This month’s issue of “The Atlantic” has a wonderful article by Joshua Wolf Shenk that is as big as its title, “What Makes Us Happy?” It is a subject that probably concerns you, whoever you are. In the wake of Mike Tyson’s family tragedy, it also offers a chance for us to examine how to build, or shape, happy American prizefighters.
This is not a column about Tyson. On Friday, Norm Frauenheim, who knows Tyson much better than I do, expressed the boxing community’s condolences much better than I could. Do not read what follows as a rebuttal of Tyson or his choices.
The genesis of this column predates Mr. Shenk’s piece, actually. It happened in Houston’s Toyota Center the last day of February. Sometime before Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz fought, the ring announcer read the names of celebrities at ringside. Despite the presence of Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, Mario Lopez and others, native Houstonian George Foreman garnered twice the applause of everyone else.
But here’s an observation that transcends Texans’ pride in one of their own. As Foreman circled ringside, HBO employees – not the ones you know but the guys and gals in black t-shirts and headsets that handle lighting and sound – greeted him with palpable affection. Off-television and five years since calling him a coworker, they were genuinely happy to see him. He got more hugs than handshakes.
George Foreman is a happy ending – an American prizefighter who retired with health, wealth and wits. Oscar De La Hoya, that evening’s promoter, is going to be another, we hope. And despite being starched in the main event, Juan Diaz, who recently graduated from University of Houston, is the active American prizefighter most likely to become one.
Why are happy endings important? To soothe our consciences. They assure us, as fans, not every hero must die broke, broken or both. That may court false comfort, but anyone who loves our sport wants every fight to end in a knockout then every felled prizefighter to rise at 11 and move towards happiness.
Working off Shenk’s treatment of Harvard psychiatrist George Valliant’s longitudinal study, then, let’s examine the best way to build American prizefighters whom boxing can add to its short list of happy endings.
The study’s first criterion for happiness is an ability to cope with life. What defensive tactics you employ against a myriad of daily stimuli – what psychoanalysis calls “adaptations” – are most important. De La Hoya’s visible discomfort at being booed in Houston was much better than making vulgar gestures and storming out. Diaz’s post-fight reaction to being knocked-out – “Tell my mom I’m OK”; my loss was “not good” – was even better. And Foreman’s robustly beautiful smile before all public adversity is best.
After adaptations come acquiring an education, keeping a stable marriage, avoiding cigarettes, avoiding excessive drinking, performing moderate exercise and maintaining a healthy weight.
We can safely skip cigarettes and exercise. There aren’t too many Americans alive, much less professionally athletic ones, who don’t know some exercise is good for you – and especially if you don’t light up a Marlboro when you’re done. After adaptations – psychology’s heavy lifting – that leaves us with education, marriage, alcohol and weight.
A megalomaniacal guy who didn’t finish eighth grade but likes to get drunk at strip clubs and cut 50 pounds every training camp is the antithesis of what we seek. While no one fighter springs to mind as quite that bad, we should concede most every American prizefighter has at least one of those, ah, qualities.
Now on to some solutions.
When it comes to education, Juan Diaz is an exceptional example. Alas, “exception” is the root word there. That’s unlikely to change. But prizefighters aren’t looking to become lawyers or software developers. They don’t need degrees. Most of Foreman’s education came from a single book – the Good one. An American prizefighter’s education, in most cases, can take the form of merely broadening his horizons and becoming expert in something more than autobiography and jab/cross/hook.
We can put marriage and alcohol together not because they are inherently correlated but because so many fighters learn to drink in strip clubs – a bad arrangement. But a boxing column is nowhere to be prudish. If a world champion wants to enjoy a few years of drunken promiscuity, he should go right ahead but never mistake it for a permanent lifestyle. Sixty years-old and regularly drunk by the time Trixxxie takes the stage is a living antonym for the word “contentment.”
That leaves weight. Prizefighters spend the first half of their lives doing lunatic things to make weight. Comes with the territory. If you are 5 feet 10 inches tall and fight at middleweight, it’s really not a big deal to gain 50 pounds in the decade after you finish. Just try not to arrive at your retirement party already weighing 210.
Notice that money is nowhere on that list? Turns out that above a certain annual subsistence level – probably near 2007’s U.S. median household income of $50,233 – money isn’t all that important. Besides, championship prizefighters adhering to the other items on this list don’t squander fortunes.
If you’re not a championship prizefighter but a fan, what can you do? Well, following what’s above can’t hurt. But you might also do some activist applauding, as it were. Fighters don’t care what you post on message boards. But they care a lot about revenue. Vote with your wallet, in other words. Support fighters who will bring credit to our sport when they retire. Ignore the others.
Buy a Foreman Grill. Travel to Houston for Juan Diaz’s next fight. While you’re there, go easy on Oscar when they announce his name. Buy the pay-per-view telecast of the next Shane Mosley or Kelly Pavlik fight. Oh, and know that even if you are the 10 millionth customer come July 18, you’ll have helped fix exactly none of Floyd Mayweather’s problems.
Bart Barry can be reached at bbarry@15rounds.com
[...] See the full article from “15rounds.com” [...]