Kings of the Ring: The History of Heavyweight Boxing Review

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Kings of the Ring: The History of Heavyweight Boxing ReviewI must admit I picked up `Kings of the Ring' with a little trepidation. I like my sports books to be correct in every detail as well as sparkling and original, and I was concerned this might be coffee table fare - great on pictures but light on text. I found myself extremely pleasantly surprised.
The book is broken up into chapters on all the heavyweight champions and a few who never won universal recognition, from the bareknuckle days to the present, and yet it manages a seamlessly coherent narrative. In the early 20th century, for example, the theme is one of white (mainly Irish-American) men striving to the top while battling to keep African Americans out of the loop. This allows the author, Gavin Evans, to delve deeper than any other I have read into the lives of some of the great fighters who were frozen out of the title race (Peter Jackson, Sam Langford and Harry Wills) and also to look at the failings of the great champions with an unblinking eye.
He clearly admires many of these men and the way they fought, but he never allows that to blind him to their many faults. As he writes in his introduction, "In retrospect their flaws probably seem more remarkable than in their own airbrushed times: the extreme racism of most of the early white gloved champions, the violence against women and other men, the greed, the stupidity, the links with organised crime, the alcohol and the drugs." All of this is exposed without recourse to euphemism or, indeed, for hyperbole and in some cases the picture that emerges is genuinely shocking. For example, I was raised to think of Jack Dempsey as a sweetheart outside the ring as much as he was a killer inside the ropes, but, sadly, this book presents a very different picture of the man: a violent, racist, bully for much of his life. Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and even Rocky Marciano also emerge more flawed, or rather more rounded, than the bowdlerised versions of their lives I'd previously encountered.
Despite all this, Evans clearly adores the old heroes - as much for their flaws as for their assets - and he lovingly provides vivid details of their fights and their lives as champions. In the end, though, he emerges as something of a modernist, taking the view that boxing, like every other sport, has moved on. He ends by predicting, tongue presumably not too far from cheek, that in 50 years time we'll be saying: "Ah, Tyson, Holyfield, Lewis, Klitschko - they don't make them like that any more."
So, definitely worth a cover-to-cover read and on top of that the pictures are truly wonderful. I've been following boxing for many moons but most of the pictures of the old champions were ones I'd never seen before, and they include contemporary cartoons and other illustrations. Highly recommended. *****Kings of the Ring: The History of Heavyweight Boxing Overview

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