The Hardest Game : McIlvanney on Boxing

The Hardest Game : McIlvanney on Boxing
by Hugh McIlvanney

The Hardest Game : McIlvanney on Boxing
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Book Summary Information

Author: Hugh McIlvanney
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-11-21
ISBN: 0658021540
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Book Reviews of The Hardest Game : McIlvanney on Boxing

Book Review: The Sweet Science According to Hugh
Summary: 5 Stars

Through 90 compiled articles that span 30 years, McIlvanney takes us back to the time when the great prizefighters roamed the ring (Ali, Foreman, Frazier, Hagler, Leonard, Tyson, Lewis, Bowe, Holyfield). Also included are some memorable fights for top-ranked British fighters as well as his thoughts on the issues facing boxing then (and maybe even now) - ring deaths and the dearth of good heavyweights.

Like his subjects, McIlvanney pulls no punches. Here are some excerpts:
On the people who believed that Tyson carried Buster Mathis Jr. for a few rounds in one of his first fights after prison, he has this to say: "Anybody who believed that drivel about the set-up would lose an IQ competition with a plant".
On Riddick Bowe as a possible contender who could give the paroled Tyson much trouble: "...But Bowe is handicapped by his ability to out-eat a squad of navvies" [ellipsis mine].

The only limitation I have with this book is that the articles consist merely of preludes and postscripts to a fight. This would prove no problem when the article is read in the context of a newspaper where events are fresh on the minds of the readers but when read by people who weren't even born during the time of those fights, there's that sense of missing the plot felt by the reader.

Still, McIlvanney's insights are priceless. Quite interesting are his evaluation of the heavyweights. Though it's a given that Tyson had talent, he refused to see him as Ali's equal which was proved prescient. Holyfield was what he considered a "synthetic heavyweight" - a good matchup for the 5'11 Tyson but cannon fodder for taller heavies like Lewis or Bowe. His disdain for Lewis who seems to be always one good punch away from a knockout, is also quite evident in the text.

All in all, McIlvanney tackles the sweet science like no other writer and boxing as well as his other favorite sports (horse racing, football) should consider themselves blessed that such a talented writer patrols the beat.

Summary of The Hardest Game : McIlvanney on Boxing

Thirty years of ringside reporting from one of the world's most honored sportswriters

A living legend on both sides of the Atlantic, British sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney is best known for his incisive ringside boxing commentaries. Employing a writing style as muscular as it is graceful, McIlvanney never fails to infect the reader with his enthusiasm and sense of awe for the sport, while at the same time revealing the deeper truths at work in all such extreme expressions of human will and physical prowess. As one critic put it, "The genius of McIlvanney is his ability to magnify and precisely delineate those elements of sport that contain fundamental truths about the human condition."

First published in 1983 to great acclaim, this sport classic is reprinted with the addition of recent dispatches to span 30 years of ringside reporting. The Hardest Game includes McIlvanney's commentaries on such immortal bouts as "The Rumble in the Jungle" (Foreman vs. Ali, Zaire, 1974) and "The Thriller in Manila" (Ali vs. Frazier, Philippines, 1975), and the most memorable fights in the careers of Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, and others.

"Anyone who admires writing as muscular as it is graceful should buy this book." -- The Daily Telegraph

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