and Jane Camillin, editor Gareth Davis, typesetter Graham Hales and proofreader Dean Rockett, with Derek Hammond in charge of marketing.
Thank you all.
Introduction
C ALL it what you will, the noble art, the sweet science, the fight game, showbusiness with blood but boxing has an excitement, a drama, a charisma all its own. True, it has its do-gooders and its abolishers because of its very nature. But the most incontrovertible piece of evidence that its critics can never ignore or deny it that boxing, in some form, has been with us as long as man can remember. Fist-fighting, as a sporting competition, has been part of our culture for thousands of years.
To set the scene for this book, it would seem appropriate to take a brief look at boxing history down the years and establish where the sport has been and where it is at the present time.
It has certainly come a long, long way since its beginnings in ancient Greece where excavations at Knossos on the island of Crete have revealed that a form of the sport was known among its inhabitants as early as 1500 BC. But it was not until the early 19th century that a boxing dynasty was established in England and later in America.
The first recognised rules were set up by the English champion Jack Broughton in 1743 and were in operation until 1838 when the London Prize Ring Rules, or the New Rules of Prizefighting as they were initially called, were introduced. These were revised in 1853 and again in 1866. In 1867 John Sholto Douglas, the ninth Marquis of Queensberry, sponsored new rules compiled by his friend John Chambers, a keen follower of prizefighting. They had first met at Magdelene College in Cambridge and the marquis, who had only a sketchy knowledge of boxing, agreed to lend the new rules his name and patronage. Thus the Queensberry Rules came into force.
In the early years of the 18th century, a typical contest had been an unregulated, no-holds-barred battle watched by a circle of spectators, hence the ring as we know it today. There was no referee, or any set rounds or time limits. Beyond the fighters personal sense of sportsmanship, there were simply no rules. The object was to fight until one contestant could no longer carry on. Battles generally lasted for hours, and while fists were considered the primary weapon, no tactic was forbidden. These included gouging, throwing, kicking, strangling and often the use of a cudgel, a short thick stick.
For many years, no consideration was given to the relative weight of the contestants, and no organisation existed to give official recognition to champions or challengers. To set up a title battle, a fighter would issue, often in writing, a challenge or response to an open invitation by the so-called champion to take on worthy rivals.
In time bare-knuckle fighting went into decline and by the time the Queensberry Rules were drawn up, they were considered more in keeping with the times. America fell in line and boxing had entered a whole new era.
Wrestling tackles and other dangerous practices were banned, the length of rounds limited to three minutes with a rest of 60 seconds in between, and contestants had to wear fair-sized boxing gloves of the best quality and new .
The Queensberry Rules are basically the same today as the ones in operation a century and a half ago, although naturally with changes and modifications over the years to bring them up to date with conditions at the time. With safety at the core of all changes, these included the shortening of championship fights from 45 rounds to 25, then to 20, subsequently to 15 and today to 12. Other changes were extra weight classes, the methods of scoring fights and as recently as 1990 the changing of the weigh-in from the day of the fight to 24 hours earlier.
Even when the Queensberry Rules were introduced, old habits died hard.
There were still fights to a finish but gradually promoters saw the commercial sense in using a maximum number of rounds and, if no knockout or intervention had been achieved, having a points verdict based on which participant had done the better work over the whole fight.
Through it all, boxing has survived over the centuries in spite of some rough passages. It has fallen a victim of reformers, lawmakers, expungers, and so often the ineptitude of its own ad