![]() ![]() But, more than that, they envy his capacity to believe.įucking Ray'll believe anything, they say. ![]() The regulars at table twenty-four enjoy the whole bit, from mannerism to mantra, the way it ends with Ray pressing fingers to his lips. Mancini's devotional rituals do not change. Red sauce, pink sauce, white sauce, or grilled. Īlmost three decades later, Ray Mancini mumbles a prayer as a waiter sets the plate before him. And between rounds, he issued a muttering prophesy: Something bad's going to happen. One of the television announcers had seen it before. What's he got to do? wondered the champion's corner man. But his manner of combat, the eagerness with which he endured abuse, seemed to gentle the condition of his birth, as if he'd descended from the Hwarang knights who famously admonished against retreat.īy now, both fighters were purplish and quilted with bruises.Īnd as the champion went wearily to his corner, he wondered what the fuck Bill Cosby was doing there and why he was speaking in that Fat Albert voice. The challenger, for his part, had no father to speak of, a source of great embarrassment back in his native Korea. I never took a step back, he told his son. Each passing round became an homage to the champion's father, who had been a fighter himself. T's ass?īut against almost every expectation, this fight was even better than a movie. Hey, people would ask, when you gonna kick that Mr. And during this brief moment in American life the public observed little distinction between flesh and fable, between Boom Boom Mancini and Rocky Balboa. This was America's champion: symbolically potent, demographically perfect. Bill Cosby left his seat to volunteer advice in the champion's corner. One could see Sinatra transfixed, his admiration palpable. The longer it went, this stubborn accrual of brutalities, the more it thrilled - not just the millions watching at home - but his fellow celebrities at ringside. (Warning: This post contains adult language.) A story of loss and redemption and the bonds between fathers and sons, The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini by Mark Kriegel takes readers from the sweaty fight gyms of 1940s Brooklyn to the glamorous, if corrupt, televised fights of the 1980s, tracing the arcs of the very different careers of the Mancini men while depicting their personal relationships with the ring. But another tragedy awaited the younger Mancini - this time in the ring itself. Growing up in the shadow of his father - whose own boxing career was tragically cut short by injuries sustained in WWII - Ray vowed to win the world championship title and national glory that Lenny, the original Boom Boom, had missed out on. ![]() In the 1980s, Ray Mancini was a national hero the real-life Rocky who rose from the gritty streets of Youngstown, Ohio, to become boxing's All-American Boy. ![]()
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