Buy this book on-line BUTLER, FRANK: : THE GOOD,THE BAD AND THE UGLY: The Story of BoxingLONDON.STANLEY PAUL,1986. ISBN 0091661102.
UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.NFINE/NFINE.No owner inscrptn,no price-clip to dw/dj.
Colour photographic sporting scene [Clay v. Liston,1964] to upper wrap and b/w sporting scenes [Turpin v. Sugar Ray Robinson,1951 + Joe Louis k.o'ing Billy Conn] photographic rear wrap.Minimal shelf-wear - miniscule rubbing to upper wrap's bottom corners and negligible creasing to dw/dj's edges - no nicks or tears present,head+foot of spine/
backstrip minimally bumped with miniscule reciprocal creases.Top edge very lightly aged and minimally spotted/foxed,fore-edge clean and unfoxed; contents bright,crisp,tight and near pristine, though the book is very,very slightly cocked.Bright,clean,red paper-covered bds with bright,crisp,stamped gilt letters to spine/backstrip and near immaculate,plain white eps.8vo, 2-216pp includes half-title +title pages,contents list,46 chapters in 5 book parts,16pp contemporary b/w photographs and an index.
The distinguished columnist Frank Butler,
until recently (then 1986) Fleet Street's longest serving sports editor,draws on more than fifty years' experience at the ringside for this fascinating history of the fight game.Offering an in-depth look at 'the good,the bad and the ugly' aspects of world boxing,he mounts an eloquent and forceful defence of a sport that from its beginnings in ancient Greece has been surrounded by controversy.
Frank Butler looks at all-time greats of the game like Sugar Ray Robinson,Joe Louis,Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler who fought their way up from poverty and back-street squalor to become household names.He looks,too,at corruption and crooked practices in the sport and at the exploitation of gullible fighters by ruthless promoters,gangsters and con-men like 'King Con' Harold J. Smith - once famous for his lavish promotions and huge purses but now serving a long gaol sentence for embezzling 21 million dollars.
Legendary champions like Louis and Ezzard Charles died sick and, through mismanagement,penniless,though their fights grossed millions,while Sonny Liston
- said to be run by the mob - met a mysterious and lonely death.Frank Butler tells their stories,and the stories of three more world beaters who met tragic fates in the bleak aftermath of retirement:Freddie Mills and Randolph Turpin,both suicide victims,and Jackie Paterson,killed in a drunken brawl.
Finally,he considers boxers who have brought something special to the fight game:Muhammad Ali, who helped to change the face of world boxing:British 'Nice-Guy' Henry Cooper,and the 'Warrior of Peace' Barry McGuigan,Ireland's finest boxer for two decades who,when he fights in Belfast,succeeds where generations of politicians have failed - in uniting Catholic and Protestant.Furnished with a wealth of inside stories from ring and dressing-room,and generously illustrated,
this is an expert and brilliantly entertaining guide to boxing over the last
half century by one of the game's most informed and articulate observers.Butler was Fleet street's longest serving sports editor and columnist.Son of a famous boxing writer,James Butler,he was privileged to sit in ringside press seats while a schoolboy in the 'twenties.He went
to Fleet Street in the early 'thirties and
began reporting boxing,covering his first
world title fight when 21 and going on to cover battles featuring Joe Louis,Sugar Ray Robinson,Rocky Marciano and many more super-champions in America.A national
award-winning columnist,Butler received the OBE for services to sports journalism.
Though regarded as one of boxing's sternest critics,he was invited to become
an administrative steward of the British Boxing Board of Control.Butler's long record at the ringside home and abroad qualifies him to comment authoritatively on the fight game.
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