Review—Cut Time
Dec 26th, 2007 by Nut
This is a short book of essays about boxing. The author, who happens to teach English at Boston College (I had no idea), calls it “an education at the fights” because he is a professor and he organizes the essays to sort of “teach” readers what he’s learned about boxing and from boxing.
Unfortunately, you never forget that Rotella is a professor because he either brings it up or his language is a dead giveaway. Not a good thing when you’re trying to be entertained with stories about boxing (a great, entertaining subject) and you’re getting the professor vibe from the author. He says things like “divested him of his gloves” instead of “took his gloves off” and “relieved him of his title” instead of “took it.” There are many more examples I could give, but anyway.
My favorite pieces are “The Switch” and “Bidness.”
“Bidness” is a profile of an aging boxing legend, Larry Holmes. Rotella tracks Holmes as he retires and unretires from the sport that made him wealthy. Thing is, Holmes is over 50 years old. What makes the profile interesting is that Holmes doesn’t seem to love boxing the way you would expect a 50-year-old boxer to love it. He talks more about the financial aspects of it, how it made him relatively rich but probably should’ve made him even more money than it did. That boxing sort of took advantage of him and took him for granted.
This is something you’ll notice a lot of boxers feel, rightly or not. But Holmes is interesting because he is a boxer, not a guy with the power to knock everyone out, but an actual boxer.
“The Switch” is also really entertaining and it revolves around Kevin Kelley, another boxer way past his prime who was once a great fighter. What stands out about this essay is that the author is barely present in it. Which is great when compared to the other pieces in the book. His ego is pretty much missing in action, the whole focus is on the boxer and his story. Which is interesting because to me, one of the most interesting things about boxing is how important their egos are to their mental well being and success. Rotella seems to follow suit, even though he is a professor.
In all, the book is worth a read for those two pieces alone. The rest are kind of boring and don’t really bring boxing to life the way other books have done (like Rope Burns by FX Toole, which is where Million Dollar Baby came from and I highly recommend), but only part of it is the author. Some of the topics he has decided to tackle simply don’t have much to them and he can only be blamed for choosing them, not writing about them.
Coming up Next: Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
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