Joe Frazier is ripping Muhammad Ali out in the press tent and Evander Holyfield is across the way, hidden in the indirect lighting of the place where Georgia Tech plays basketball, now all shadows and liniment and tough guys.
A Cuban handler is banished from ringside for distracting the Irish fighter and scoring judges are playing some kind of weird Nintendo to keep things fair, and doing an awful job of it, the result of suspicious Olympic judging in the past.
Between rounds Stevie Wonder reminds us that you can feel it all over and a Bulgarian in the rafters is doing a happy hula on his chair seat because two of his countrymen have won today.
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This is a rough game, the roughest, the last-chance game for the desperate and the disenfranchised. There is no game worse than boxing.
Nate Jones, of Cabrini-Green and Western Illinois Correctional Facility, soon will be beating up a Chinese heavyweight, ranked 10th in the world by somebody. Jones has a bronze medal for sure and two more fights for a gold.
“I am a product of my environment,” Jones will explain. He has ended up in the right place.
This is boxing and boxing is what it is, whether it comes with flags and anthems and headgear or with Don King.
No pixies here, not a one. No one clean shaven, including the women, wet warriors or shoe company darlings, chasing history and Tom Brokaw.
“People call me a legend,” Carl Lewis admitted. No legends here.
The fighters have been saying that NBC stands for the No Boxing Company, and NBC doesn’t disagree because women just will not watch thugs beat each other up, even if they put Katie Couric there to sanitize it all. “Oooh, didn’t that hurt?” she could ask. During the Olympics, the hand that holds the remote has nail polish.
Boxing has been parked out of sight, like a stolen car–something about which Jones has stories–and there is talk, as always, that boxing will be dropped by the Olympics because of its unsavoriness, replaced by, believe this or not–pool.
Well, let’s just see. How bad could this be? Jones was, of course, in jail, for 20 months, auto theft and armed robbery. And the super-heavyweight has a charge of sexual abuse waiting back in Hartford and the light-heavy was a crack addict and the light-middleweight is accused of beating up his girlfriend.
“I done a lot where I didn’t get caught,” Jones said.
One of Jones’ brothers committed suicide. A sister was killed in a car crash. His father died of gangrene. His twin sister has lupus complicated by meningitis. Six months after getting out of prison, Jones nearly was sent back for selling pot.
Oh, brother, does this sound like one of those John Tesh stories. Where’s the music? Where’s the slo-mo? None of that here.
This is too real and this means something too important to young Jones, who worries about slipping into that life again.
“It is a scary thing. You hang out, you know?” Jones said. “And there’s drinking and reefer and you might want to celebrate, you know. My bad past is the reason for my good present. But I don’t forget where I came from.
“Some of those guys are still my friends. Some have slipped and some have slumped. What am I supposed to do, not talk to them.?”
Let me take this one. The answer is yes. The answer is hell, yes. Get away. Use this. Don’t go back. Take your medal and your future and send for the folks.
“When I win the gold,” Jones said, “I’m throwing a picnic for my family and friends.”
He’s going back.
And Smokin’ Joe Frazier, a gold-medal winner himself, is complaining they gave the honor of lighting the flame to that “dodge drafter” Ali and seems both surprised and sorry Ali didn’t fall into the cauldron.
“Everything he’s saying here will be in Dad’s book,” prompts Frazier’s daughter, Jackie.
This is what Jones has to look forward to. If he is good enough and works hard enough, he could be an infirm Ali, a quaking prop for bubbas. Or Frazier, a bitter man generations later hawking his life’s story, still a thug and an even smugger thug because he can more or less talk and Ali cannot.
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Still, for Jones, it is a better world than that other.