The Manly Art

In “Sonny Liston's Eyes,” the reader is taken into the Underworld of the sport when a writer interviews an ex-mobster—who is dying of lung cancer—and claims to have killed Sonny Liston, as well as JFK and Martin Luthur King Jr. He tells an incredible story but backs it up by saying he has absolutely verifiable evidence that he will produce for the writer. In “Frankenstein” we see why a young amateur boxer should have picked boxing over football. He has little say in the matter, as his father and uncle have trained him his entire life for football and his grandfather, an ex-professional boxer, has trained him in boxing after he begged him to teach him, after a fight in grade school. He has only two losses in 50 fights but when he is offered more money—just for a sign-on bonus—than the average worker makes in an entire lifetime, or that his grandfather made in his entire boxing career, and 20 times the bonus even his grandfather relents to the 18-year-old-high school senior signing with the Miami Dolphins.