By Bart Barry-
Editor’s note: To commemorate his 543rd Monday column for 15rounds.com, we asked Bart Barry to interview Bart Barry about the current state of our craft.
BB: When we began, thought was write for free a while and enjoy access then eventually make some money, if not a living enough to travel enough to enjoy access, and then, even if we didn’t get money in the end, we’d always have access, right?
BB: Now there’s no access. It’s worse than indifference; it’s a model built on going round print media.
BB: When did we first notice?
BB: Richard Schaefer. He did not like the idea of an independent media but didn’t have a model where it could be circumvented so he followed Arum’s lead like he did everything else. But Arum liked print media. Liked to spar make outrageous accusations wink once quotes were down. King too. Maybe it was generational cultural but Schaefer did not see. He had his dozen or so media guys he was false friendly with but you could tell he didn’t trust or like them any more’n they trusted or liked him.
BB: How hard is it to write this column?
BB: Much easier than a couple years ago.
BB: Really?
BB: Before Mayweather-Pacquiao you felt an obligation to make three-quarters of your column about the sport because there were still good stories going on you could meet a young fighter and know he’d be developed and follow his ascent. Immensely rewarding. After Mayweather-Pacquiao there was no excuse to challenge yourself because the hopelessness of things was too apparent.
BB: And there were personal problems too.
BB: No need to delve in those.
BB: That has to affect outlook.
BB: Nothing bad enough to miss work. We’ll use that as a tenable threshold, compadre.
BB: Then we blame The Fight to Save Boxing?
BB: Only out of convenience. Its very satirical name above implies boxing needed redemption of some sort, which it did, and didn’t get any.
BB: How much boxing reading do we still do?
BB: Fractions we once did. Carlos, Jimmy, Norm, David, Tom, Steve – a few others irregularly. But the writing 10 years ago had a vibrancy to it we don’t have any more. We settle scores or fluff things we know don’t deserve it. The writing a decade ago was no better but there was more of it and felt urgent. Now if it’s positive it feels like a press release. And if it’s negative you think: Well, yes, obviously.
BB: What about awards?
BB: Some years past it felt futile and we stopped for the same reason we stop any extra effort: It wasn’t improving the writing. Some of that stuff’s a literary search for truth and admirable. A lot of it is gaming a committee and not. Still read the emails and try to congratulate people whose work we admire but returning to the first point: The more awards we won, worse access became. It wasn’t causal but gave an able excuse to stop entering both columns and credential applications.
BB: This is all pre-PBC then?
BB: Actually yes. The PBC amplified bad things whose effect will endure but created very few new problems. There’s nothing innovative there, is there?
BB: More money, more television, saturate the market with product.
BB: Not saying Al Haymon’s not bright – Rick James wrote very positive things about Haymon in “Memoirs of a Super Freak” – but Haymon’s not Edwin Land or anything.
BB: Still on about Rick James.
BB: Was as an autobiography should be. Vulnerable rough randy as a quiche.
BB: This year’s reading has been everywhere.
BB: Last year’s too.
BB: Why?
BB: Start with fiction, invention of a sort from the unity of one’s imagination. Then you cycle into nonfiction because of some interest or other. You get only so far in that and its requisite reductionism and soon you’re down to –
BB: Names. Numbers. Colors.
BB: – classification of one sort or another. You decide all reduction takes you to a void looking suspiciously like unity. Then you cycle back to fiction.
BB: Miss being ringside?
BB: Only ringside. None the rest of it. The credentials scramble. Nitwit publicists. Airport checkpoints. Cliche characters. Caricatures of wizened old trainers. It’s been years since the experience justified the hassle.
BB: Since Martinez-Chavez Thomas & Mack?
BB: Could be. Really don’t care.
BB: Advice to a young writer.
BB: If anything can stop you from writing –
BB: Let it.
BB: – let it.
BB: Cynical.
BB: No. Wrong. That is not cynical. It is about finding a thing you were born to do. Passion. Since this column is a commemorative effort it marks at least 535,000 words published here. That accounts for only about 1/3 the words we’ve written during that time. If you do not revel in the process –
BB: If anything can stop you . . .
BB: – you should not pursue writing about this sport or another subject. The affirmation is nighnil. If what’s within is too little and you write for without don’t do it. Not because we don’t want the emboldening competition but because you’re precluding yourself from finding a passion.
BB: Social media?
BB: Useless. No, worse. It’s a reflexive anxiety device. Perhaps an historic one. You look at Twitter and see massive anxiety manifesting itself as a need to comment on everything and the machine’s job is to provide more items to comment on because those comments are something to comment on.
BB: You loved Twitter, didn’t you?
BB: Years ago.
BB: Maybe you’ve changed.
BB: One should hope. That’s our adaptation to whatever. Twitter necessarily adapts to our adaptation. We adapt to its adaptation of our adaptation. Tiny adjustments and directional deviations and more adjustments to follow. Nature’s way.
BB: The shape of an oak branch.
BB: You want real ambivalence, lad?
BB: Hit me.
BB: Ralph Waldo Emerson knew all this and wrote it down a century and a half ago.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry