For three decades at the end of the 20th century - throughout boxing's
most engrossing era - James Lawton was ringside, covering every
significant bout, spending time with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Sugar
Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hitman Hearns, Roberto
Duran, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield and many other great
fighters.
Lawton found himself captivated by the sport as he followed it around
the world. From a big fight's initial announcement, through the
fighters' punishing training regimes, the overblown press conferences
and dramatic weigh-ins, up to the bout itself and its savage fall-out -
Lawton observed and absorbed it all, grateful for the remarkable access
he was afforded. He witnessed Ali screaming in pain for his
dressing-room lights to be turned out after a fight; he was there to
meet Tyson at the prison gates on his release in 1992; he listened as
former champions wept while struggling to find their new place in the
world. As part of a small, tight-knit group of sportswriters with the
privilege of covering each fight in such intimate detail, Lawton formed
lifelong friendships and found himself forever altered by being caught
up in the whirlwind of a sport at its most spellbinding.
A Ringside Affair brings that brilliant epoch back to life - and puts
it in the perspective it deserves. It salutes the epic quality of
boxing's last years of glory, retraces arguably the richest inheritance
bequeathed to any sport, and speculates on the possibility that we will
never see such fighting again. It is part celebration, part lament, but
perhaps most of all it is a personal record of some of most enthralling
and challenging days produced by the world's oldest sport.
