The Big Fight About the Big Fight

Boxing enthusiasts like to style their sport the “sweet science.”

It is, of course, a very debatable view. To its critics, prize fighting is an atavistic relic of a brutal and mercenary past. But to a fight fan, boxing is the distillation of all other sports stripped of their elaboration. They argue that, in the end, all our games are really about beating the other guy up and that anyone who doubts that never has watched a brutal, vicious, atavistic chess match.

Boxing has enriched our language as has no other sport: We call a defensive person a “counter- puncher.” When we speak of “toeing the mark” or “coming up to scratch,” we recall those “bare-knuckle” days when championship bouts were “fights to the finish” and every round ended with a knockdown and began with the two combatants “toe-to-toe” in the center of the ring.

That is why the issue of James (Buster) Douglas, Mike Tyson and the new long count is a matter of moment to all with a decent sense of tradition and fair dealing. A 10-count, after all, is precisely that: One human being--and not a clock--counting to 10 from the subjectively and, therefore, fallibly observed moment when a fighter is “down.” There are no instant replays, nor should there be. The man on the canvas looks to the human referee in the ring and not to some impersonal, mechanical timepiece outside it. He is entitled to rely on what he sees.

If baseball is life as we wish it were--reflective, pastoral, precise, endowed with infinite possibilities--boxing is life as we really live it--contentious, sweaty, uncertain and played out against the clock. Football has a scoreboard, hash marks and chains, but in boxing, even the scoring is a matter of opinion. You make the best call you can on the information you’ve got and then live with it. That’s the savor in the sweet science; it isn’t at all scientific.

Besides, anybody who’d steal an upset from a 42-to-1 underdog has no soul.