An interview with the boxing writer by the boxing writer, 2019
By Bart Barry-
Editor’s note: In what has become an annual
tradition, Bart Barry ran out of ideas for his column. So we suggested he interview his favorite
subject about his favorite subject, and he acquiesced. He even used the verb “to acquiesce” in his
reply to our request!
BB: I was watching an interview with Bo Burnham a
couple days ago –
BB: We’ve come a long way from reading interviews
with Richard Ford, haven’t we?
BB: – and he talks about a couple things that
resonated. One was about feeling
nostalgia for events that’ve yet to happen, and the other is the artist
treating subjects he’s struggling with rather than things he already knows.
BB: Let me guess – that led to thinking how we
might do this with column-writing?
BB: For a few minutes, it did. Then we came back, yet again, to Harold
Bloom’s old idea about reading in pursuit of a mind more original than your own,
which is a cry for authority. Satisfying
someone else’s pursuit of authority can hardly begin by not-knowing things.
BB: I inferred from Burnham an unspoken assumption
his learning process is accelerated enough th’t watching him learn a subject can
be entertaining.
BB: I like that.
Cognition of any adult sort, too, must begin with knowing lots of things. While nobody wishes to watch a 5,000-hour movie
of a newborn’s journey to his first successful steps, it might indeed amuse to
watch a person who learns quickly use his existing knowledge to learn something
new.
BB: Quite a roundabout way of conceding you don’t
want to write about Gennady (sic) Golovkin.
BB: I added the suffix in there for you. He’s changed the spelling of his first name.
BB: Part of the first-loss rehabilitation kit.
BB: New trainer, new network, new name, new
weightclass, lots of new tats.
BB: He
didn’t go full-Cotto, did he?
BB: (Laughing) He really didn’t. Maybe half-Cotto.
BB: Good riddance to Abel at least.
BB: Abel was part of the packaging. But HBO was all the packaging. That’s why I avoided the subject. I knew it would spin into another acidic
postmortem on the Heart and Soul of Boxing.
BB: Do you feel unheard on this subject?
BB: That’s well-put. Few things, if anything, look more craven
online than some goofball leading his generic thoughts with “like I’ve been
saying all along” – as if there weren’t a way to verify this if anyone cared to
do.
BB: Is that what’s going on here with GGG?
BB: Could be.
But it’s late. The postmortem to
be performed would go something like: Almost everything I believed about
Golovkin’s greatness got told to me by HBO, but during the same time HBO told
me how great Golovkin was HBO steered its storied franchise into a sandbar and
sank, so maybe I should review everything I believed about Golovkin’s greatness
. . .
BB: You say it’s too late for that because nobody
thinks he’s that gullible.
BB: The most anyone might concede is that HBO
introduced him to Golovkin, but he did all the appraising on his own.
BB: And that’s what few evangelists would yet
admit it was a ruse.
BB: Sergio Mora put it succinctly Saturday night: Golovkin
made his legend by annihilating B- and C-level fighters.
BB: That ruse relied, in part, on there being no
available A fighters.
BB: Nobody will fight him! Nobody will fight him!
BB: Better yet was waiting till Canelo went 12
rounds with him to decide Canelo must be an A-level fighter because he went 12
rounds with him.
BB: A career 154-pounder went 24 rounds with the
most fearsome middleweight since Hagler.
Who cares about the judging; that argument is sleight-of-hand. The GGG ruse collapsed when Canelo stood tall
for 72 minutes in front of Golovkin.
BB: Yet we watched Saturday’s sacrifice.
BB: After what Andy Ruiz did, you sort of have to
for a while, no?
BB: Our sport thrives on misanthropy. No sooner had Ruiz done something perfectly
unexpected but some pundits criticize him and the defenders pile-on.
BB: “Like I’ve been saying all along . . .”
BB: No disinterested party in his right mind
thought Ruiz would win. So just enjoy
it. Just laugh at it. Laugh at anyone who feigns expertise for the
next month or so. Be happy for
Ruiz. Be happy for the way the spectacle
razed expertise. For heaven’s sake,
though, don’t decide now’s a good time to reiterate your own expertise.
BB: Whither
the state of the craft, our craft?
BB: “Dilettante” – that’s the word. It’s the perfect word. And it disarms, too. No more aesthetic judgements. The dilettante is not entitled to them.
BB: Are we reading more or less?
BB: Oh much less.
BB: Whither awards?
BB: Thrilled for Kelsey.
BB: The best thing about all these new broadcast platforms
is how little you must think about what you’re going to write, week-to-week. The defiance of not-writing has dissolved
with that, no?
BB: It has.
You enjoy watching boxing. You
enjoy writing. Howsoever long it has
been –
BB: Fourteen years and change.
BB: – there is no longer any sense of anxiety
about it. Volunteer Sunday mornings at
the bus station, go home and change into something absurd, drive too fast to
the coffeeshop at The Pearl –
BB: Taking the racing line.
BB: – taking the racing line, yes, and write till
the place closes. See what happens. Let the conversations and songs going on
round you flavor whatever comes out.
BB: Do you ever look back?
BB: Not at any of this. I looked back recently at some of the short
fiction from 2003.
BB: How was it?
BB: Precise.
It was all rewritten three times.
That’s the simple mechanics of it.
BB: Want to talk about the publication of that online?
BB: Nope. It’s
now feasible to publish 100,000 words anonymously. Fun, too.
BB: Who’s your favorite fighter?
BB: Has to be Usyk.
BB: Not Inoue?
BB: Not yet.
I’m more likely to miss Usyk’s next fight, though – hell, I’m more
likely to miss my next breath – than Inoue’s.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry