La Nause'e In The Ring

FIRST, a statement of skin-deep alienation: what am I doing in Section 128 of the Boston Garden at seven o'clock on a Saturday night? This is a lot of bullshit. I have been writing for this paper for nearly three years and they give the one ringside pass to a photographer. A photographer! Well might you ask what the world is coming to. There is no respect for words. As usual, nice guys have finished last.

This is my first time here at the end of the Riverside line, and it does not take long to realize that the name "garden" is hopelessly inappropriate. Unless it refers to a terrarium somebody forgot about for three years so that everything inside it has rotted, providing mulch for all the worst fungus and scumcrawlers in God's imagination. Everything is painted in aggressive tempera paints, greens and reds as flat as a Boston accent, and a horrible school-bus-yellow. I don't have to tell you what school-bus-yellow means in this town. I am beginning to get nervous. The American flag is hung up backwards, at least from where I'm sitting. There is a loud menacing rumble and whistling from the heating system. I am nervous, nervous. All alone up here; no one in section 128 stupid enough to come for the preliminaries. I am tense, I am nervous. I get up to get a hot dog.

On the way I pass a man with a Marvin Hagler T-shirt. He has a goatee and has shaved his head shiny bald, just like the Champ. That's a real fan for you.

The hot dog stand smells horrible. There is this terrific bad smell and it can only come from the hot dogs and still I put one in my mouth. Everyone I see is ugly. They are all ugly, ugly. Boxing is like a dirty rain filtering through the air of the city, bringing all the worms to the surface. I have never seen so many pork-pie hats in my life. I pay a dollar sixty for a cup of beer and head back to my seat. I am nauseous. I am hoping I can hide.

The first preliminary bout has already begun. A guy named A1 Stiles is fighting a guy named Mario Moldanado. They are middleweights. Stiles cannot even afford a pair of boxing trunks; he fights in a pair of blue terrycloth shorts. He had entered the ring in a robe of the same material. K-Mart coordinates. Neither one of them can fight. They hardly throw any punches. They miss the ones they throw. Nobody is watching them anyway.

And there is no noise, just the rumble of the heaters. There are hardly any people here yet, just the seats, the ugly colors.

I look over the railing. Down near ringside someone has spilled beer on the man in front of him. Spilled beer all over the plaid jacket and the girlfriend's llama coat. The man in the plaid jacket is angry. He is shouting and brushing the beer off his jacket. He jabs his finger at the man with the beer in an expression of anger. Jab, jab, jab.

Now the bout is over. Stiles is in the opposite corner giving Moldanado a hug. This impossibly fat guy from the Stiles' team is follwoing him with the K-Mart robe, but Stiles is all over the place. He hugs his trainer. He goes back to hug Moldanado again. The decision comes: in six rounds, by unanimous decision, Stiles. He goes and hugs Moldanado again. The fat guy is still trying to get the robe on him. Stiles seems happy he has won. Secretly he must be ashamed. He has not landed a solid punch all night.

Something at the heart of the whole thing is disgusting. This is not boxing on television. Where the fuck is Hemingway? Where's Papa? There are just these two guys with nothing to lose and nothing to win missing punches in the middle of this silence and this indifference and the noise from the heaters, rumbling, rumbling. I am beginning to be very scared. An enormous sourness fills me. What is wrong with us?

A local fighter named Robbie Simms is fighting a fellow named Herrington. Herrington looks unhealthy. This is good. It is like that old joke when you hear that someone is dead and you say, "I didn't even know he was sick." You would not have this problem with Herrington. He excudes cancer. When he dies in the second round he has died of natural causes. Simms is Hagler's half-brother. Two Cains, no Abel.

Next there is a fight for the New England championship, pitting a feather weight of great appeal from Dedham with the unlikely name of Freddy Roach against the current champion, Joe Phillips. Phillips looks greasy. Roach is pretty sly and pretty soon he takes command. But I am filled with loathing. I go for another hot dog.

When I get back there's this boohoo sprawled across my seat. He is recklessly drunk. I am scared. I am filled with loathing. I go to my seat and he gets my drift and moves over. "Relax, man," he says. I hate him, I am filled with loathing. I want to go home, where my room is warm and my sheets are clean. I hate the pressure of his leg against mine. I am filled with loathing. He is screaming in a Latin accent.

"Kill him! Knock him through the fuckin' ropes! Knock him through the fuckin' ropes!"

"Kill!"

"Fuck!"

"Punish!"

I am frantically taking all this down in my notebook.

"Fuck!"

I am scared and my soul is filled with loathing.

"Shit! Kill that son of a bitch!"

"Punish him! Knock him through the fuckin' ropes. Blood!"

He is becoming quite exercised. He has no previous attachment to Roach but Roach is clearly winning, and that is enough.

"I got $500 on the guy in blue. $500 on blue." He is looming over me.

"How about 1 to 5?" someone near me asks.

"Tell you what," the boohoo says. "I give you 1 to 5."

"Tell you what," the guy behind me says. "Get out of my way or you're over the fuckin' railing."

The boohoo is chastened. I am secretly pleased. At the end of the featherweight fight he leaves. He will go toe to toe with a urinal.

It is past nine o'clock. The guys next to me are smoking sensamilla. "Here we go. Here we fuckin' go." This makes no sense to me at all.

"Is that Sugar Ray Leonard? I knew I'd spot him."

"Is that Howard Cosell?"

"No. That's not Cosell."

"On Leonard's left--is that Cosell?"

"Nah, that's not Cosell. That's not Cosell."

"Is that Joe Frazier?"

"Where?"

"Behind Cosell."

Who are these people? They have spent at least twenty dollars a head to come see this. It is horrible, horrible. The men in front of us are not any good, and when boxing is not any good it is very bad. There is no style, only brutality. I can't catch the names of the next two fighters. I don't want to. I haven't got it in me to even look at the program. Everyone around me is ugly. They are all dressed in macho and Boston College macho. These are all tough guys. The have all had at least one fight in their life and they will talk about it till they die. And they will talk about Marvin Hagler, in bars and to children and grandchildren.

A woman has entered the arena down by the ringside seats. She is wearing a skin-tight purple dress, and even from my rarefied perch I can tell she has colossal breasts. Down by ringside everyone is going crazy. Three guys try to kiss her. I cannot tell if she is enjoying this.

My seat is hard. I have been sitting without moving in this very hard seat because I am too scared to move, and I am hoping all the shrapnel will fall around me.

People are starting to go nuts. They are waving flags from a foreign country. Vietnam? The inside of my brain smells like a very old book. People around me are going berserk. The challenger appears in the ring in a black satin robe. I think his name is something like Fully Insured. At least I hope it is.

Now Hagler is coming up the aisle, Marvelous Marvin, dancing his little dance. Finally, there is some real noise in this building. I cannot hear the heater and I am glad. The people are going nuts. They love him because he comes from Brockton. He is one of them. They are going nuts.

"We love you, Mahvin!" shouts a man behind me. He has a close-cropped head. With his dry skin and broken capillaries, he looks like a jelly donut. "Mahvin, we love yooooooo."

The ring is full of people. They are being introduced over the public address. I cannot make it out. Most of them are New England champions or contenders of some weight class. The only one I recognize is Vito Antuofermo, who may be the only man who is ugly from a hundred yards away. Then the announcer gives an Italian name and a Korean guy steps up. He is confused. They pull him back. He blushes, he is confused. Above him the flag is backwards.

They announce the national anthem of the challenger's homeland. Everyone is shouting "Mahvin! Mahvin!" You can't hear the anthem.

"Mahvin! We love you Mahvin!"

Then they announce the Star Spangled Banner and everybody is up and singing it. I want to stay in my seat and hide but I have to get up. The guys next to me are passing the joint around. I look over the rail, I am so high, and so afraid of heights, why didn't they give me that ringside seat? The bastards, the fucking bastards.

"Mahvin! We love yoooo!"

"Destroy and destruction," the guy behind me says.

The fight begins. Hagler is playing around.

"Kill that tall skinny prick!"

"Destroy and destruction."

"Mahvin! We love yoooooo!"

The round ends. Fully Insured has missed a lot of punches. Otherwise, nothing has happened.

"Mahvin, we love yoooooo!"

In the second round Hagler starts to fight. Fully Insured is missing all his punches. Hagler bores in, deeper, deeper, his bald head boring in like a phallus. Fully has two inches in reach but Hagler is the one landing the jabs. He is moving constantly and impossible to hit.

"Mahvin! We love you! Do you know that?"

In the third round Hagler comes flying out of his corner and nails Fully with a left hook, and it is clear that Fully's filly will be collecting an annuity before the night is over. It is just a question of when. The guys next to me are anxious. They have a bet on Hagler in six. One of them has smoked too much dope and is snoring. Somebody is throwing his business cards like confetti: "Tint City." It's a glass company.

The rounds come. Fully Insured has nothing. Hagler is throwing everything. Fully can take a punch, though, and he is getting a good chance to prove it. Finally in the sixth Hagler throws his left hook and Fully is on the floor. The crowd is going crazy. "Mahvin! We love yooooo!" Fully gets up. He is moving like a freighter in heavy seas.

"Mahvin! We love yooooo!"

The eighth round starts. The guys next to me have lost their bet. In twenty seconds Hagler has thrown a right and Fully Insured is sprawling like Dick van Dyke. The referee can tell that the next punch is a ticket to the afterlife, and ends the fight. People are going crazy. Hagler's wife is in the ring, jumping up and down, her arms in the air. His kid comes in the ring in a little three piece suit. Everyone is hurrying out. They want to miss the crowds. Hagler is holding his belt in the air.

"Ah, Twinkie," somebody says to his friend. "You couldda beaten Hagler. Wid a gun! Wid a gun!" He is taken with his own joke, and keeps repeating the punchline to gall Twinkie.

"Wid a gun!"

I admire Hagler. He's good at what he does. But when a boxer's not extraordinary the only thing left is the visceral thrill of seeing someone get knocked down. I feel sick, I feel sick inside. I have seen too many bad fights, too many ugly people. Everyone is gone and people are screaming unnaturally in the tunnels to hear the echo. I feel sick, I feel sick. What is wrong with us? This is the essential question for our times. What is wrong with us? What is wrong with us? People are screaming in the tunnels.CrimsonNevin I. ShalitMARVIN HAGLER looks for an opening as he stalks challenger Fulgencio Obelmejias in the seventh round of Saturday's title fight.