I was surfing around my sports stuff today and came across this clip of legendary boxing great, Teofilo Stevenson.

I am a secret fan of boxing. I actually dig the shit out of it, but don’t often admit it because I am, after all, anti-violence etc. Also, lately boxing is not that interesting–there are no real personalities and boxing on the whole seems to be suffering from the same thing every other sport is suffering from: too many people thinking they can do that–and really nobody can. Diluted talent is what I think it’s called.

Watching this old clip made me remember why I love(d) boxing so much. There is beauty in the perfect hit, but even more so, there is humanity in the story of sports. Remember the olden days when the story of a person’s life mattered just as much as his/her successes (or lack of) in sports? And not in a “Tiger Woods is the cleanest and neatest non-Negro” sorta way–but in an earthy-never-gonna-keep-me down sorta way?

Images back during Teofilo Stevenson’s time were not carefully crafted by handlers–but pretty much all that the athlete had outside of his/her skill. The human being still sits underneath the crafted image these days (as Tiger Woods has shown us)–but for some reason we are addicted to the idea that our athletes are perfect beings that make no mistakes. Back in the old days, the mistakes and the situations we didn’t understand and the drama behind the scenes were what made us love them.

I wonder what caused that change. And I want the old days of sports to come back.