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When Trevor Berbick was killed on October 28,of this year, a wave of news about the passing of the former WBC Heavyweight Champion hit the TV and Internet. You would have thought that a major world event just took place.
Being a writer and the fact that I deal with so many different people and companies, I became flooded with news clips and articles. Like many, I was shocked. I don’t know if I was surprised in the same way some other people were but I was surprised nonetheless. It caught me off guard for two reasons.
1.) I was surprised, and I mean this with no disrespect to Berbick’s family, that Trevor had not already been killed. Mainly due to the fact that he was always a guy who was involved in some confrontation or another and considering his past, I figured he would have met the wrong guy long before this.
2.) Because of how much of a fuss everyone made. Two hours before this hit the news, no one could care less about Berbick or his life and he was mainly known for his KO loss to Tyson.
I guess it may have been the way it happened, with him being found in a church courtyard and all, almost like a movie plot. The bad guy gets his in the end and while the road is about to close, he journeys to the only place he can find a last chance at salvation before he goes to be judged.
Who knows why it created such a stir for the moment? It did and last night it had me thinking. Why is it that every time an athlete dies we act as though some unthinkable act has just happened? Not only in boxing, but also in any sport. Boxing just happens to be the sport that I follow and so will use as my guide here.
The following are some other examples of former fighters who seemed to have shocked the general public upon passing away.
Rocky Marciano, 1923-1969: Our only undefeated heavyweight champion, Marciano retired at 49-0 (43) and had left the ring long before he passed away. The circumstances in which his death happened was the strangest thing about it all. A plane crash! Then again, why is that such a big deal? I mean, people die in plane crashes all the time. Not daily, but often enough to where we aren’t in shock when we hear of one going down and hitting the earth.
Not once have I ever turned on the news to hear the sad tale of John Doe dying in an unexpected crash of his flight home. This is different, I guess, because John Doe is not Rocky Marciano? Was Marciano more important than John Doe? I am sure that to John Doe’s family, he wasn’t.
Sonny Liston, 1932-1970: He compiled a record of 50-4 (39) and was once the most feared man in all of boxing. Many thought that he would destroy a young Cassius Clay when they met for the title the first time, yet in his life, no one said anything good about him. He was not a loved figure in the sport. Sonny did no good deeds nor was his reign one of top quality opponent after top quality opponent. What he did have is that Mike Tyson type of appeal before there was a Mike Tyson.
During Liston’s career, there were rumors of his mob ties and even fight fixing that tarnished his accomplishments. For some unexplained reason, when it was reported that Liston was found dead in his hotel room of an overdose, rumors and astonishments flew around the mill. Was it that unbelievable someone with a known drug habit, money problems and a shady past could overdose on drugs, alone and broke in a hotel? Of course it isn’t! It happens!
Liston is not the only junkie to ever meet this fate, nor was he the last. For some reason, the fact that it was Liston the former heavyweight champion of the world, people acted as though the devil himself went to Sonny’s room and plunged the drugs in to him.
Julian Letterlough, 1969-2005: He was called “Mr KO” and looking at his record of 20 knockouts out of 21 wins, it is no wonder why. Truth be told however, Julian, even as exciting as he was, never won a world title or beat a world class fighter in their prime and finished with a spotty 21-5 (20) record.
Letterlough had personal problems in his life that caused his death. He was tragically shot in the back after an argument in his home and pronounced dead a short time later. Over the years, I bet I have seen on the news at least 15 times about someone dying due to a domestic dispute. If you should ask me about it the only name I can remember in any of those incidents is Julian’s. Not because I was a big fan of his, but because he was a boxer and athlete.
I could name probably 20 more fighters off the top of my head that died and we were caught by surprise that it happened. I can’t name 20 other people outside of celebrities or athletes who have passed away, yet I have read names in newspapers and obituaries about hundreds of others who have died in similar fashions and I couldn’t recall them if I was paid to. I have come to a conclusion about this so-called “theory” of mine, if you will. It has to do with us as people.
We watch the sports that interest us. Some follow baseball or basketball or football, or in my case, boxing. Most of us have a secrete desire to at some point in our lives to be like these people that we follow. They are the people we look up to. That is one of the beauties of life as enjoyed by athletes. Being admired by everyone from the average joe to millionaire playboys. They are your fans, they help pay your salary and the more you have of them the more money you make.
It is our desire to watch and follow our sport of choice because it helps us have a release in life; we get away from our daily routine and for those moments that we watch, everything else seems to fade away. These men we watch perform their chosen profession seem just a little more than what we are. They seem a little bit stronger. They seem a little bit faster; their lives, looking from the outside in, seem to be just a little bit better. It is as though they are just a little bit better.
It is almost like when you were back in school; you always had that one kid in gym class who could play every sport well and was captain of the football team. He was a pompous ass and had the brains of one too but for some reason, even though no one really liked him and his grades barely made it, this was the cool kid who always had a group of people hanging around with him.
10 years later, he ends up bagging groceries as a chosen profession and still lives at home but when he was the best athlete in high school, the guy was somebody we all wanted to be like. Again, we looked up to him in school because he could do what we couldn’t and that was be the best at something that we wanted to be just as good at.
Yet for some reason when you saw the old football captain bagging groceries, you wondered exactly what was it that we thought so much about this guy, all those years ago?
We admire our pro athletes much more than the high school sports star. We admire them more because they are not accessible to us. We admire them more because they make so much money, fulfilling their dreams. Mostly, we admire them because they are fulfilling their dreams and we are not, so we live vicariously through them. They become our outlet in life and when they fail, it almost seems as though we fail.
How else can you explain that pit of the gut feeling that you get when your favorite team comes up short in the big game or when your favorite fighter gets knocked out in the title fight? You walk away feeling as though you lost and have the disappointment that lingers afterward.
So when a tragedy happens to one of our idols, it sticks with us. I think somehow it reminds us of our own mortality. If such things can happen to the men who can do only what we dream of, it surely can happen to us. These men had skill, money and fame; they trained hard and they had hearts big enough to pull them through the rough times. If they can come up short and have such things happen, how can we expect to pull through such things if needed?
I don’t really know for sure if my theory is “correct” as I am just taking a guess and playing amateur psychiatrist here. Of course, we know that the athletes which we admire are everyday people, who have everyday problems, which is kind of ironic since we turn to them to forget out everyday problems.
Without these guys to look up to and watch when we need an escape from the everyday and be entertained, who will help us have that moment of escape at one point or time that we all need? Even if it is just to relax and get away from life for a few moments.
I for one will continue to turn to them for my minutes of escape. To watch them live out their dreams, to excel at the things that I haven’t. I will look up at them as though they are just a little bit better off and happier then the average person. Except when I do, I will start realizing something, that they are still just everyday people.
Just ordinary men, like us.
