http://www.boxingnewsonline.net JUNE 27, 2019 lBOXING NEWSl 23THE LAST FIGHT
Most boxers, even those
lucky enough to go out on
a win, fight past their peaks
as their bodies and minds
plead for them to stop.
Elliot Worsell investigates
E knew it was the end before it
had even begun. He knew it was
the end because it felt different
to the beginning, and the middle,
and how it felt last week. Gone
was the 21-year-old who won the
world title a decade earlier. Gone,
too, was the 31-year-old who
had recently been hitting times and heights of old in
training, convincing himself his next opponent was
tailor-made for him.
Now struck by a feeling too unusual and strong to
ignore, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, moments before
battle, chose not to. He turned to his assistant trainer,
Ted Fagan, in their changing room and outed himself,
first as doubtful, then prematurely retired. He told
Fagan he didn’t want to be there anymore. He told
him he didn’t want to do it – fight, pretend – anymore.
“What?” said Fagan, incredulous.
Mancini, the former WBA lightweight champion,
repeated his sin.
“It’s a hell of a time to tell me, ain’t it?”
Though he yearned to either stay put or escape,
Mancini made it to the ring that night, just as he had
done 33 times before, and prepared for the pain that
was to follow. It wasn’t a fight he was walking into; it
was the most predictable and necessary of defeats.
He was finished, he knew that much, but only when
finished in the ring would it stop.
“I can remember and tell you things from fights
30 years ago, but I can’t tell you anything about the
walk to the ring the night I fought Greg Haugen,”
Mancini said. “It’s all a blur. It’s not like I don’t want to
remember it. I just can’t.”
Ask Mancini how long his professional boxing
career lasted and he will tell you it lasted five-and-
a-half years rather than the 12-and-a-half his record
indicates. He will try to convince himself as much
as you that it ended in 1985, following a second
loss to Livingstone Bramble, and that subsequent
outings in 1989 and 1992 were mere vanity projects,
fights accepted for all the wrong reasons. He calls
the Hector Camacho fight a robbery. He calls the
Greg Haugen fight, finished in the seventh round, a
mistake.
“I was doing an off-Broadway play and not being
physically challenged,” said Mancini. “I was still in
shape and wanted to show I could get up and fight
in a world-class event again. I had a great training
camp but in the dressing room knew I didn’t have it
mentally anymore. I didn’t want to be there.”
A boxer’s last fight tends to be spared the
ceremony of a footballer’s last match or an athlete’s
last run and in place of a lap of honour they will
experience the most dishonourable kind of beating,
one handed out not so much by an opponent’s fists
but the sport itself. The opponent, in fact, is merely
an inconsequential third party, no more than a
bystander. They are the salacious text message on a
phone. They are the person whose underwear ➤H
FAIRYTALE FINISH:
Froch prepares to knock out
George Groves in
their rematch
Photo: ACTION IMAGES