Ring Observer Boxing by Scoop Malinowski
By Scoop Malinowski
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.” – Seneca
Seneca, was a Roman stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature.
Born in 4 BC, Seneca wrote that only the prize fighter who has been bloodied, wounded, battered and bruised—during training and previous matches—can enter the boxing ring confident in his capabilities and about his chances of earning victory. The fighter who has avoided or been protected carefully from enduring punishing hits and strikes, protected from the risks of a hard fight… That is a fighter who is scared, fearful of the unknown And if they aren’t, they should be. Because they have no actual idea how they’re going to hold up.
This would explain Mayweather’s fierce reluctance to fight Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto in 2008, Antonio Margarito in 2005-2006, Paul Williams, Sergio Martinez, Gennady Golovkin at 154 and now the Pacquiao rematch.
Seneca’s assertion was that the boxer who has “seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist…who has been downed in body but not in spirit…”— they know approximately the limits of what they can take. Only they have a true and accurate sense of rhythms of a fight and what winning is going to require them to do. That sense comes from getting knocked around. That sense is only possible because of the hard times—the hard knocks—they’ve experienced before.
Protected fighters like Floyd, Gervonta Davis, Deontay Wilder, Adonis Stevenson know the protection has come at a cost, and they will never know their true capabilities, the limits of their capacity. But that is the modus operandi of boxing is now in America, the emphasis is on maximizing the prize, not the courageous, dangerous pursuit of true greatness and proving supremacy over all other fighters.
