You Don't Even Feel It (A Story From the Dark Side)

When I was ten years old, my father took me to Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo to watch Willie Pep take apart some poor tomato can. I’ve been a fight fan ever since, and my wife’s become an even more rabid aficionado than I; she’ll tell anyone who’ll listen how she wangled a press conference pass and met Freddie Roach and Manny Pacquiao.

It’s a tough sport to love. You have to watch twenty lousy fights to see one good one, and I think you get better odds kissing frogs. The judges miss half of what you see on TV, and screw up their cards accordingly.

And the sport’s brutal, and takes its toll. . .