Writers' Fighters and Other Sweet Scientists by John Schulian

Writers' Fighters and Other Sweet Scientists Reviews

• 
  Bart

  Writers' Fighters is a collection of mostly 1,000-word pieces that sportswriter John Schulian wrote for the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times. All the pieces treat the sport of boxing and seem to have been written between 1977 and 1982.
  
  Most sportsfans will remember that the '76 summer Olympics were held in Montreal and featured a number of great American boxers including the Spinks brothers. But the greatest of these fighters was Ray Charles "Sugar Ray" Leonard. Much of Schulian's book covers Leonard's early rise and career, with special emphasis on the Panamanian monster who would give Leonard his first loss (ironically in Montreal), Roberto Duran.
  
  For the most part, I write these reviews in the third person because I don't look for myself in books that I read. This review will be an exception because, as a boxing writer who has published more than 150 stories (many of which can be found
  here), I bring a special sort of experience to the reading of a collection of boxing stories.
  
  John Schulian is well ahead of his peers in most regards. He has a good feel for a story and he doesn't get too caught up in the wiseassery that seems to permeate most sportswriting; he is not a resentful never-was athlete who, in the words of one sportswriter, "writes about people who can't speak for people who can't read." Instead, he admires the admirable folks and writes disparagingly about all the rest.
  
  Probably no subject takes more shots in this collection than promoter Don King, just celebrating his first decade of promotion when this book was published. King, and his hair, would go on to become household events for many Americans in the years that followed Schulian's insights about him and his "pinky ring the size of a baby's fist."
  
  About 15 years after Writers' Fighters was published, the Internet changed much about the way sports, and the sport of boxing especially, is covered. Today, most fight fans look to websites dedicated to the sport before they open a local paper or read a magazine. And with few notable exceptions, most periodicals have responded to this by putting their off-season LPGA writers on the boxing beat whenever a major fight comes along.
  
  As a result, most of the sort of writing that Schulian did for newspapers is no longer done for newspapers. And because websites don't have periodicals' budgets, most of the interesting events that happen on Tuesdays and Wednesdays of fight weeks are no longer covered; most fight week coverage, anymore, is a Friday weigh-in and a Saturday morning press conference and a Saturday night fight card and a Sunday venue that bears no evidence of the previous week's event.
  
  That's unfortunate.
  
  Writers no longer spend the time they once spent in fighters' training camps, and fighters are no longer as accessible either - though they're much more accessible than other professional athletes. What happens, then, is superficial coverage of meaningful figures and fanatical coverage of inconsequential figures (who, desperate for press, will let anyone with a blog come into camp).
  
  Though there are more words written about boxing today than ever before, there is also less writing of Schulian's caliber. Some of Writers' Fighters strays into the superficial sometimes - providing a precursor to the standard witty rewrites of press releases and conference-call transcripts that numerous sportswriters now make a living of - but very little of it.
  
  And readers should always be grateful of anyone who could take ringside judges' questionable scorecards and turn a phrase like this: "The whole thing smelled of what the champion was beating out of the challenger."
• 
  Jimmy

  If you like boxing, you should read Schulian. If you like sports writing, you should read Schulian. If you want to escape the mediocrity of internet sports blogging, freeing yourself from the spaghetti junction of opinions, the absence of historical context, and general drudgery of Open City journalism, read Schulian.
• 
  Paula

  First collection by great writer who I am very partial too.