By S. L. Compton
Ring Sports Magazine, BoxingInsider.com Writer:
Viewing Boxing From Ringside (Writers Club Press, 146 pages, paperback, $14.95) is a newly published collection of articles and musings by Frank Lotierzo and Tom Donelson. The Genesis of this book can be traced back to the excellent website www.Cyberboxingzone.com.
Cyberboxingzone is a place where scholarly boxing minds gather to discuss topics as wide ranging as mythical matchups to who is the most crooked mind in the sport. The conversation is always polite, intelligent, and thought provoking. The preface warns the reader ?prepare to be challenged?.
Viewing boxing From Ringside does not pretend to be a scholarly work or an artistic endeavor. It is the sport of boxing from the perspective of two fans.
Unapologetically opinionated with a shoot from the hip style that is at times entertaining or frustrating. I say frustrating because at times the reader is, just as stated in the preface, challenged by the arguments in some of the articles.
These can range from the now cliché ‘Harry Wills was one of the best heavyweights who never got a shot at the title’ to rating Gene Tunney ahead of Jack Dempsey in a pre-1930s heavyweight top ten list despite the fact that Gene only had a handful of Heavyweight fights against a mixed bag of competition.
Interesting additions to the book are interviews with former heavyweight champ Ken Norton and noted boxing historian Tracy Callis. The Norton interview is typically flat (Norton always seems to come off as cardboard in interviews) but the Callis interview is quite insightful. In fact the real saving grace to the book might be the publicity that the Cyberboxingzone website (which Callis is a regular contributor to) garners from its release.
My recommendation to fans and readers is to buy the book as a primer. Read it and then hop on over to the Cyberboxingzone to tell the writers just what you thought of the book and their individual articles. You wont be sorry.
