McClintock - On the chin: a boxing education

The first thing that impressed me about Fritzy was his collection of boxing maxims, which he deployed continuously and without regard to their relevance: Ya dont play boxing, Dont hook with a hooker, Kill the body and the headll die, Move ya head or the other guyll move it for ya.

Fritzy was Jakes trainer. I had got his mobile number from Jake, but put off dialling it for two days, afraid my voice would betray me as soft, privileged and generally unsuitable for instruction. When I did finally work up the nerve to call, I half-hoped nobody would pick up. But on the fifth ring, a voice, broad and rasping, answered: Fritzy here.

Gday, I said, affecting the same kind of matey, flat-vowelled intonation my dad uses when talking to his mechanic. I was calling about getting some boxing lessons for me and a mate?

The sport of boxing provokes love, loathing and sometimes lust with equal intensity. Its a ticket out of poverty, a middle-class fascination and a promoters goldmine; it can hook people with a primal burst of adrenaline and clinch them tight, or repel them utterly from the first jab.

In On the Chin Alex McClintock uses his own unlikely progress through the amateur ranks as a springboard to explore the history, culture and contradictions of the sweet sciencewith detours through some of its notable characters, including: Benny The Ghetto Wizard Leonard, The Boxing Barista Luigi Coluzzi, the immaculately named Trenton Titsworth, and the great Ruben Olivares, once described as the undisputed champion of the bender and the cabaret.

Informative, insightful and effortlessly entertaining, On the Chin is your essential guide to the art of hitting and getting hit.

For Mama

WRITING A BOOK about prize fighting after having a few amateur fights is a bit like writing a book about marathons after going for a jog around the block.

But I didnt write On the Chin because I achieved a lot in the ring. Nor did I write it to share my insider knowledge of the fight gameI dont have any. I wrote this book because boxing changed my life, and because theres no point having a passion if you cant tell people all about it.

Growing up, I never thought of myself as the sort of person who would enjoy seeing people hit each other, let alone enjoy hitting people myself. The sport was not passed on to me by my dad or uncle. I didnt box at school. There was no gym in the quiet suburb where I grew up. Like a lot of people, I assumed that boxing was the simplest sport imaginable. Hardly even a sport at all.

Then, by chance, I scratched the surface and learned the truth: boxing is really, really complicated. Not just in the ring, but outside it too. The contradictions are difficult to reconcile. Discipline vs debauchery. Sophistication vs grit. Uplift vs exploitation.

Boxing is confusing and problematic because humans are. For better and for worse, its extremes reveal what were capable of. My own experience in the ring taught me that Im stronger than I ever thought possible, braver, more resourceful. But it also revealed a lot about my shortcomings.

If youre disgusted by combat sports, this isnt the book for you. Your reaction is rational and understandable, and I wont try to convince you youre wrong.

If, however, youve watched the odd fight and felt the primal thrill of combat, but cant be bothered with the confusion, deception and greed that make it so hard to follow: read on. This book is an attempt to cut through the bullshit and make the sport a little less confusing.

If youre not sure whether youre interested in boxing, Id say this: stories about boxers are not just stories about people punching each other in the face. Theyre stories about class, race, migration, urbanisation, politics, history, sex, gender, the bodyabout what it means to be human.

They are mainly stories about men, though. Things are changing, but through history few fields have been as male-dominated as the busted-beak business (which is really saying something). Ive attempted to include fighting women, but I should say upfront that theyre outnumbered.

On the Chin is also a story of home and awaybecause Im from here and most historically significant boxers are from over there, especially the US, which has dominated the sport for the last 140-odd years. Still, Ive managed to sneak in the stories of a few Aussie fighters.

Ive tried to write it all from the starting point that most people, even most sports fans, have little knowledge of boxing beyond Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. If youre already an aficionado, what follows will not all be new to you. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

Boxing is infested with a whole alphabet of organisations (the WBC, WBA, WBO, IBF, IBO and so forth) that hand out world title belts. Some of these bodies are more credible than others, although its a relative matter because theyre all crooks (see The Alphabet Gang later in the book).

But regrettable as it is, these sanctioning bodies do exist and do have influence in the sport. Thats why this book refers to winners of their diluted titles as titlists, title holders or belt holders, while the word champion is used only to refer to the owners of legitimate, lineal championships, i.e. the guy who beat the previous champion, who beat the previous champion and so on back to the introduction of the Queensberry Ruleswhich introduced gloves to the sport, among other innovations. If that doesnt make sense now, I hope it will soon.

I HAVE A single childhood memory involving boxing. I am lying between Mum and Dad on the waterlily-patterned cushions of the bamboo couch in our living room. We are watching the evening news, which the whole familyme, my parents, my twin brother George and my younger sister Rosedid every night: it was one of our rituals. I think my parents considered it educational.

Tonight: the opening theme, which I always found oddly thrilling; the intro graphics swooping low over the pages of an atlas; the newsreaders voice describing the days goings-on in federal politics, all as normal. Then he adds, in tones of mock outrage, that Mike Tyson has bitten off a chunk of Evander Holyfields ear in a fight for the WBA heavyweight championship.

At the time I had no idea what this meant, but the accompanying footage, which you have probably seen, shows two gleaming, herculean African-American men wearing bright red gloves punching each other, then hugging, while a small bald man with a bow tie fusses about nearby. One of the men seems to kiss the other on the side of the head. Then, in slow motion, a different picture: Tyson sizes up Holyfields lobe, closes his eyes and bites down hard, as if into an apple. Holyfield screams and jumps around like a child in a puddle.

Dad sucks air between his teeth. Oh, that is foul, says Mum, squirming and looking away. Both are disgusted but also, I think, a little amused. They are not boxing people. They are lawyers.

Anyway, thats nothing compared to what happens next. Tyson turns slowly to his left and expectorates an unmistakeableeven on an old wood-panelled, standard-definition CRT televisionchunk of ear. He does it with the mild disgust of a flu patient coughing up an unexpectedly large piece of phlegm. I imagine it had a similar texture.