Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage

by Budd Schulberg, Hugh McIlvanney (Introduction)

In this bountiful collection of his best boxing writing of a lifetime, Mr. Schulberg takes his fans all the way back to an epic bare-knuckle contest in England two hundred years ago; draws a revealing portrait of Uncle Mike Jacobs, the impresario of boxing in its Golden Age; expertly places Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali in the social history of their times; brings fans up to date in the careers of the great names of recent decades-Tyson, Holyfield, DeLaHoya, Hopkins, Chico Corrales; and much more. His writing sparkles with authority and insight. Here is great prose on great fighters, laced with a realistic sense of boxing's wrongs as well as its rights. Publication of Ringside is an event in the world of sports reportage.

Genres: Sports

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Budd Schulberg (1914–2009) was a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist who is best remembered for the classic novels What Makes Sammy Run?, The Harder They Fall, and the story On the Waterfront, which he adapted as a novel, play, and an Academy Award–winning film script. Born in New York City, Schulberg grew up in Hollywood, where his father, B. P. Schulberg, was head of production at Paramount, among other studios. Throughout his career, Schulberg worked as a journalist and essayist, often writing about boxing, a lifelong passion. Many of his writings on the sport are collected in Sparring with Hemingway (1995). Other highlights from Schulberg’s nonfiction career include Moving Pictures (1981), an account of his upbringing in Hollywood, and Writers in America (1973), a glimpse of some of the famous novelists he met early in his career. He died in 2009.

Reviews

[Laurence Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront. Even if he'd never done anything else, that's worth a few hat tips from both film and boxing fans. But how was he as a journalist?

Schulberg's prose is not quite as "imperious" as the cover quote pulled from the Telegraph would have you believe. For instance, he is immoderately fond of ungainly neological adjectives like "fistic." Even worse, I lost track of the amount of times Budd re-Christened the boxing world "fistiana," presumably a term from a more naive pre-internet-porn age. And once he has a caricature in his head - Cus D'Amato as a psychologist with a spit-bucket, Don King a P.T. Barnum on steroids, Mike Jacobs a kind of hyper-successful New York Del-Boy - he hangs onto it for decades.

But these repetitions I actually find endearing. For a start, his wary adoration of D'Amato was born out of genuine fear. Schulberg managed a solid - better than a journeyman, but never quite a gatekeeper - heavyweight called Archie McBride in the '50s, and nearly suffered a nervous breakdown fretting over his charge's safety after signing a contract for Archie to fight D'Amato's dangerous young protege Floyd Patterson. And since I'm still reeling from Norman Mailer's descriptions of King ("a genius with a hustle, one more embodiment of that organic philosophy walking in now, centuries late, from the savannah and the rain forest"), Schulberg's admiration for the man's incomparable business mind doesn't seem so bad. I'd have a harder time justifying "fistiana," but anyway...

Also, Schulberg genuinely knows the boxing business. (And he's not bad on films, either - anyone who goes to bat for The Set-Up is OK in my book.) My guess is even knowledgeable readers can pick up a thing or two here and there, and the scope is impressive. The first piece collected describes the fight between Toms Cribb and Molineux for the English championship in 1810, and the book runs all the way through to Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs Arturo Gatti in 2005. More impressively, even writing into his 90s, Schulberg is a remarkably clear-eyed analyst. He quickly assesses Mayweather as one of the few contemporary boxers who might have held his own in an earlier era. He correctly picks Winky Wright to beat Felix Trinidad when all the cash was going the other way. And without a hint of patrician's snobbery, he immediately recognises Corrales/Castillo I as every bit as great as Louis/Conn, Marciano/Walcott, Arguello/Pryor and Hagler/Hearns.

I think this is one of the more readable boxing books out there. As a personality, I much prefer the generous Schulberg to self-conscious "characters" like Bert Sugar. As a sports hack, he's not quite Red Smith or Hugh McIllvaney, but good enough that you don't miss them. As a writer, his occasionally repetitive prose is preferable to the portentous musings of Joyce Carol Oates or the florid machismo of Mailer. Unlike the latter or Ernest Hemingway, from whom Mailer doubtless caught the affliction, Schulberg's attraction to boxing isn't an insecure scribbler's desire to be seen as a tough guy - in fact, Budd openly admits he hates being punched in the face and his one attempt to spar with McBride ended in abject disaster - but instead a retention into adulthood of the same wide-eyed joy he got from watching Benny Leonard at the Garden as a kid. Schulberg can't help his love for the brutal game, and that particular adoration is infectious.

[Joe Rodeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great round up of 20th Century boxing by a knowledgeable worshipper of the sport.

But I've read too many books by authorities on their subjects that play it too safe, not to offend anybody; and get sued or lose future prospects. Isn't there at least a remote chance that Liston threw the second fight?

Didn't you know that Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis were long time boxing buddies?

& Editing would have eliminated repetition.

3 1/2*

[Daniel Milner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seen it all has our Budd, brilliant résumé of the live of Mike Jacobs to finish…

[Luis Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nonfiction. A treasury of boxing reportage by a titan of sportwriting and the fight game in particular. Every boxing fan should read this excellent book.