Tag Archives: boxing

Escaping Fate Is Available for Pre-Order

The first book in Paradox (my epic sci-fi conspiracy thriller/sports/adventure series) goes live before Thanksgiving, but you can be the first on your block to lock it in now.

Pete Bedauern began his life as a latchkey kid in a run-down trailer park with a single mom, living on stale hot dog buns and bleak prospects. Those were the cards Fate had dealt him, and Pete was on his way to becoming an angry young man. Then Pete’s estranged uncle burst on the scene to punch Fate in the mouth.

Uncle Si is scarred inside and out; he’s a hard drinker; painfully blunt; a little mysterious and maybe even scary, but takes an interest in his nephew that Pete’s father never took. Most of Uncle Si’s life is a secret, but through the part of it he shares, Pete undergoes a master course on life, love, and full-contact sports.

As it turns out, Uncle Si not only has tons of money, multiple businesses, and a fleet of fast cars, he also owns a time machine.

Paradox is one good-hearted-but-alienated boy’s odyssey into manhood, and Escaping Fate is the opening leg of that journey. Before it’s complete, Pete will learn the guarded secrets of history, take on a pan-continuum conspiracy, contend for a world championship, crack the code for success with women…and even save the world.

Well, one world, maybe…

Book II in the Paradox series (Rebooting Fate) might be ready by Christmas. They’re all written–just need some tweaking before they’re  ready for prime time.

Escaping Fate is for sale on Amazon, as well as the other e-book stores through this universal book link. Paperback editions will be coming along soon. Thanks to all my readers for your support over the years, and for staying loyal during my eight-year hiatus which is thankfully now coming to an end.

Paradox Chapter 14: Fiat Currency and the Dangers of Resounding Success

We took a tour of New Orleans, collecting from the various bookies. Each one paid us $400 in then-current denominations. With a net of $300 from each bet, we now had a couple thousand more than what we’d brought there.

We found our horseless coach where we’d left it, climbed in and shot a warp back to the hangar at BH Station. As we got out, Uncle Si handed me the stack of money and said, “And that’s one way to get yourself some seed money.”

I flipped through the stack of bills, unbelieving.

“You could take that stake right there, buy up a bunch of real estate in Florida, and you’ll be a millionaire in the post-Disneyworld USA.”

As I examined one of the bills, I was reminded of what had bothered me before. “Uncle SI, why does it say, ‘the United States will pay to the bearer $100?’ If you’re the bearer, you already have $100. What’s gonna happen—they just trade you this hundred for another one?”

He chuckled and tapped his temple. “You’re sharp, Sprout. It’s good you notice these things, and question them. You should always be that way.”

I followed him back into the cool underground labrynthe and he explained on the way. He began by producing a bill from his own wallet and handing it to me.

“Compare those two,” he said. “Aside from the denomination and the design, what else is different?”

After I pointed out a few superficial differences he shook his head, made a cutting gesture, then pointed at the bottom of my bill.

“What does that say?”

“United States Note,” I replied.

Now he pointed toward the bottom of the bill he’d pulled from his wallet. “How about that one?”

“Federal Reserve Note,” I read, aloud.

He took his note back. “You don’t see anything on here about paying the bearer anything, either.” He flopped it around a bit before putting it back in his wallet. “Just some vague statement about it representing legal tender for all debts, public or private. This is what’s known as ‘fiat’ currency. It has no worth whatsoever, beyond durable fire kindling. It’s propped up only by assumptions, and the credibility of a government.”

He now pointed to my stack of money. “That’s not real money, either. It’s paper. The difference is: it doesn’t pretend to be real. Before it was replaced by funny money, you could take it to a bank and exchange it for real money—the amount of money printed on the note.”

I scratched my head. “Okay…then what is real money?”

“Gold or silver. That’s what a government backs paper currency with, if it’s honest, and not trying to screw the people. At your age it’s probably too much of a complicated, boring mess to be of much importance to you. But we’ll talk about it more when you’re older. Ultimately, the fate of the USA was settled by this very issue.”

***

We turned in our period clothing at the wardrobe and dressed comfortably again. Carmen fixed a meal for us, then we relaxed in the living room.

“So tell me what you learned on our field trip,” my uncle said.

“Well,” I said, “if you can travel through time, that means you know the future when you’re at earlier points in the time stream. You can make easy money when you know about what hasn’t happened yet.”

“Well said, Sprout. And now you know one of many reasons why history is important for you to know.”

“How many times had you seen that fight?”

“That was my first time.”

“B-but…” I stammered. “How…?”

“I’ve studied history,” he said, with a smirk. “I knew that Corbett won that fight.”

“But you knew more than that,” I protested. “A lot more. You were predicting what would happen, and when.”

He tapped his temple again—obviously one of his most common gestures. “Pattern recognition. I’ve got it. You’ve got it, too. That’s one reason why television bores you so much.”

“Especially sitcoms,” I said, reacting to his remark without considering how he knew this about me (we’d never talked about TV before).

“As you get older, it’ll help you out when you apply it to stuff beyond television, too. Important stuff.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, I’ve read a little about Sullivan, and a little about Corbett. Enough to make some deductions. The other part is, I know about fighting, and fighters. I’ve seen a whole lot of fights in my life. I’ve been in a few. That’s gonna become part of your training—watching fights. The more you do it, the more you’ll learn. When I first started, I didn’t understand much. I couldn’t tell when a man was hurt. I assumed the guy with the best physique was stronger and therefore would win. I didn’t understand why clinching was so effective. Actual real-life knockout punches didn’t look that impressive to me…partly because in Hollywood movies, guys get hit with freight train haymakers all the time…with bare knuckles, no less…and it hardly fazes them, unless some 98 pound chick throws it. Or unless the plot calls for it”

He opened a dark bottle of something and took a swig. “So what else?”

I replayed the “field trip” in my mind, briefly. “People couldn’t have been more wrong about the matchup,” I said. “It was completely backwards from how they thought it would go.”

He chuckled and leaned back in his seat, gaze roaming across the ceiling for a moment. “So much for ‘experts’—then and now. There’s some psychological factors at work, here. It can give you clues about human nature; and you can extrapolate from there into other situations. The sports writers who wrote all those articles you read? They probably saw Sullivan in action back when he was young, in shape, and hungry.”

“He sure didn’t look hungry when I saw him,” I said.

“That’s not the kind of hunger I’m talking about,” he said. “It has nothing to do with food. Once upon a time, Sullivan was hungry…probably starving…to prove himself. To make his mark in the world. To become a world champion. Then to stay champion. It made him very dangerous. He was a wild brawler, but was probably pretty good back in the day, relative to his contemporaries in the game. Remember that boxing was mostly illegal up until the fight we just saw, so there were social disincentives to get involved in it at all. There might have been somebody better during his own time—but if so, they didn’t fight him. Hell, Corbett himself might not have been able to keep out of range from the young, hungry John L. Sullivan.

“Anyway, that’s the Sullivan people remembered. When he wasn’t in a fight…and he’d been inactive for four years when he met Corbett…it was like he was invisible to the public at large. They didn’t realize he was becoming an alcoholic couch potato. They still remembered him as he was in his prime, and that’s who they expected to see again.

“In fact, they had probably exaggerated their own memories until he was better in their minds than he actually had been. There were 10,000 men in the audience, and most of them had never seen him fight before. All they knew about him was from exaggerated stories they’d heard—second or third-hand hearsay in a lot of cases, embellished at every telling. That’s why so many people assumed he was invincible.”

I nodded. This made sense, when I considered it this way.

“That sort of thing is a danger for everybody, to some extent,” he went on. “If you’re not careful, you’ll add to or take away from memories, until the actual truth is replaced by some more pleasing, or more convenient, modified version. Then you cling to your romanticized truth, and even if you’re reminded of the actual truth now and then, you’ve grown to like your version better, so you hang on to it and dismiss whatever disagrees.”

“That’s silly,” I said, laughing.

He shrugged. “Human nature is often silly. And what I just described is mild. Some people keep twisting and twisting the original data in their mind until they fall off the deep end. They can’t accept reality anymore because this fantasy they’ve concocted becomes their reality. And what’s even crazier is that groups of people…sometimes in the millions…can all adopt the same basic fantasy, insisting that it is truth and that their fantasy is the actual reality.”

I hadn’t yet witnessed this. Without experience or context, I couldn’t imagine it. I was sure Uncle Si knew what he was talking about, but the phenomenon had no more meaning or import to me than did the “West Coast Offense” during my life before picking up a football magazine in my mother’s favorite hair salon.

“What else?” he asked.

“What you’ve been teaching me about sudden violence,” I said, “it really works. It worked for me against the kids in the park. It worked for you against the guy with the handlebar mustache.”

He waved, as if shooing a fly. “That clown was no threat. Except to our ability to watch the bout. What else?”

“About Sullivan and Corbett?”

“Well, yeah. For starters. I’ll give you something to think about: what you saw there in New Orleans is the culmination of a pattern that has happened over and over again, and probably always will.”

I leaned forward and rested my chin on my fist.

“You see this especially in the Heavyweight Division of professional boxing,” he said. “Western boxing, that is. Some brawler comes along, and he’s a wrecking machine. He doesn’t just score knockouts on his way up the ranks, but he ends careers. His victories are so devastating, the victims are psychologically damaged afterwards. They’re beat so bad, it shakes their confidence. They’re never good enough to seriously contend again after a beat down from the Bad Boy. So finally, he slugs his way to the top. He is crowned champ, and in such convincing fashion that people assume he’s invincible. Including himself, sometimes.

“But then, now that he’s on top he gets complacent. Maybe because he believes the hype about himself, but also because there are no serious challengers now. None of the potential contenders have survived the mauling he dished out on his bloody climb to the top. So guess what happens?”

“He stops training?”

Si nodded, pleased with my answer. “Sure—in many cases. Or he stops taking his training seriously. Bottom line is, he gets soft physically at exactly the same time his ego goes out of control. What does overconfidence do?”

I recited what he taught me: “It leads to arrogance. Arrogance leads to recklessness. And recklessness leads to defeat.”

“That’s my man, Sprout. So while the Bad Boy is on his ego trip, up comes some fresh new guy, who wasn’t a victim of the bad boy’s rampage…maybe he hadn’t turned pro yet; was too young; inexperienced; whatever. But he climbs up the human rubble left over from that rampage, and next thing you know, he’s in position for a title bid.”

“And nobody takes him seriously?”

“Of course not! Not in a fight against the Bad Boy. The Bad Boy is invincible!”

I laughed at this.

He knocked back another shot of booze. “Let’s call this guy ‘the Challenger.’ Y’know, I can think of one time when he wasn’t even all that good, but the result was the same.”

“Big upset? New champion?”

He nodded. “That’s right. Every single time. Well…I take that back. There’s one exception in the history of western boxing: Marciano. The Rock never got complacent; never slacked off on his training; never stepped through the ropes without bad intentions…until retiring undefeated as a professional. And he stayed retired.”

“I think I’ve heard of him,” I said.

“But like I said: the Rock is the exception. The only exception to this pattern.”

“So the same thing happened to Corbett?” I asked.

He grimaced. “Not exactly. Corbett was never a wrecking machine, so he doesn’t fit the pattern, anyway. Still…there are similarities. After he became champ, he got lazy. Starred in a Broadway play about himself instead of defending his title.”

“And along came the Challenger!” I crowed, proud of how clairvoyant I was.

“Bob Fitzsimmons,” my uncle said, nodding. “A blacksmith by trade, so he had pretty good upper body strength. Looked like a heavyweight from the waist up, but skinny little birdie legs. He was actually a middleweight, if memory serves. Tough son of a bitch, too, I’m guessing.

“So he gets a title shot. Gentleman Jim isn’t at his best, but he hasn’t fallen apart, either. I forget how many rounds they go, and Corbett just makes him look stupid. But Fitz isn’t out of shape and over the hill like Sullivan was. He’s game, and waits for his puncher’s chance.”

“I guess he got it,” I surmised.

“Yup. And a body shot, at that. Sports wags called it ‘The Battle of the Solar Plexus.’ Knocked the wind out of Corbett. Gentleman Jim couldn’t beat the count. New champ.”

“The solar plexus—where’s that?”

He reached over and gently pushed his fist against the center of my torso just under the sternum.

“Pit of the stomach. You take a big shot there, it can paralyze you for a minute or so. It’s one of those nerve centers I’ll teach you about down the road. There’s another one in your ass. Anybody ever literally kicks your ass…I mean between the cheeks and up into the hind part of your crotch…it hurts like a blind mother. I mean pain like high voltage chainsaws ripping all through your body.”

I knew what he was talking about. Allyson had kicked me there when I was six years old. The pain was crippling. She made fun of me for crying, but I couldn’t stop.

“So what else did you learn?” he asked.

I thought some more before answering. “Corbett’s technique had flaws. His punches were sloppy—lousy form, and sometimes he telegraphed, too. It’s just that Sullivan couldn’t slip or block them, anyway.”

“So what does that teach you?” He fixed me with a piercing gaze.

“Perfection isn’t necessary to win,” I said. “Sometimes mediocrity is enough.”

He scared me by jumping to his feet and whooping, his bottle held high over his head. “Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder! Outstanding!”

Carmen entered the room to see what all the noise was about. He pulled her into an embrace and covered her mouth with his. I turned away as they seemed to be trying to eat each other. But then he pulled away, Carmen’s lipstick now smeared all around his mouth, and pointed at me. “That is one sharp young man, right there! What’re we gonna do with him?”

What he would do with me, it turned out, was test me to see if I could put what I knew to use.

 

Paradox Chapter 13: How to Make Money With a Time Machine

There were many times when I would ask a question, that Uncle Si would use as an opportunity to teach me something, rather than just answer directly. There are few better examples than when I asked him how he became so rich.

He stopped what he was doing right then, and ushered me into a computer lab. Sitting down facing the monitor, he said, “Knowledge is power. You can turn that knowledge…that power…into money, then use your knowledge to make it grow.”

The computers resembled the ones I’d seen in computer stores, and in the office at school, but they seemed to be much faster, and capable of a lot more. Physically, the most noticeable difference was the monitors. The pictures on the screen seemed sharper, but also, the screens were flat and the entire monitor was only about the size of a laptop.

He brought up an image of a $100 bill on the screen. Not that I’d seen any $100 bills in real life before, but it looked very odd to me. On closer scrutiny, I noticed a printing date from 1880 and the unfamiliar phrase, “This note is legal tender for 100 dollars,” and “United States will pay to bearer 100 dollars.”

I knew absolutely nothing about money, but something struck me as paradoxical about this.

Before I could ponder it much, Uncle Si continued his impromptu lesson.

“Now, one way to get your initial stake is to jump a warp back to whenever, hire yourself out for an odd job…it was a lot easier to do in years gone by…and simply earn some cash. But I’m gonna help you get started quicker.”

He used a keyboard and mouse to choose a few options, then selected “print.”

One printer in a row of several came to life. After a few minutes, it shoved out a green rectangle. He grabbed it, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, wadded it into a ball, straightened it back out, and handed it to me. I took it and, upon feeling it, immediately noticed the counterfeit bill had not been printed on normal paper. It was special, sturdy paper that felt like the real thing. He let me keep it, then printed some more bills.

He led me to a large chamber he called “the wardrobe.” I would have called it “the costume shop.” He picked out some clothes, disappeared into a dressing room, and emerged dressed like a wealthy cowboy. His sunglasses were gone—replaced by old-fashioned round spectacles. It was harder finding duds for me. Everything he had was too big for me, but with some alterations by a skilled seamstress he paged over the intercom, who used a very modern, computer-controlled sewing machine, I soon had a pair of farmer’s bib overalls, and a simple cotton shirt to wear. Uncle Si plucked a straw hat off a rack and dropped it on my head.

We took an elevator up into a hangar that I hadn’t seen inside before. We climbed into a fancy horse-drawn coach…only there were no horses. I inquired about this and Uncle Si simply replied that we could always acquire horses where we were going, if we needed them.

We took seats. He opened a hidden panel in the silk-covered inner wall of the coach, adjusting controls. Soon I felt the overwhelming sensations that told me we were shooting a warp.

***

When we climbed out of the coach it was night time. Our coach was parked near a horse livery in a city with no electricity and a whole lot of all-wooden buildings.

“Still got the C-notes?” he asked, walking toward a dark alley.

By the way he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together again, I inferred he was speaking about the counterfeit $100 bills. “Yeah. Are we in 1880?”

He shook his head. “New Orleans, September Six, 1892. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. I’m your father. We’re visiting from Texas.”

The dark alley fed out into a dirt street illuminated by lanterns on poles. It was quite a scene. Other pedestrians were out, and the way they were dressed made me stare.

Uncle Si checked an old-fashioned pocket watch ever so often, when nobody else was nearby. On one such occasion, I noticed a glow coming from the watch. Next time he checked it, I maneuvered around behind him to get a look. On the face of the watch was an LED display with a time readout and a digital map.

He found a small office annexed onto a wooden warehouse building, and ducked inside. We took our hats off inside the door, because according to him it was impolite to keep them on indoors in this culture. A fat bald man with jewelry on his hands asked what our business was.

Uncle Si waved his hat toward me and, in a western drawl, said, “Junior here just come into an inheritance. Dang fool kid wants to bet it on Corbett for tomorrow. I wasn’t gonna allow it, but I reckon it might teach him a lesson he’ll never forget.”

“On Corbett?” the fat man asked, as if not sure he’d heard correctly. “How much?”

Uncle Si gestured that I should hand him a phony hundred. I did.

The fat man took it from me, examined it and whistled. “That’s an expensive lesson.”

“Do it,” Uncle Si insisted. “If’n he learns it now, he’ll be less likely to make bigger fool mistakes once he owns the ranch.”

The fat man shrugged and happily pocketed the money. “Well, you are gettin’ four-to-one. Should Corbett win, you stand to make a tidy sum.”

Uncle Si and the fat man burst out laughing in unison.

Still snickering, the fat man handed me a newspaper. “Read the sports page, boy. Next time, at least get informed before your money burns a hole through your pocket.”

We visited several different bookies that night, Uncle Si performing variations on this same skit. We also collected more publications—newspapers, “hand bills,” and a black-and-white magazine with crude illustrations sprinkled through the text with a title on the cover that said: “Police Gazette.”

We checked into a hotel and Uncle Si told me, “Well, you got plenty to read tonight. I’ll be back.”

So I read the small stack of literature we had gathered.

There was to be a “boxing match” tomorrow—a heavyweight championship under “Queensbury Rules.” Only after finishing a few different publications did I figure out that meant boxing gloves would be worn. Evidently “bare-knuckle” boxing was a thing.

The champion was a man called “The Boston Strong Boy.” John L. Sullivan was his name, and he was really something. He had fought both with gloves and bare-knuckle. He had knocked out 500 men, and sometimes toured the country offering huge (for the time) cash prizes to anyone who could last four rounds with him. But few men even lasted one round with this savage bull of a man. He himself had never been beaten. He was strong, and tough, but he also must have had incredible endurance: one fight lasted 39 rounds, and in his most recent match, he knocked his opponent out in the 75th round!

Just from what I’d learned about fighting so far…including what boxing I’d seen on TV…I knew that you had to be incredibly tough, with tremendous stamina just to last 12 rounds, wearing 12-16 ounce gloves.

In the fight tomorrow, the gloves would be five ounces.

There were descriptions of the horrific damage inflicted on Sullivan’s victims throughout his career: broken jaws; broken ribs; opponents knocked through the ropes; intervention by the police to keep him from killing other men inside the ring.

Sullivan’s challenger was a bank clerk who went by the name of “Gentleman Jim” Corbett. He was outweighed by 25 pounds, and wasn’t nearly as strong as the Boston Strong Boy. Experts predicted he would be knocked out by the third round—though some imagined it was possible he might last into the seventh.

I didn’t understand what lesson I was supposed to be learning from this. I would never have bet on this fight if I hadn’t been told to. I was naturally tight with money anyway, never having much of it available at any given time. At least this was just counterfeit cash.

There were pictures of Sullivan in the magazine, and he did kind of look intimidating—though from the written accounts I half-expected him to stand eight feet tall and be built like the Incredible Hulk. He wasn’t nearly as tall or muscular as Uncle Si, but he had a big handlebar mustache and looked mean. His pose confused me though. His stance wasn’t very good, and his guard was horrible. It looked like both his arms were cocked to throw uppercuts. He looked wide open—like he was so tough that he didn’t care if you could hit him.

 

Uncle Si returned, nursing a bottle of vodka, and sat down on his bed, facing me. “Did you read about John L. Sullivan?” he asked. His speech was a little more forceful than normal; and his complexion kind of ruddy. This was normal when he drank.

I nodded.

“What do you think?”

“He sounds invincible,” I said. “I don’t think this Corbett guy stands a chance. Did you really intend for me to blow all those hundreds on bets for him?”

Ignoring my question, he took another swig from the bottle. “Remember. Remember everything you know right now. Okay?”

***

The next day we walked through the city to a place called The Olympic Club—an impressive arena with a boxing ring set up in the middle of acres of folding chairs inside a slapdash “auditorium” with no floor. There were thousands and thousands of men there, gathered around. I marveled at how heavily they dressed in such humid heat: nearly all of them were in suits, with long-sleeve shirts and vests under their jackets. And they all came inside wearing hats—some were top hats; some looked like the kind that restaurant in Los Angeles must have been modeled after (Uncle Si said they were called “bowlers” in Britain but “derbies” in America). Somehow Uncle Si had reserved ringside seats for us.

My eyes stung from all the tobacco smoke, and breathing was a struggle. Men pressed in around us from every side, and I was jostled probably three times every second for a while. An announcer finally stepped into the ring and began to project his voice into the multitude, hyping the coming fight and encouraging spectators to sit down so those behind them could see. When he mentioned “timed rounds of exactly three minutes—” I turned to Uncle Si. “Does he think we’re ignorant?”

My uncle shook his head, taking a swig from a metal hip flask, just as many other men were doing—mostly those who weren’t smoking pipes or cigars. “The sport of boxing hasn’t settled on universal rules. In most bouts up until now, a round lasted until somebody got knocked down, however long that took. Three-minute rounds is a new concept here.”

“Jeez,” I said.

“Yeah. Sullivan suffered so much damage in his last title defense, he decided he would only fight according to Queensbury Rules thereafter. Set a historic precedent, unbeknownst to him. Boxing is the way we know it because of Sullivan, when you think about it.”

I pondered how one person’s personal decision, made for whatever reason, could affect millions of people for centuries to come.

A man with a mustache just like the one Sullivan had in the picture was standing next to us. He narrowed his eyes while staring at us—perhaps because we spoke of the future as if we knew it, and the present as if it had already happened. Uncle Si ignored him.

The boxers were introduced and stepped through the ropes along with their “seconds”—their corner men. Both competitors wore tight pants with leather boots, but were bare from the waist up. Corbett was lean, like he’d faithfully stuck to his roadwork for years. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw “The Boston Strong Boy.” He didn’t resemble an athlete of any type—much less a legendary heavyweight champion.

“That’s Sullivan?” I blurted. “What a slob! He looks like 300 pounds of chewed bubblegum!”

It couldn’t be him. This flabby butterball was clean-shaven, and didn’t even resemble the Sullivan in the picture I’d seen.

Handlebar Mustache, next to us, flashed me a dirty look.

Uncle Si said, “Well, first of all, he’s over the hill. You can counteract Father Time if you’re fanatic about your conditioning. But he hasn’t been training; hasn’t defended his title in four years. He’s a hard-drinking over-eater who indulges himself too much—especially for somebody who has to fight a younger, faster opponent.”

I couldn’t shake the hype from all the sports writers. “But Corbett is a bank clerk who can’t take a punch!”

“Corbett is one of the very first ‘scientific’ boxers,” Uncle Si said. “He’s a pioneer of what Muhammed Ali will one day call ‘the sweet science.’ He’s got a trainer who fought the champ before; he trains with discipline; and studies his opponents before he fights them.”

The announcer finally finished bellowing to the crowd, then had his rules talk with the two boxers.

The bell rang.

Their stances weren’t much better than the awkward pose I’d seen in the Police Gazette. Sullivan kept his right cocked, but his left extended almost straight down to his left thigh, while he stalked the smaller man flat-footed. Corbett actually moved pretty well, but he had no guard whatsoever—both hands hung down around his waist.

And speaking of hands, I was dumbfounded by the gloves worn. Five ounce gloves looked like little more than mittens—not much of an improvement over bare knuckles, I would guess.

Sullivan charged like a drunken bull. Though Corbett was obviously agile, for some reason he allowed the ponderous old champion to back him into a corner. Uncle Si leaned forward with interest, as did most of the men around us.

With malice in his eyes, Sullivan wound up and threw a haymaker. He caught nothing but air. Corbett escaped while the blow was just building up steam. The smaller, quicker boxer grinned as he danced away. Before the round was over, Corbett backed into a different corner. Again, Sullivan loaded up for a big shot. Again his wild roundhouse missed as the grinning Corbett danced away untouched.

Corbett hadn’t even thrown a punch. He seemed interested only in making Sullivan look stupid. The crowd began to boo.

By the end of the second round Sullivan had yet to land a punch, and Corbett still hadn’t thrown one. However, Corbett had backed into all four corners. He ducked, dodged and danced out of harm’s way before Sullivan could tag him.

Uncle Si tapped my chest with the back of his hand. “You see that?”

“What?” I asked.

“Every time Sullivan loads up to swing that right…as if he’s not telegraphing bad enough already…he slaps his thigh with his left hand.”

“What’s that about? I asked.

“Not sure.”

Sure enough: next time Sullivan wound up for a haymaker, he slapped his thigh when he threw it.

“See it that time?”

I nodded.

“Never, ever a good idea to be so predictable. I’d be real surprised if Corbett hasn’t noticed it.”

The crowd was turning ugly fast—booing and jeering. At first I assumed this was due to the champion’s unprepared condition and dismal performance. But their contempt was aimed at Gentleman Jim for running away. At one point, Corbett turned away from Sullivan, faced an ocean of his hecklers and waved both hands at them. “Wait a while,” he said with a grin, “you’ll see a fight!”

It occurred to me that neither man had a mouthpiece. They must not have been invented yet.

In Round Three, Corbett backed into a corner yet again. Sullivan looked determined not to let his quarry escape this time, and actually refrained from slapping his thigh before launching that freight train of a right roundhouse. But before he could get off, Corbett suddenly came to life. He stepped into a left hand that landed flush in Sullivan’s face, and followed up with a flurry that got the champion moving backwards for the first time.

Corbett peppered him with shots from both hands, and before I knew it, Sullivan was the one trapped in a corner.

Uncle Si laughed out loud and drank from his flask. Bedlam broke out in the audience. The din of yelling voices was deafening. Men waved their hats, or stripped off jackets and swung them in circles by the sleeves. Judging by all the hanging jaws, this turn of events was a shock to most.

When the bell rang, blood was gushing from Sullivan’s nose.

“Corbett’s ready to go to work, now,” Uncle Si said. “He still might play with his food a bit, but he’s measured his man and he’s ready to start building the coffin.”

Handlebar Mustache glared at my uncle, who just tossed back a pull from the flask.

At the start of round four, an infuriated Sullivan charged out in pursuit of Corbett again, hell-bent on avenging his broken nose. But the elusive boxer sidestepped and danced out of harm’s way time and again. I was sure I could feel Sullivan’s frustration.

The fight progressed according to a pattern of Sullivan charging and Corbett retreating, but periodically surprising the champion with flurries and counterpunches.

“Wow—Corbett’s footwork is really good for his time,” Uncle Si observed. “He’s riding circles around John L with that bicycle.”

“I guess it should have been four-to-one for Corbett,” I admitted. “Everyone had it backwards: he’s the invincible one.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Uncle Si said, with a disdainful sneer. “Footwork is the foundation, but you can’t neglect the other stuff. Both these guys have terrible form. Granted: Corbett doesn’t have to fight a perfect or even textbook bout here. But still…look at those punches.”

I studied Corbett with a new focus for a bit. His guard was still completely down. When he did flick out punches, they were stiff-armed, windmill-style blows that an uncoordinated child would throw. The fact that they were bedeviling Sullivan made them no less ugly.

“You’re right,” I said.

He shrugged. “He doesn’t have to be great to be the better man today. But almost any contender from a more refined era would beat him. Jack Johnson would give him fits. Gene Tunney would take him apart. Even Max Baer would make him pay for his sloppiness.”

Evidently, Handlebar Mustache had heard enough.

He glared at Uncle Si, saying, “You must be a sports writer or somethin’. Is that what you are, cowboy?”

Uncle SI didn’t reply, but screwed the cap back on his flask and slipped it in his pocket.

“Just who do you think you are, anyway?” Handlebar Mustache demanded. “You must figure yourself a fight expert. But I’m gettin’ tired a’ hearin’ all this malarky from you and your hayseed boy.”

“At ease, shitbag,” my uncle said, simply, still watching the match.

“What’d you call me?” Handlebar Mustache obviously didn’t intend to wait for a verbal answer to his question. He lurched to his feet, tore off his hat, peeled out of his jacket and vest with angry, jerking movements.

I barely caught the movement of Uncle Si’s hands as he shot up from his chair. His left blurred up to land open-handed on the man’s face with a loud smack. It caught the guy on the mouth, and up into the bottom of the nose. Handlebar Mustache staggered back from the humiliating slap, then his head snapped back from the follow-up right that caught him on the jaw.

As Handlebar blinked and swayed, Uncle Si grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around and tripped him forward to fall on his hands and knees.

The men surrounding us had diverted their attention from the bout to watch this much more decisive action. Handlebar pushed himself up off the ground, retrieved his vest, dug through the pockets, then came at Uncle Si with a knife. I was transfixed by the economy of movement that followed. Uncle Si slapped the man’s knife hand from the outside, pushing it onto a trajectory which would widely miss the target. Shuffling forward a step, his hand now gripping Handlebar’s wrist, Uncle Si yanked hard on the captive arm while pivoting his upper body, driving his elbow into the man’s temple with all the torque of his shoulders behind the blow. In the same motion of the natural recoil of a delivered strike, Uncle Si grabbed a fist full of hair, pulling the man’s battered head forward and down, as he sprang into the air and drove his knee up to meet the man’s face.

Handlebar fell backwards and lay still with his eyes rolled up in his head, blood leaking from his lips and nose. It didn’t look like he’d be pulling himself to his feet any time soon.

Uncle Si produced his flask again, took a drink, and with a wicked smile asked, “Anybody else want to stick his nose in my business?”

There were no challenges from the onlookers. A couple of them lifted Handlebar off the floor and carried him away through the crowd.

Uncle Si glanced at me. “I’d advise against using a knife in close combat. But if, for some reason, you ever have to use one in self-defense, don’t lead with it.”

He went back to watching the match. Eventually, so did I.

It seemed to me that Corbett’s style was more about timing than technique. He kept one step ahead of the champion, but timed his movements to evade attacks when Sullivan made a sudden rush to close the distance. Nearly every offensive effort from Sullivan instigated a combination of punches from Corbett to the head and body. Corbett’s punches still looked sloppy, but they landed with a high degree of accuracy.

“See the way he’s working the body?” Uncle Si asked me, after Corbett had thrown a double hook to the ribs.

I nodded.

“That can take the wind out of even a fighter who’s in shape. You’re gonna see Sullivan slow way down if this keeps up.”

It did keep up, and Sullivan slowed down.

My mood changed from one of astonishment that the immortal, invincible John L. Sullivan could be so badly outfought, to a sickening sadness at how he was being systematically dismantled. A large portion of the crowd, however, had a markedly different reaction. Their enthusiasm for destruction never waned—they simply switched loyalty from Sullivan to Corbett. Passion, when coupled with a fickle nature, is frightening.

By the 14th round, Corbett was landing almost at will, and Sullivan’s offensive efforts were getting fewer and farther between.

“Corbett’s just playing with him, now,” Uncle Si remarked.

“Seems to me Corbett could finish him now,” I said.

“But he’s smart, and being methodical. Sullivan’s still got a puncher’s chance, even though his best chance evaporated after the first couple rounds were done. You never want to get careless, especially with a dangerous puncher. Corbett’s gonna wear him down with attrition until there’s no risk.”

The match wasn’t even competitive. After that, I lost any hope that it might be.

During Round 20, Uncle Si looked a little disgusted as he said, “Corbett needs to quit playing around and put him out of his misery. This is just embarrassing.”

Sullivan’s face was covered with angry welts. There were red marks all over his torso as well. He wasn’t even throwing punches anymore. As he gasped for breath, his primary concern seemed to be simply remaining on his feet.

“Remember this,” Uncle Si said. “There’s a lot of principles at work here that have application outside of this match. Sullivan’s not used to being on defense…so he’s got no defense. He doesn’t know how to fight going backwards, and he’s got no choice but to go backwards now. He’s hurt, and completely out of gas, too. He’s helpless.”

“Why doesn’t he throw in the towel?” I asked.

“Pride.”

The crowd, now tired of the matador-and-exhausted-bull show, was hissing and jeering again.

***

In Round 21, Corbett must have decided it was now safe to let it all hang out. He landed a left hook to the head with an audible smack that reverberated through the noisy, smoke-filled building. The champion staggered backwards, and Corbett pursued, stinging him with jabs and crosses as if his fists were a swarm of bees.

Sullivan backed up to the ropes and reached out clumsily, groping for the top one to use as an anchor and keep his feet. As he tried, and failed, to grab the rope, Corbett loaded up for the coup de grace. Why not? There was no danger anymore.

Corbett caught him right on the button with a freight-train of a right hand…one of those Hollywood haymakers you’d never get away with on a target that wasn’t already out on his feet.

Sullivan’s knees buckled. He toppled over and hit the canvas with a thud, then rolled over on his back. The place went crazy. Everyone was on their feet, yelling.

I couldn’t hear what Uncle Si told me, but judging by the movement of his mouth I think it was, “We’ve seen enough. Let’s go collect your money.”

 

UPDATE:  This book is published! Click here to buy on Amazon.

Click here to buy anywhere else.

Paul Bishop’s Felony Fists

After Paul Bishop read Mel Odom’s retro-boxing novel Smoker, he found Odom’s website and looked up his contact info.

“We hit it off immediately,” says Bish. “We had a ton in common including a shared love of the fight pulps.”

During their first phone conversation, the brainstorming began for a new sports fiction series. The series is called Fight Card. It is a throwback to the boxing pulps of yesteryear.

Felony Fists was the first Fight Card instalment by “Jack Tunney.” For you armchair fight historians out there, that nome de plume is exactly what you suspect it is–a fusion between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, though the series takes place in the ’50s, not the ’20s (when those two were heavyweight champs). Several different authors in the Fight Card stable are writing under that amalgamated name.

The Fight Card series consists of monthly 25,000 word novelettes, designed to be read in one or two sittings. The stories and stylings are inspired by the fight pulps of the ’30s and ’40s – such as Fight Stories Magazine – and Robert E. Howard’s two-fisted boxing tales featuring Sailor Steve Costigan. – Paul Bishop

Patrick “Felony” Flynn is an LA beat cop who is also possibly the world’s most seasoned amateur middleweight. He’s offered a spot on the detective squad if he’ll help knock gangster Mickey Cohen out of boxing. That means he has to move up in weight to light-heavy, turn pro, and arrest Cohen’s fighter Solomon King’s ascent toward a title shot against Archie Moore. A middleweight moving up to fight a badass light-heavyweight is a monumental chore all by itself, but in case the reader doesn’t appreciate that, the pressure is heaped upon Felony Flynn increasingly right up until the last chapter.

During all this time, Flynn becomes partners with another rookie detective, Tombstone. A black detective on an historically/notoriously bigoted force like the LAPD must be exceptional, and Tombstone is. This subplot, a counterfeiting subplot, and the fight plot all come together and are tied off nicely. The writer set out to tell a retro-style pulp boxing yarn and I’d say he did a good job.

For my taste, Cohen’s tactic to get Flynn to throw the fight was overkill. The stakes were plenty high already, as were the odds against Flynn in the fight. For Cohen to be so scared of an Irish brawler with one professional fight (against an over-rated has-been) presenting a threat to a contender who consumes talented pros for breakfast (and who Archie Moore is worried about) was just too much. In Flynn’s other fights, he never was 100% on. He was either distracted, or careless…something to put the outcome in doubt. I really would have liked to see Flynn go to war from Round One in the climactic fight, and let the tension come from the fact that he’s overmatched, and making it through 15 rounds with Solomon King requires a superhuman effort. Plenty of tension that way and far more realistic.

Speaking of realism, I just have to provide the following advisory about boxing technicalities:

In boxing, a right-handed fighter does not have a right jab or a right hook. He jabs and hooks with the left. He throws straight rights or a right cross. (Everything I’m saying is mirror-opposite for a southpaw, of course.) What some people call a right hook from a right-hander is actually either an angled right uppercut or a roundhouse right–an ill-advised punch 99% of the time, though I did see Lennox Lewis score a knockout with one.

I don’t know how many other readers would notice or care about getting these fundamental details right, but for me it was an annoyance in what otherwise was an enjoyable read. To be fair, a LOT of authors who write about boxing make these kind of mistakes. (One exception is this book from the Fight Card series.)

Paul Bishop retired from the LAPD, so he knows a thing or two about the crime angle. That and his hard-hitting, fast moving prose in Felony Fists makes this a great read, and one of many highly entertaining Fight Card books.

P.S: Check out this trailer for Fight Card: Front Page Palooka below!