Interview with Sergei Artemiev
By Ilya Galak
Brooklyn, NY
Boxing is big money. Boxing is fame. Boxing is a spectacle. That is why it attracts such overwhelming attention, while touching the interests of so many – bread and circuses. Perhaps, that is why not everything that happens in professional boxing finds adequate evaluation.
In fact, the events in the boxing ring should be evaluated much easier; as professional boxing – is life. Just like in life, it offers place for tragedy, as well as comedy. A boxer confined to a wheelchair is always a tragedy. A boxer opening his gown with no boxers underneath (as it happened with Timmy Larkin in 1942) is a comedy. A Boxing Hall of Fame champion drowned in his own bathtub, like Albert Chalky Wright – is a tragicomedy.
Just like in life, there is always a place for heroism, in boxing. A prospective boxer Craig Bodsianowsky got into a car accident, and had his leg amputated at the knee. His will power was extraordinary enough to help him come back to the ring, and keep fighting on a prosthetic leg, demonstrating his high class mastership.
There is also place for cowardice, as when a two-meter-tall Anjey Golota missed Mike Tyson’s punch and started running away from the ring in the middle of the fight.
Still, the same question has been bothering me for a while: why is that despite medical control and plenty of referees, the tragedies on the ring keep happening? Of course, it is often a referee’s fault by letting the winning boxer finish the ‘floating’ rival. Often it is the managers’ fault , pushing their boxer to fight an incommensurably stronger one, or while unprepared physically or technically.
A boxer has a right to refuse continuing the fight, but in theory only. People blaming boxers who become handicapped because they didn’t quit fighting in time, simply don’t understand the ring fighter’s psychology. Perhaps, here lies the answer to my question: the blame is on boxers’ character, will power, and courage.
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