On the Chin

by Alex McClintock

  Boxers have always had an intense relationship with food. Modern nutrition has changed diets, but it hasn’t changed the obsession. Traditionally, red meat has been given an almost talismanic status. Rocky pounded those sides of beef, but perhaps the most extreme fictional example of boxing’s meat fetish is the 1909 Jack London story ‘A Piece of Steak’ in which aging pugilist Tom King loses a fight to a less-experienced opponent simply because he can’t afford a choice cut. ‘Ah, that piece of steak would have done it! He had lacked just that for the decisive blow, and he had lost. It was all because of the piece of steak,’ laments Tom at the fight’s end.

  Butchers did play an outsized role during the sport’s early days. Not only did they have access to nutritious high-protein foods, but prior to industrialisation butchery was a trade that required enormous upper body strength—which obviously came in handy in the ring. Blacksmiths and bakers also seem to have been overrepresented in the ranks of bare-knuckle boxers.

  Captain Barclay, a legendary walker but also a leading boxing trainer of the nineteenth century, was perhaps the first to cash in on the public’s fascination with what boxers eat. He had firm ideas about nutrition and training, which he shared in a popular book, Practical Advice on Training. He disdained bread, advised his boxers to eat grass-fed beef and championed the consumption of ‘all-potent water gruel—iron prince of health and strength’. Ahead of the blockbuster 1810 rematch between Englishman Tom Cribb, whom Barclay trained, and the black American Tom Molineaux, Barclay insisted Cribb lose more than two stone (about thirteen kilos), and reportedly went through his stools to ensure his nutrition was optimal.

  This sort of thing was considered a bit precious even in Cribb’s day, and nutrition-minded boxers were mercilessly sent up in Blackwood’s Magazine:

  In the morning, at four o’clock, a serving man doth enter my chamber, bringing me a cup containing one half quart of pig’s urine, which I do drink…At breakfast I doe commonly eat 12 goose’s eggs, dressed in whale’s oil, wherefrom I experience much good effects. For dinner I doe chiefly prefer a roasted cat, whereof the hair has first been burned by the fire. If it be stuffed with salted herrings, which are a good and pleasant fish, it will be better…

  You might think that with the advent of modern nutritional orthodoxy, the idiosyncrasies in boxers’ diets would begin to fade away, replaced by a bland devotion to protein shakes, broccoli and brown rice, but nothing could be further from the truth. As boxers from Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America have gained prominence on the global stage, they’ve brought their own super-foods with them.

  Junior welterweight Ruslan ‘The Siberian Rocky’ Provodnikov credited his superhuman strength and endurance to raw moose liver. And if the Blackwood’s writer had lived to see the 2009 HBO documentary in which Mexico’s Juan Manuel Marquez drinks twenty-five raw quail eggs cracked into a milkshake cup, washed down with a warm glass of his own urine, he might have given up on parody.

  Whether crazy or conventional, boxers’ diets are all consumed with one thing in mind: making weight. The entire sport is governed by the difficult-to-argue-with principle that one should pick on someone one’s own size. One of the great things about this system is that boxing is open to people of all body shapes, from Primo Carnera, the ‘Ambling Alp’ of the 1930s, who stood just shy of two metres tall and tipped the scale at 120 kilos, to recent flyweight virtuoso Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez, who would have spotted Primo a cheeky forty centimetres and seventy kilos.

  For most of the twentieth century, there were eight weight divisions everyone could agree on: flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight. Titles were contested in ‘junior’ categories as early as the 1920s and ’30s, and over the following decades more and more new weight classes were introduced between the existing ones, like extra layers in an already wobbly trifle. By the time the strawweight and cruiserweight divisions were established in the 1980s, the total number of weight categories had more than doubled, to seventeen—and there are still occasional calls to introduce a super heavyweight division.

  Whatever the merits of adding these extra weight classes, they have made the sport far harder for the average Joe to follow. I’ve even had people ask me whether junior welterweight—the division sandwiched between lightweight and welterweight—is for younger fighters. And just because things aren’t difficult enough, these weight classes are sometimes called different things in different parts of the world and by different sanctioning bodies. Take, for example, our friend Ricky Hatton, who, until he got his soul taken by Manny Pacquiao, was the lineal junior welterweight champion. Or should that be the light welterweight champion? Or perhaps the super lightweight champion? All three mean the same thing: whatever you called Hatton, he weighed 140 pounds (or 63.5 kilograms) on fight night.

  One of the arguments for finer distinctions between weight classes is that it allows boxers to fight closer to their natural weight, rather than having to bulk up or drastically diet down. In particular, it’s meant to stop boxers from dehydrating themselves in order to make weight so that they’ll have a size advantage over their opponent. However, this assumes that they won’t just dehydrate an equal amount to a new weight class, where, in theory, they’ll be comparatively even larger, assuming their opponent hasn’t done the same thing, which they almost always have: it’s a vicious cycle.

  Drained, skeletal-looking fighters are a fairly common sight at public weigh-ins, at least for the divisions below heavyweight, which has no upper limit. Boxers struggling to weigh in are sometimes forced to hit the scale nude to avoid being weighed down by their undies, while a haircut once saved Shawn Porter from missing the welterweight limit. Some fighters are notorious for drastic weight cuts: Hatton was affectionately known as Ricky Fatton for the way his weight ballooned between fights, forcing him to lose more than twenty kilograms at a time.

  Beyond dieting, boxers (as well as Greco-Roman wrestlers, MMA fighters and jockeys) use a variety of techniques to cut weight. Hard training helps, but many turn to manipulating the fluid levels in their bodies using sweat suits, saunas and ‘water diets’. These usually involve a week of controlled sodium intake and drinking lots of water before suddenly cutting f luids to zero, causing the body to dump all the water it has been retaining. When taken to extremes, these techniques are dangerous because they can leave boxers weakened even after they rehydrate. Dehydration may also affect the level of the cerebrospinal fluid the brain floats in, potentially making a drained boxer more vulnerable to serious brain injury—even death.

  Day-before weigh-ins were introduced to the professional sport in the mid-1980s to try to stop badly dehydrated fighters getting into the ring, but may have had the opposite effect: more time to recover allows for more drastic weight cuts and therefore greater dehydration.

  It’s a thorny issue, but there may be a solution: progressive weigh-ins before fights. Much as I hate to give boxing’s corrupt alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies credit for anything, the WBC has introduced such weigh-ins, requiring boxers to be within ten per cent of the required weight thirty days out from the fight and within five per cent seven days out. These weigh-ins seem much harder to game. But no doubt boxers and coaches will find a way.

  As the day of the fight drew closer, my anxiety manifested as organisational mania. The outcome of the bout might have been out of my control for the time being, but I was going to make damn sure everything else was firmly nailed down. I pestered Paul at every training session. Had he spoken to the promoter? Was my name definitely on the list? Was there any news on my opponent? Was it a problem if I didn’t have my registration book from Boxing NSW yet?

  ‘Yes, yes, no, no.’ He took my questioning with resignation and good humour.

  The same cannot be said of Paul Toweel who, aside from being the event’s promoter and the official in charge of registration at Boxing NSW, was the nephew of the Lebanese-South African bantamweight world cham
pion Vic Toweel, and a former Australian junior middleweight contender in his own right.

  In retrospect, it’s clear that the blame for us getting off on the wrong foot lay with me. Soon after Paul Miller and I had chosen a date, I set aside a day to organise getting my ‘blue book’—the passport-sized document that would be the official record of my career in the ring.

  First, I drove up to the local pharmacy to get a photo taken and I did my best to scowl at the cute Italian girl holding the camera, on the basis that a mean-looking headshot might lend me some credibility. She seemed unimpressed. (On my way out I picked up an extra tub of Vaseline, which helps prevent cuts by lubricating the skin, just in case Paul forgot his own on fight night.)

  Back at home, I set about printing out and filling in the various documents required to register as a boxer in the state of New South Wales. The Amateur Boxing Association’s website was archaic—I could pay with either a cheque or a money order, and the completed forms had to be faxed to head office—but it was the lack of a guaranteed processing time that really got to me.

  What if I achieved a state of exemplary preparedness, only to have my fight called off because someone at Boxing NSW hadn’t checked the fax machine? What if the cheque didn’t clear in time? What if a combined postal strike/natural disaster brought down the mail system?

  Actually, part of me thought that any of these scenarios would be fantastic, in that they would give me a plausible excuse to avoid the probably painful and certainly terrifying night I had signed myself up for, without the shame of having to back out. Still, sitting there at the computer, the sliver of doubt introduced by the possibility that registration would take longer than thirty days was even more unbearable than the previous certainty I would have to fight someone.

  There was only one thing for it. Having sent off my forms, I would get in touch with Paul Toweel directly to make sure my registration would be processed on time. Luckily for me, though unluckily for him, his number was listed right there on the website. I picked up the phone and dialled. I waited, a little nervous. I had never had anything to do with a boxing official before and didn’t know what to expect.

  The voice that picked up was deep, with a clipped South African accent that reminded me of Tony Greig.

  ‘Hi, this is Paul Toweel…’

  ‘Ah, hi Paul, this is Alex McClintock, I’m fighti…’

  ‘I’m not hyer to take your call roight now, please leave a message awfter the beep.’

  I sighed and hung up. Clearly I was channelling my fear of the actual fight into paranoia about the effectiveness of the New South Wales amateur boxing bureaucracy (which wasn’t entirely irrational, now that I know more about boxing administrators), but that didn’t make the anxiety any more bearable.

  So I decided to call again. And again. And again. How many times did I call Paul Toweel over the next three days? Over a dozen for sure. He never picked up. The calls either rang out or went straight to the answering machine. Sometimes, when it was the latter, I’d wait five minutes and call back, just to make sure he hadn’t been on another call. I learned his voicemail off by heart, and left an increasingly desperate series of messages. I acted, in short, like a crazed stalker.

  This was possibly why, when Paul Toweel finally did call back on the fourth day, I couldn’t help but perceive a note of irritation in his Highveld baritone.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said.

  ‘Um, I just wanted to check you got my registration forms?’ I replied weakly.

  ‘Ja, I got that from your messages. The book will be done when it’s done.’

  I was starting to feel a bit sheepish about the messages. ‘It’s just I need to get it in time to go to the doctor,’ I said.

  ‘Ja, I know. You can come and pick it up from the office next week. Ask for Polly.’

  ‘While you’re here, can I just check that Paul Miller has put my name down—Alex McClintock—for the next fight night at Souths Juniors? That’s M-little C-big C-L-I-N…’

  ‘Ja. He has. Ask Paul to call me if there’s anything else.’

  The line went dead.

  As important as the traditional list of things boxers should do in preparation for a fight (roadwork, sweat, eat well) is the list of things they should not do. Traditionally this second list has comprised two big-ticket items: drinking and sex.

  The former has a strong scientific basis: repeated studies have shown that alcohol is dehydrating, impairs performance for days after consumption, slows muscle recovery, and can make you gain weight. In modern boxing it’s standard practice for fighters to eschew alcohol altogether in the weeks and months leading up to a bout.

  Boxers have always had a complicated relationship with alcohol, though. In the bare-knuckle days the sport was virtually synonymous with the public houses in which the Fancy—the Georgian term for the fight crowd—congregated. It was quite typical for successful boxers to use their winnings to set up taverns, though a large number also died drunk in the gutter (which may have been less of a boxing thing than a reflection of the miserable condition of the English poor in general). Even during training, the consumption of ‘blue ruin’ (gin) and ‘heavy wet’ (beer) was common, though ale was thought to be the healthier. A. J. Liebling referenced Egan on the matter.

  Dutch Sam, the greatest little man of his age—he weighed 131 pounds and beat good men of 160—trained on Blue Ruin, but this practice was not endorsed by the Bimsteins of the time. In fact when, in 1814, at the age of thirty-nine, Sam succumbed in only thirty-eight rounds to Bill Nosworthy, the Baker, they all said if he had stuck to Heavy Wet he would not have had such a premature downfall.

  Liebling himself was reporting from the Neutral Corner, a bar near Stillman’s frequented by ex-fighters and managers. By that time, the 1950s, trainers administering brandy to help boxers recover during fights had gone out of fashion and everybody knew the demon drink was bad news.

  But knowing what’s good for you and actually doing it are two different things, especially for young men from hard-drinking working-class backgrounds suddenly in the possession of money. Too many fighters to name here have been undone by their fondness for a drink.

  Young Griffo, the turn-of-last-century featherweight who can stake a plausible claim to being Australia’s first world champion, used to fight tipsy, but had such incredible reflexes it really didn’t matter. At least until the drinking caught up with him. The skinny, square-headed bruiser grew up in the Sydney suburb of Millers Point, where he reportedly took bets from anyone who thought they could hit him while he stood on a handkerchief. No lesser authority than Nat Fleischer, the long-time editor of Ring magazine, once said: ‘What Shakespeare was to literature, what Napoleon was to military science, Griffo was to boxing.’

  Outweighed by New Zealander Dan Creedon by nearly twenty kilos in a fight the press dismissed as a mismatch, Griffo was only hit by one clean blow. His feat of dodging a spittoon thrown at the back of his head by rival Mysterious Billy Smith is even more celebrated—the sozzled Griffo spotted it f lying towards him in a bar-room mirror. But from the mid-1890s on he was in and out of prison, mostly on disorderly conduct charges. Once he nearly lost his hands to frostbite after falling asleep in a vacant lot, and he spent many of his later years as an alcoholic ward of the state. He died penniless in 1927 at the age of fifty-six.

  Just as sad is the story of Ron Richards, a skilled and hard-punching Indigenous boxer who held the Australian middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight titles during the 1930s and ’40s. The handsome and powerfully built counterpuncher never fought for a world title, but did defeat Gus Lesnevitch, who went on to become light heavyweight champion.

  Basically, Richards’ entire career was mismanaged; plans for overseas tours never came off, he fought too many inconsequential rematches and was embroiled in several scandals. After his wife died of tuberculosis he began drinking heavily; fellow fighter Ambrose Palmer told Peter Corris that Richards visited him the day before a fight, offer
ing to share two bottles of wine. (Corris notes that Palmer, a beer drinker ‘like a true Australian of the time’, was horrified.)

  With his personal life spiralling out of control, Richards’ performances in the ring became patchier and patchier, and by the mid 1940s he was retired, most often seen slumped over a bar in one of Darlinghurst’s pubs. Reduced to vagrancy, he was brutally bashed several times by bullies who wanted to be able to say, ‘I KO’d Ron Richards.’

  Eventually, under the sweeping discriminatory powers state governments had over Indigenous Australians, Richards was shipped back to his native Queensland, where he was confined to Palm Island Aboriginal Reservation (known to Indigenous people as a de facto penal settlement) for seventeen years. He was only permitted to leave in 1967, after finding out his estranged second wife was ill. He died soon after.

  Richards’ imprisonment for the mere fact of being Aboriginal makes his story particularly troubling, but the figure of the shambling ex-pug turned alcoholic is a familiar one in the history of boxing. One-time light heavyweight champ ‘Slapsie’ Maxie Rosenbloom even had a second career as a character actor in Hollywood specialising in the role. Much like dieting and eating disorders, the pattern of monastic training camps before fights and titanic benders after does not set boxers up to have a healthy relationship with alcohol.

  Corris, whose detective Cliff Hardy was an admirer of Griffo, includes the booze problem near the top of his long list of boxing’s flaws: ‘For too many men boxing was a sad mixture of alcohol and sweat—drinking to celebrate wins and ease losses, losing condition as a result, taking more punishment and drinking more.’

  •

  Alcohol is bad for a fighter, but according to superstition, sex might be even worse. ‘You can sweat out beer and you can sweat out whisky,’ said the great Sam Langford, ‘but you can’t sweat out women.’