mostly i would learn from every tape and every silent film i saw and not from any one boxer. the mystery of the sport is hidden inside every bout you see from leonard dorin to barney ross. you must look closely.

but i am reminded now of the time when as a boy i met the profoundest chess player that there was around my way. whenever i would play him he would violently tear me to shreds with an ominous kind of calm that i had only seen at the end of old west shoot out movies. he was sharp. even in times that i had captured more of his material and was (at least i assumed so) in the seat of power - maybe a rook here, a few pawns there, perhaps even his queen - he would out of nowhere swoop down like a deadly hawk and defeat me every time without fail. for a while i used to think he was some kinda cheat -- i mean how does he suddenly beat me as easy as he does even when i would seem to be ahead -- but the man was no cheat, he was simply that sharp. i only played him a few times and never saw him after those bombardments but the questions of how he did this to me would spin around in my mind for years. i would later come to find that in truth every move that i would make was not made by me but instead by him. yes i would take my bishops or whatever and move them around myself but only ever because he would draw me out to do so. he would leave open say a rook for me to take from him (and i would like a dummy) or put a bishop in the line of my queen to make me move around my pawns in front to make her safe (and i would like a dummy) and by way of this he would deliberately manipulate my distribution of material to ultimately make a defensive lapse for that one final blow. every move i made was shepherded by his invisible hand and he would walk me into invisible traps i had no idea were even there. this lesson i would translate to boxing but also for the many other facets of life. because truly life is like boxing and boxing is truly like chess. this i think is the real prize to take from the sport, not the fame or money, but the revelation of strategy.