OPINION:
One night, the late great boxing analyst and author Bert Sugar got a phone call at home.
“This is Bob Dylan.” America’s songsmith was calling Sugar to talk about one of the lists of top fighters Sugar had presented in an ESPN show.
He had some opinions of his own, because Bob Dylan is a huge fight fan.
You didn’t see any of that part of Dylan, 83, in the current biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” an excellent film chronicling the entry and rise of Dylan on the American scene in the early 1960s. His career includes 125 million records sold and the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.
And his own boxing gym.
Dylan clearly had a special place for fighters in his heart. He wrote two songs about boxers.
One was “Who killed Davey Moore,” about a former featherweight champion who was knocked out by Sugar Ramos on March 21, 1963, at Dodger Stadium and collapsed in his dressing room after doing post-fight interviews with reporters. He was taken to the local hospital and never regained consciousness, pronounced dead four days later.
Dylan performed the song seven months later in a show at Carnegie Hall. He would often do it live, but a recording was not released until “The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991)” in 1991.
The lyrics were taken from newspaper reports about Moore’s death, from the perspective of the referee, the crowd, the manager, a gambler, a boxing writer, and Ramos, ending each line in the first person with the refrain:
“It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.”
The second one came 12 years later in 1975 — a protest song about the 1967 conviction and imprisonment of former middleweight contender Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in connection with the triple homicide that took place during a bar robbery in Patterson, New Jersey, in 1966. Dylan joined the voices of many who believe Carter was wrongly convicted.
Dylan read the fighter’s autobiography and met with Carter in prison. Soon after, he wrote “Hurricane,” which wound up being one of his more successful singles in the 1970s. Among the lyrics he wrote, primarily about the case, was this:
“Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
“But he never did like to talk about it all that much,
“‘It’s my work” he’d say, ‘and I do it for pay
“And when it’s over I’d just as soon go on my way.’”
Carter was released from prison in 1985 after his conviction was overturned by a federal judge.
The songs were different — one was about the death of a fighter and an indictment of the boxing industry, the other a protest song about a wrongfully imprisoned fighter. But his connection with both was the ring, a special place for Dylan — so special that he had his own private boxing gym in Santa Monica.
That’s where he sparred with former lightweight champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini.
Mancini, who held the lightweight title from 1982 to 1984, retired in 1992 (I highly recommend a 2013 documentary “The Good Son: The Life of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini,” produced by local filmmakers Christopher Tavlarides and Jimmy Lynn).
Two years after he retired, Mancini found himself in this private gym sparring with Dylan, a place where celebrities would often work out. Will Smith prepared for his role in “Ali” at Dylan’s gym.
Mancini’s dentist told him about the gym and that Dylan might want to work out with the former champion. Not long after, Mancini got a call from Dylan’s assistant inviting him to come spar with the singer/songwriter.
“I arrived at the gym first,” Mancini said. “They say the boss is on his way in. I get dressed and I am shadowboxing. I see out of the corner of my eye in the mirror this figure come in, wearing a hoodie. It’s Bob. He looked like a very inconspicuous guy.
“He come up to me and says, ‘Ray, thank you for coming. I’m going to go get ready.’ So I loosen up a bit. He comes out and shadowboxes some. Then we get in the ring.
“We start to box,” Mancini said. “I told him, ‘Throw your punches. I want you to throw your punches. I’ll block and I’ll slip. But I will let you know I’m there and hit you once in a while too. But throw your punches. Don’t hold back, and if you catch me, it’s my fault.’
“He is very steady and consistent,” Mancini said. “We are working. I’m going to the body a little bit. He’s throwing his punches. He has nice form. Bob is one speed. He keeps coming.
“We box four rounds. After the second round, he says to me, ‘Ray, can you leave out the head shots? I got a few more songs left in there.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll lay off the head shots.’
“After four rounds, he thanks me. I asked him, ‘Bob I hope you’re joking about the head shots?’ He said he was joking. We became friends. Later (when Dylan’s Grammy-winning album, “Time Out of Mind,” was released). I said, ‘Bob, I don’t get any thanks on the back of the album? I laid off the head shots.’
“We would hang out sometimes at the gym,” Mancini said. “He had pictures of Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Frazier, Roberto Duran on the wall in between pictures of Muddy Waters and B.B. King. It’s got the heavyweights of rock ’n’ roll and the heavyweights of boxing.
“Sometimes, it would be just me and him there,” Mancini said. “He had such great boxing knowledge. He would ask me about fighters. I would try to swing the conversation to music.”
There was a scene in “A Complete Unknown” where Dylan is beaten up in a bar fight and comes away with a black eye. I’m not sure how accurate that was. But if it had happened to Dylan who sparred with the former lightweight champion of the world, I think Dylan would have sent the guy “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”
• Catch Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
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