Hey, watch the hair!

On ESPN 2 the other day, they were showing classic boxing matches. The one I caught was the epic second battle between Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Livingstone Bramble for the World Lightweight Championship. It brought to mind a flood of memories and observations.

Ray was probably the last of the great Italian American boxers. The great Italian American boxers all shared three common traits:

1. They had memorable nicknames (come on “Boom Boom” has got to be top 5 great monikers of all time).

2. Their mothers always sat ringside (and if they had passed, a photo of them would be placed ringside because “Mama is always watching.”)

3. Their defense was based on blocking punches with the brim of their nose.

Livingstone Bramble on the other hand was a bit of an oddity. He was a world champion boxer from Saint Kitts and Nevis, I think the first and last one. He was reportedly a practitioner of witchcraft, claimed he cut the head off a chicken to help prepare for fights, and carried a live snake with him into the ring..although I think he found Don King to be quite heavy.

The other unusual thing about Livingstone was his hair. He sported small, tightly wound braids all over his head. This might have been common for voodoo priests in the Caribbean, but not common in the world of pugilists.

His hair always stuck in my memory because of the controversy it caused in the Mancini fight. Mancini’s corner claimed after the first fight that Bramble’s hair was cutting Mancini. (I am not making this up) I am sure it was not the 300 or so punches that Livingstone administered to Mancini’s mug but the prickliness of his “do” that did Boom Boom in.

Never mind, that paper mache was thicker that Mancini's skin. He would start bleeding as soon as he crouched to enter the ring. The ding of the bell would open a cut over his left eye.

But I always wondered if there was some validity to this claim. So I decided I’d try an experiment to prove once and for all if Bramble’s hair shredded Mancini’s face like a grater to a block of mozzarella.

Since I am of Italian ancestry, I nominated myself to be the “guinea pig”. Of course, I offended myself when I called me a “guinea pig” because of the whole derogatory use of the word “guinea” to describe Italian Americans. After I calmed down and accepted my apology, I proceeded.

Next, I had to find someone with similar hair to Bramble’s. I searched high and low until I stumbled on the perfect hair. It turned out the sample hair belonged to Leticia, an 8-year-old girl that lives down the street. Not the perfect choice for my little experiment, but after I promised to teach her how to drive, she agreed to help.

To make things as accurate as possible, I rented out a boxing ring at the downtown gym. The owner was a bit concerned when I said I wanted to spar with an 8-year-old girl, but after I explained it fully, he was REALLY concerned and ran to call the cops. I knew the knots I used to tie him up would not last long (I was a lousy boy scout), so we wouldn’t have much time for the experiment. We put on the gloves and I urged her to come right at me, leading with her head.

I don’t remember much after that. When I came to in the squad car, I had several cuts all over my face, and both eyes we nearly swollen shut. The police officers were laughing so hard they nearly wrecked three times on the way to the station. One said, “That was the worse beating I’ve seen since Livingstone Bramble pummeled Ray Mancini.”

Through a nearly shut jaw, I uttered “So it wasn’t the hair. I knew it.”

I was vindicated. I suffered the same fate as “Boom Boom” and not because of any spiky hair. Granted his beating was at the hands of a professional boxer while mine was from an eight year old who is currently borrowing my car to go buy some “Hello Kitty” jewelry.

Next week ESPN classic is going to show the infamous Tyson- Holyfield ear-biting bout. You know, I was always skeptical that a man could bite off another man’s ear….

Baseball Begins!

Baseball begins. Did you hear me? The baseball season is starting, aren’t you excited?

What’s that? Yes. It starts every year in April.

No it didn’t “just” end, it’s been something like 5 months since the last real games were played.

Well, you should care.

Because it’s “America’s pastime” that’s why.

No, surfing the web for porn is not America’s pastime. I am talking about sports okay.

No. Football should not be considered America’s pastime.

Because, they are just a bunch of steroid bloated Neanderthals.

Well, baseball players are not Neanderthals.

Hey, they do that all the time because they have to adjust their cup.

I don’t know why they don’t get form-fitting cups. I am not about to ask a guy how he protects his manhood. That’s a personal matter unique to every man.

Why, yes. I happen to be wearing a cup right now, what business is it of yours?

Yes, I had it molded to fit the particular contour of my groin.

Let's just say it's unusual and leave it at that, okay! Satisfied. But I am not going to agree that football should be “America’s pastime!”

Yes football is more “popular” if you consider being the most talked about, most covered, and highest rated programming on TV as popular. Sure football is more popular but that doesn’t make it “America’s pastime.”

Yes, more people follow Nascar.
And basketball.
And golf.
And poker.
But it’s more popular that hockey so there.

Baseball is our national pastime because it is a link to our past, as James Earl Jones put it in Field of Dreams, “It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again..”

No, not like how Rev. Sharpton is linked to Strom Thurmond?!

Jeez, can’t you understand, baseball is a beautiful game. It combines extraordinary physical skill with mental aptitude to produce a game that explodes with thrilling action at every crack of the bat!

Yes, this happens once every 10 minutes in a typical game.

No, watching paint dry is not nearly as much fun as watching baseball.

Neither is watching grass grow.

Okay, I’ll make you a deal, the next time we go to a baseball game, I’ll watch the players and you watch the grass grow and we’ll see who has more fun. Let’s go next week okay?

You can’t because you are having root canal?

Ouch. Okay how about the following week?

Root canal again? And the week after that?

Oh my god, did you gargle with coke and chocolate syrup as a kid? How many root canals can you have?

How many games in a baseball season? Ummm lets see.. I think it’s 162.

You are going to have 162 root canals!

All right, I guess we’ll never get to share in the splendor that is America’s pastime.

Oh, I’m still going to surf the web for…hey come on, I was talking about baseball!

Chris Simon Slashes Ryan Hollweg's Face

It's as if Chris Simon read by last blog and said to himself "Yeah, I have a stick. I should totally use it to decapitate another player."
Chris Simon...giving psychopaths a bad name.

Understanding Hockey Fights

A couple of weeks ago, there was huge fight during a National Hockey League game between the Buffalo Sabres and the Ottawa Senators. If you have not seen the fight, click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49sqgSv5SE0 . If you have seen the fight, click on this link because if you watched it once, you can’t help but watch it again.

Before I continue commenting on this, let me take a moment for some background information. In case you had forgotten, and by the TV ratings many of you have, there is a professional league in North America for the sport of “hockey”, a sport that combines the beauty, speed and grace of figure skating and monster truck shows.

Periodically during contests in this league, an altercation will arise. The cause of these altercations varies. It might be that one player says something to another player who takes offense to said comment. This is a remarkable occurrence in that seldom do two players speak the same language in this league. And even if they do, the chances that a comment can be properly understood when spoken through a toothless mouth are remote at best.

Another reason for a disagreement to arise is when one player makes excessive physical contact with another player, usually resulting in that player losing a significant amount of blood. A third party will then intervene on behalf of the bloodied player and proceed to extract the same amount of blood from the offending party. This is where hockey players get their credo “a pint for a pint”. I know many of you thought that was a beer reference, but that is only in the world of rugby.

And yet another reason for a massive display of physical harm against another human (or “fight”) is the time-honored tradition of “sending a message”. Guglielmo Marconi had his “telegraph”, Thomas Edison had his “telephone”, and Gordie Howe had his “three uppercuts to the jaw”. All have the similar purpose of transmitting a message from one person to another. In the case of hockey, that message is usually “we will not let you get away with braining our goalie.”

This later reason was the casus belli for the Senator/Sabres fracas. It achieved the distinction of official “fracas-dom” when the two goalies threw off their masks and proceeded to re-enact the famous “Dynasty” Alexis Colby v. Krystle Carrington cat fight, including going the extra mile for authenticity by wearing oversized shoulder pads. It was one of those special fights that happens two to three times a year and gets the purist of the sport to speak glowingly of the “good old days.” (translation: when only Canadians played the game)

But you don’t hear anyone saying this was a black eye on the sport (pun intended). You don’t have any commentators going off that “thug life” has taken over the sport. No pundits cry out that these kinds of fights are ruining the sport. Dr Phil has not talked about the toll this has taken on the youngest viewers of hockey, which I believe to be 52 year olds.

Now, if this was a basketball game or football game, oh lord you would not be able to keep Dan Patrick’s pie hole closed long enough to get a word in edge wise. Bob Costas would openly weep about how this is not what sports is supposed to be about. You would get blame spread evenly from rap music, to video games, to not enough mothers are breast feeding their children.

So why is there such great outrage when basketball players throw punches? Mind you, these punches connect as frequently as Shaq hits a free throw. On the contrary, hockey fights, in which people actually get hit, barely measure on the moral outrage barometer.

Oh sure, perhaps our indignation at predominantly African-Americans in violent situations while simultaneously ignoring predominantly Caucasian Euro-Americans in far more violent circumstances belies a not to subtle undercurrent of racism that our society has yet to exorcise itself of after 400 years. That’s what the so-called social-economic experts (i.e. pessimists) might say, but I like to think of myself, as most Americans do, as an ill-informed optimist.

And the ill-informed optimist in me believes we embrace hockey fights because it is a celebration of our Neanderthal past. Just like we have Civil War re-enactments, these hockey players act out, with great historical accuracy, the common exchanges between our earliest ancestors, even using wooden clubs just like they did. Watching someone get beaten down into bloody submission harkens us back to a time when life was much simpler. You hunted, you gathered, and then you died. No meetings to attend. No tax returns to file. No having to decide every four years who will lead the free world. Actually most of us don’t bother with that last thing, but you get the point.

So go back to the link above and watch it again, and again, and again. I promise you’ll get swept up in the nostalgia…and you’ll start craving mammoth meat.