BOXIN G
The Flesh is Weak
By JOHN WELLS
RAMATICALLY, it would have been difficult to L./imagine a more strikingly staged perfor- mance. Emerging just before the Big Fight from the low tunnel under the stands, full of men standing about in groups and drinking beer in the warm orange light, out into the vast open space of the arena, cold under a grey late evening sky, with a blustering wind smelling of cigar smoke that flapped the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes fixed to the front of the two opposing stands, lit with white arc lamps, it was hard not to be impressed by the scale of the entertainment. In the centre, roofed with corrugated iron and bright with white lights, the corner ropes bound, with red leather, the stage seemed set more as a little Roman theatre than as a conventional boxing ring. But, tragically, the drama was not to reach its climax.
In the seats at the ringside the atmosphere was that of a nightmarish first night. Antonioni sat sallow and solemn, staring up at the empty ring: Edward du Cann slipped quietly into his seat in the dusk, holding his binoculars. Tall men in sporty check overcoats sat crammed in the narrow seats between unnaturally short men with abnormally broad shoulders, out of which their cropped heads grew neckless and with difficulty. There were heavy jokes—'Don't drink out of that side, my old son of a gun, you'll get claustro- phobia'—a champagne cork popped, a man said `Whoops—pardon,' and above the loud murmur of financial discussion and the voice of a man with crinkly hair and glasses announcing in a voice clearly audible four rows away how much he'd just paid for a house in the Bahamas, serious doubts were exchanged about how long Cooper's eye could hold out.
Until now the crowds up in the stands had seemed divided, one group suddenly breaking into 'Why are we waiting,' carried or dimmed on the wind, another greeting some inaudible obscenity shouted from their midst with a vague, distant cheer : others just sat there, thousands of white faces under the hanging roof. But now, as the flicker of flash-bulbs that had been flaring obscurely everywhere began to concentrate on the opposite side of the stadium, the crowd seemed to find its unity, there was a steady chant. of 'En-ry, En-ry, En-ry,' and a feeling of mass impatience as the clock passed ten fifteen.
A man in a white shirt and a black bow tie climbed into the ring and held up his hand. The cheering increased. There were, he said, hundreds of people blocking the gangways and the boxers could not reach the ring. A murmur of dis- approval spreading like a wave, and then, with the intensified popping of flash-bulbs, a single Union Jack on a pole, carried above the bobbing heads of the crowd to a flourish of fanfares through the loudspeakers, and coming towards us from the other side of the arena. The chanting of `En-ry, En-ry' builds up, and finally bursts into a roar. Preceded by his'rather awkward standard- bearer, Cooper climbs cumbersomely into the ring in a long blue dressing gown with Union Jacks on the back, shaking his heavy head and waving away the great roar of adoration from the crowd in the darkness. A number of tubby men with bald heads get into the ring with him, looking rather like butchers in their white overalls, and follow Cooper into his corner, pulling at their noses and wiping their hands on the seats of their trousers in a business-like manner, as if anxious to begin.
Then a repeated wave of cheering, mixed with boos this time, and the Stars and Stripes comes nosing its way through the crowd, leaving a phosphorescent wake of flickering flash-bulbs. Finally Clay steps lightly over the ropes in a
white towelling dressing, gown and stands calmly in his corner, looking out unseeingly over the booing, cheering crowd.
The man with the microphone calls for silence and asks us to rise to our feet for the Anthem of the United States of America. We rise, the anthem is played, a little tinnily. and Clay stands loosely to attention, looking up at the Stars and Stripes as a television cameraman climbs up through the ropes with a hand-held camera on his shoulder, looking up at Clay looking up at the flag. One or two people in the crowd whistle the tune. there is a little ribald laughter, and then `God Save the Queen,' There can have been few occasions since the war when the National Anthem has been sung with such passion. Almost everyone is singing, rising to the line 'Send her victorious' with such tearful fervour that we almost expect Her Majesty herself to slip out of a light dressing gown and go dancing out into the ring with gloves at the ready to defend the nation's honour.
For another moment or two the illusion of great drama is sustained. The man in the black tie steps forward again. 'Your Highnesses' (Cheers) `Your Excellencies' (Cheers) `My Lords' (Cheers) 'Ladies' (Cheers) 'and Gentlemen' (Cheers) `The Heavyweight Championship of the World!' For a split second the spinning globe hesitates on its axis, the universe falls silent, and we sit in our appointed orders at the centre of history, about to witness a crisis. Clay turns east and presents his gloved forearms in prayer. A man somewhere in the crowd shouts : `Hit him while he's prayiag !' Then the amplified bell peals. Clay comes bouncing and bobbing out into the ring, light and quick and a matt, dim burnt umber : Cooper ambles forward, slow-footed, pink and vulnerable : the mobile red gloves touch for the first time, and the dull stream of dis- appointing reality begins to move once again.
Even faced with the reality of Cooper in the ring, hypnotised by the dancing black athlete moving round and round him so contemptuous of his legendary strength, the mass of the crowd cling to their illusion. Sustaining themselves with the auto-hypnotic incantation of 'En-ry, En-ry,' cheering wildly at Cooper's even wilder swings, roaring with rage at every clinch, they make it seem possible that this is a decisive contest between two supermen, and that the warnings of `Wait until his eye goes, though' murmured at the ringside as early as the second round, may after all be unfounded. Then suddenly it happens. Cooper's eye is slit, gleaming red blood flushes down the cheek, covering half of Cooper's face, and everyone is on his feet shouting for the fight to be stopped.
The feeling in the crowd during the last few seconds, as Cooper fought blindly on, was like that of a dying man, screaming at the approach of death. The roar grew louder, but it was broken with protests. At the same time it was as if the whole faith in the illusion, the whole life of the crowd, had drained away in a matter of seconds, leaving them finally silent. As the police and photographers fought in the ring it was as if some elderly actor, known by the audience to be suffering from a fatal illness, had collapsed and died on stage. As if instead of watching two champions, competing for the absolute mastery and control of the flesh and in doing so creating
the illusion of immortality, we had witnessed only the collapse of the physical system, that we had been involved in no more than an ugly accident in which both of them, and we as well, had been the victims.
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