The Highest Highs and the Lowest Lows

Eric Raskin looks at his love of boxing, good versus evil, and what makes boxing both an exciting sport, and one which walks a fine line between sport and cruelty:

Newsflash: The human head is not intended to be punched. Very rare is the man who enjoys a lengthy career in boxing and comes away with no damage to his mental capacity. Sometimes it's just a barely noticeable slurring of speech; sometimes it's full-on pugilistic dementia. And it isn't always predictable based on the number of punches a man has taken. If it were, Jake LaMotta wouldn't have made it through his 80s with reasonable lucidity, and Wilfred Benitez wouldn't have lost most of his short-term memory function before his 50th birthday. At its worst, boxing is the most unwatchable sport in the world. (At least among sports that are, without debate, actually "sports" and not just activities that you can do sitting down or while smoking a cigarette.) But at its best, there's no other sport that quite compares.
OK, that's an opinion, but it starts to feel like a fact when you sit down and watch the Gatti-Micky Ward trilogy. Or the Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez battles. Or Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo I. Or Julio Cesar Chavez-Meldrick Taylor I. Or Marvin Hagler-Tommy Hearns. Or Ray Leonard-Hearns. Or George Foreman-Ron Lyle. Or the Thrilla in Manila. I could fill another thousand words just listing the amazing fights that are more rewatchable from start to finish than any Super Bowl, any March Madness game, any Masters Sunday.

He's looking at his love for the sport prior to the Cotto-Margarito rematch. After Margarito pummelled Cotto in their first fight, in 2008, he was discovered at a later fight to have tried to get his hands wrapped with weighted inserts.  He's been plagued ever since by the question of whether his fists were loaded in the Cotto fight.  Raskin discussess the underlying feeling amongst boxing fans that Margarito deserved the brutal beating he received by Shane Mosley when he entered the ring sans loaded hands. 

I have to agree with Raskin about boxing.  It is an awe-inspiring sport, at least at its best points, but it is hard to ignore the damage inflicted on the fighters.  There is a real difficulty in embracing all parts of the fight game.  All of the amazing individual performances are tempered by the knowledge of the tremendous bad parts, the injuries and deaths.  And yet I want to tune in.