The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226346205
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017-04-06T06:00:00+00:00

POSTFIGHT: YOUR INTELLIGENCE COME UP

Inspecting the shelves of the cosmetics and vitamins aisle of a Whole Foods Market in Las Vegas, lethally taut and hard amid products that vied to outdo one another in gentle harmlessness, Bernard Hopkins was the very embodiment of Raymond Chandler’s tarantula on a slice of angel food cake. He was talking on the phone with his lawyer. “I’ll fight whoever I can make more money with,” Hopkins said. “Whoever step up, I’ll fight him. Then the other one.” When the call was over he put a series of searching questions to a young woman manning a display table loaded with designer soap, and came away with an aromatic armload of purple and white bars. “Two for six dollars,” he said, grimacing with pleasure. Holding my gaze, he advanced his face to within inches of mine, as if inspecting me minutely for signs of insensitivity to a bargain. “Two for six! Smell this shit!” He waved a bar under my nose and went off around the corner into the next aisle, calling to Malik Chambers, a longtime member of his carefully chosen crew, “Get me some of that coconut water.” To me, he said, “No tap water. Never. And no white rice. Worst thing for you.”

It’s a never-ending source of offense to Hopkins that people are surprised to discover he’s so abstemious and measured in his habits, such a paragon of deferred gratification and fiscal prudence and other traditional Calvinist virtues of a capitalist society’s model citizen. Yes, he’s a miracle of longevity in a violently unforgiving trade and upward mobility from an extremely unpromising start in life, but at this point he’s also exactly the abstemious and measured type: a fiftyish guy with plenty of money who lives in the suburbs, associates with similarly moneyed professionals, works long hours, manages his investments with care, works out obsessively, eats whole grains and kale and egg whites, and derives a certain quiet upper-middle-class joy from shopping at Whole Foods. Such guys don’t often have the Raymond Rosen projects and Graterford Prison on their CVs, though.

We left the store and got back in the car—a black SUV, because if there’s a fighter with a title involved, especially in Las Vegas, you can usually count on a black SUV. Chambers, who was driving, held up the World Boxing Association (WBA) championship belt with one hand and said, “It’s a piece of junk and you can quote me. I don’t answer to nobody but God, and everybody else can kiss my ass.” Hopkins and his crew do not get sentimentally attached to titles, but belts do lead to bigger paydays, and the WBA light heavyweight title was one of two that he would be defending in his next fight. It was July, 2014, and he was in Las Vegas to help tout the Canelo Alvarez–Erislandy Lara bout for Golden Boy Promotions, but he was also negotiating to determine his own next opponent. Adonis Stevenson, a southpaw who loaded up big

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