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A Philosophy Professor and a Boxing Coach, Gordon Marino Wears Dissimilar Hats
A Philosophy Professor and a Boxing Coach, Gordon Marino Wears Dissimilar Hats
Academia and scholarship are prim and proper and generally take place in ivy-covered brick buildings.
The art and science of boxing are rough and rugged and usually situated in dank and musty gyms.
On the surface, at least, they couldn’t be more diametrically opposed.
Gordon Marino, a longtime philosophy professor and current Professor Emeritus and Director of the Hong Soren Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, has a different twist on the matter and actually sees an intersection between the two. In addition to teaching philosophy, Marino trains amateur boxers.
“Many would say they are antithetical. Even me sometimes. My wife [Susan] is a neuroscientist and was on the Cleveland Clinics Fighters’ Brain Health study,” said Marino, a leading scholar on Kierkegaard, the Danish existentialist philosopher, who lived from 1813 to 1855. “I know what kind of damage those hurricane blows can deliver and I get sick when I see a boxer taking a beating in a contest that should be stopped. Yes, I am ambivalent about building minds up and then putting them in danger.”
The sweet science and philosophy do seem to make for strange bedfellows.
“Philosophy is about acquiring wisdom and developing the virtues,” Marino said. “Again, with proper instruction, boxing can be fertile ground for those two endeavors.”
Marino, an amateur boxer who came close to turning professional, played wide receiver at Bowling Green State University in Ohio before transferring to Columbia. He went on to earn graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago. In addition to St. Olaf, he has taught at Yale, where he was an assistant football coach, at Harvard, at the University of Florida, and at Virginia Military Institute where he was the head boxing coach.
Marino explained being a college professor is in some ways like stepping into the ring.
“This might strike some readers as puzzling, but I should also mention that philosophy is a rather violent game. Scholars work for months or years to construct a theory and then others strive to find something wrong with the theory and take it down with an intellectual uppercut,” he said. “I can tell you from experience, being on the end of one of these uppercuts can make you feel pretty stupid and for my part I would much prefer a punch in the nose to one that knocks out my intellectual confidence.”
Having gone through the rigors and challenges of being a professor has also enabled Marino, who has written about boxing for a number of periodicals including The Wall Street Journal, to fully appreciate what boxers endure.
“I would like to think being a teacher has helped me be a better boxing coach. It has made me more adept at offering clear explanations and helped me to understand that students of both philosophy and the sweet science want to learn something new all the time,” he noted. “On the other side of the coin, my experience as a trainer has improved my work in the classroom. It has strengthened my ability to take better reads on my students and to know when and how to push them.”
Marino said growing up in a volatile household in New Jersey, he was looking for an escape hatch.
“I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in what would then have been considered a fairly violent environment,” he acknowledged. “I was smacked around at home on a daily basis, so in addition to the desire to learn how to defend myself, I suppose I wanted to kick some butt.”
“I was originally drawn to the violence and opportunity to express my anger,” he said of boxing’s appeal. “Let’s face it, everyone wants to be a tough guy and to receive their red badge of courage for overcoming five alarm fears.”
“In my late sixties and having calmed down a mite, I am more fascinated today by the courage, technique, resilience and resolve of fighters,” he said. “I also feel that in order to be a good, caring human being, we need to be able to deal with internal obstacles such as anxiety and anger.”
Marino continued: “There are very few places today where we can do some sparring with those challenging moods and emotions. With the right supervision, boxing provides a workshop for dealing with these feelings. For instance, following in the teaching of (the late trainer) Cus D’Amato, one of the lessons I pass onto my sub-novice competitive boxers is not to panic about feeling panicked. And that in order to be successful in the gloved game you are going to need to use, but control your aggression.”
Lessons are learned every single day and Marino used the manly sport to his advantage.
“I am better at taking life’s punches for having been in boxing,” he said. “And if you will excuse my moralizing, it seems to me that if you can’t take a punch, you won’t be able to do the right thing in life.”
Marino used an example from today’s headlines. “Consider the people and the cops who passively watched George Floyd have the life choked out of him. For the cops other than (Derek) Chauvin, intervening might have meant losing their job, i.e., taking a punch,” he said.
Marino wasn’t done. “Know thyself is one of the first philosophical commandments and if you have some muscle for self-reflection, you can certainly learn a lot about yourself in the ring,” he added. “Of course, the bruising game has also stamped in the importance of preparation and cultivated a little more control over my emotions than I would have had if I had spent my time on the links.”
One thing that Marino admires about pugilists is they go about their business essentially solo. Boxers walk figuratively naked into the ring.
“It is a truism to say that in boxing you are out there all alone. Boxers certainly reveal something about their will,” he explained. “When the leather starts flying you will be forced to ask yourself in public, just how far you are or aren’t willing to go to win.”
“For example, it could be that in learning to box and perhaps in sparring, you recognize you are too afraid to stay in the pocket. However, having grasped that, you push yourself and develop the courage to get inside and let your hands go.”
The second step is to remain in control of yourself despite what’s happening that may scare you.
In addition to cultivating control over emotions, said Marino, “(sports like boxing) nurture affiliations – strong and intimate bonds between people.”
On the other hand, there are negatives. “Just the same, make no mistake about it, sports can also poison character, especially when your guides to boxing or whatever are blind or indifferent to the issue of character,” Marino said.
It’s been said a wise man knows his limits and seeks out others as a way to enrich oneself. For Marino, that man was legendary trainer Angelo Dundee.
“About 15 years ago, I was assigned to write an online story on Ang for Men’s Health. I went to Florida to meet with him at the South Florida Boxing Gym, where he was still training fighters. He must have been in his late seventies, but he was a ball of positive energy.”
Marino could sense the experience was going to elicit a wealth of information from a man who trained 16 world champions.
“Like Muhammad Ali, Ang had a heavyweight love for people, as well as a sparkling sense of humor. Maya Angelou once remarked, ‘that you might not remember what a person says, but you’ll surely remember how they made you feel.’ Ang made so many of us, his friends, feel special. I loved the man,” he said.
It’s something that Dundee said that still resonates with Marino. “Of course, as a coach, I pumped him for his knowledge of strategy and technique,” he recalled. “Now and again, he would give me a piece of advice to which I would have to protest. ‘Ang, I can’t use that with amateurs.’ A [Sigmund] Freud of sorts, he taught me that when you have a boxer who won’t listen, as Ali often wouldn’t, praise him for doing what you want him to do, even though he or she might not be doing it.”
Having covered boxing for 15 years for The Wall Street Journal, Marino said the stint helped him immensely as a coach.
“Every time I met an elite fighter, I would ask him or her to teach me one of their signature moves,” he said. “Sometimes they were a little guarded about this – for example, Oscar De La Hoya just told me – ‘exhale on your big punches.’ But most of them came right back with something I could bring home.”
Manny Pacquiao was extremely helpful. “Tell them to always throw six punch combos on the bag or shadow boxing, because they will turn into two punches in the ring,” explained the eight-division world champion.
Roy Jones Jr. was equally insightful, according to Marino, who asked Roy about throwing a right hand.
“Lean right, lean left, lean back right, but this time as you are leaning right, throw your right,” he said.
The late Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward rendered this advice to Marino: “Don’t put too much weight on the front foot and when you throw your hook, turn your arm into a steel bar,” he said.
Mike Tyson, the youngest-ever heavyweight champion, gave Marino this tidbit: “Dip down a few times and jab to the solar plexus. The counter is, of course, a right hand,” he said. “Now, dip, load up your legs, feint the jab and fire your right. If you are lucky, the other guy will be coming in with his right and blam, good night.”
Sugar Ray Leonard forked over this gem just before Leonard’s wife kicked Marino out of the house: “When you are fighting a southpaw, feint the left hook and fire a wide right to the head,” he said.
Pacquiao, a left-hander, should have remembered this lesson before he faced Juan Manuel Marquez on December 8, 2012, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, when he was knocked out by a thunderous overhand right in the sixth round, Marino suggested.
For Gordon Marino, the path to knowledge and wisdom can be found almost anywhere, whether they’re in books, lecture halls or the squared circle.
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Japan’s magnificent Naoya Inoue, appearing in his twenty-fourth title fight, scored his 11th straight stoppage tonight while successfully defending his unified super bantamweight title, advancing his record to 29-0 (26 KOs) at the expense of Ye Joon Kim. The match at Tokyo’s Ariake Arena came to an end at the 2:25 mark of round four when U.S. referee Mark Nelson tolled “10” over the brave but overmatched Korean.
Kim, raised in a Seoul orphanage, had a few good moments, but the “Monster” found his rhythm in the third round, leaving Kim with a purplish welt under his left eye. In the next frame, he brought the match to a conclusion, staggering the Korean with a left and then finishing matters with an overhand right that put Kim on the seat of his pants, dazed and wincing in pain.
Kim, who brought a 21-2-2 record, took the fight on 10 days’ notice, replacing Australia’s Sam Goodman who suffered an eye injury in sparring that never healed properly, forcing him to withdraw twice.
Co-promoter Bob Arum, who was in the building, announced that Inoue’s next fight would happen in Las Vegas in the Spring. Speculation centers on Mexico City’s Alan Picasso (31-0-1, 17 KOs) who is ranked #1 by the WBC. However, there’s also speculation that the 31-year-old Inoue may move up to featherweight and seek to win a title in a fifth weight class, in which case a potential opponent is the winner of the Feb. 2 match between Brandon Figueroa and Stephen Fulton. In “olden days,” this notion would have been dismissed as the Japanese superstar and Figueroa/Fulton have different promoters, but the arrival of Turki Alalshikh, the sport’s Daddy Warbucks, has changed the dynamic. Tonight, Naoya Inoue made his first start as a brand ambassador for Riyadh Season.
Simmering on the backburner is a megafight with countryman Junto Nakatani, an easy fight to make as Arum has ties to both. However, the powers-that-be would prefer more “marination.”
Inoue has appeared twice in Las Vegas, scoring a seventh-round stoppage of Jason Moloney in October of 2020 at the MGM Bubble and a third-round stoppage of Michael Dasmarinas at the Virgin Hotels in June of 2021.
Semi-wind-up
In a 12-round bout for a regional welterweight title, Jin Sasaki improved to 19-1-1 (17) with a unanimous decision over Shoki Sakai (29-15-3). The scores were 118-110, 117-111, and 116-112.
Also
In a bout in which both contestants were on the canvas, Toshiki Shimomachi (20-1-3) edged out Misaki Hirano (11-2), winning a majority decision. A 28-year-old Osaka southpaw with a fan-friendly style, the lanky Shimomachi, unbeaten in his last 22 starts, competes as a super bantamweight. A match with Inoue may be in his future.
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Model turned fighter Eric Priest jabbed and jolted his way into the super middleweight rankings with a shutout decision win over veteran Tyler Howard on Thursday.
In his first main event Priest (15-0, 8 KOs) proved ready for contender status by defusing every attack Tennessee’s Howard (20-3, 11 KOs) could muster at Commerce Casino, the second fight in six days at the LA County venue.
All ticket monies collected on the Folden Boy Promotions card were contributed to the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation as they battle wildfires sprouting all over Los Angeles County due to high winds.
Priest, 26, had never fought anyone near Howard’s caliber but used a ramrod jab to keep the veteran off-balance and unable to muster a forceful counter-attack. Round after round the Korean-American fighter pumped left jabs while circling his opposition.
Though hit with power shots, none seemed to faze Howard but his own blows were unable to put a dent in Priest. After 10 rounds of the same repetitive action all three judges scored the fight 100-90 for Priest who now wins a regional super middleweight title.
Priest also joins the top 15 rankings of the WBA organization.
In a fight between evenly matched middleweights, Jordan Panthen (11-0, 9 KOs) remained undefeated after 10 rounds versus DeAundre Pettus (12-4, 7 KOs). Though equally skilled, Panthen simply out-worked the South Caroliina fighter to win by unanimous decision. No knockdowns were scored.
Other Bouts
Grant Flores (8-0, 6 KOs) knocked out Costa Rica’s David Lobo Ramirez (17-4, 12 KOs) with two successive right uppercuts at 2:59 of the second round of the super welterweight fight.
Cayden Griffith (3-0, 3 KOs) used a left hook to the body to stop Mark Misiura at 1:43 of the second round in a super welterweight bout.
Jordan Fuentes (3-0) floored Brandon Badillo (0-3-1) in the third round and proceeded to win by decision after four rounds in a super bantamweight fight.
A super featherweight match saw Leonardo Sanchez (8-0) win by decision over Joseph Cruz Brown (10-12) after six rounds.
Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy
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Many proclaim super bantamweight world champ Naoya Inoue to be the best fighter in the world today. It’s a serious debate among boxing pundits.
Is he Japan’s best fighter ever?
Inoue (28-0, 25 KOs) takes another step toward immortality when he meets Korea’s Ye Joon Kim (21-2-2, 13 KOs) on Friday Jan. 24, at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan. ESPN+ will stream the Top Rank and Ohashi Promotions card.
Inoue defends the IBF, WBC, WBA and WBO world titles.
This is Inoue’s third defense of the undisputed super bantamweight division that he won when he defeated Philippines’ Marlon Tapales in December 2023.
Japan has always been a fighting nation, a country derived from a warrior culture like Mexico, England, Russia, Germany and a few others. Professional boxing has always thrived in Japan.
My first encounter with Japanese fighters took place in March 1968 at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. It was my first visit to the famous boxing venue, though my father had performed there during the 1950s. I was too young to attend any of his fights and then he retired.
The main event featured featherweights Jose Pimentel of Mexico against Sho Saijo of Japan. Both had fought a month earlier with the Mexican from Jalisco winning by split decision.
Pimentel was a friend of my female cousin and gave my father tickets to the fight. My family loved boxing as most Latino families worldwide do, including those in the USA. It’s a fact that most sports editors for newspapers and magazines fail to realize. Latinos love boxing.
We arrived late at the boxing venue located on Grand Avenue and 18th street. My father was in construction and needed to pick me up in East L.A. near Garfield High School. Fights were already underway when we arrived at the Olympic Auditorium.
It was a packed arena and our seats were fairly close to the boxing ring. As the fighters were introduced and descended to the ring, respectful applause greeted Saijo. He had nearly defeated Pimentel in their first clash a month earlier in this same venue. Los Angeles fans respect warriors. Saijo was a warrior.
Both fighters fought aggressively with skill. Every round it seemed Saijo got stronger and Pimentel got weaker. After 10 strong rounds of back-and-forth action, Saijo was declared the winner this time. Some fans booed but most agreed that the Japanese fighter was stronger on this day. And he was stronger still when they met a third time in 1969 when Saijo knocked out Pimentel in the second round for the featherweight world title.
That was my first time witnessing Japan versus Mexico. Over the decades, I’ve seen many clashes between these same two countries and always expect riveting battles from Japanese fighters.
I was in the audience in Cancun, Mexico when then WBC super featherweight titlist Takashi Miura clashed with Sergio Thompson for 12 rounds in intense heat in a covered bull ring. After that fight that saw three knockdowns between them, the champion, though victorious, was taken out on a stretcher due to dehydration.
There are so many others going back to Fighting Harada in the 1960s that won championships. And what about all the other Japanese fighters who never got the opportunity to fight for a world title due to the distance from America and Europe?
Its impossible to determine if Inoue is the greatest Japanese fighter ever. But without a doubt, he is the most famous. Publications worldwide include him on lists of the top three fighters Pound for Pound.
Few experts are familiar with Korea’s Kim, but expect a battle nonetheless. These two countries are rivals in Asian boxing.
Golden Boy at Commerce Casino
Middleweights Eric Priest and Tyler Howard lead a Golden Boy Promotions fight card on Thursday, Jan. 23, at Commerce Casino in Commerce, CA. DAZN will stream the boxing card.
All ticket money will go to the Los Angele Fire Department Foundation.
Kansas-based Priest (14-0, 8 KOs) meets Tennessee’s Tyler Howard (20-2, 11 KOs) in the main event in a match set for 10 rounds.
Others on the card are super welterweights Jordan Panthen (10-0) and Grant Flores (7-0) in separate bouts and super lightweight Cayden Griffith seeking a third consecutive win. Doors open at 5 p.m.
Diego Pacheco at Las Vegas
Super middleweight contender Diego Pacheco (22-0, 18 KOs) defends his regional titles against Steve Nelson (20-0, 16 KOs) at the Chelsea Theater at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas on Saturday, Jan. 25. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.
It’s not an easy fight for Pacheco.
“I’ve been fighting for six years as a professional and I’m 22-0 and I’m 23 years old. I feel I’m stepping into my prime now,” said Pacheco, who trains with Jose Benavidez.
Also on the card is Olympic gold medalist Andy Cruz and Southern California’s dangerous super lightweight contender Ernesto Mercado in separate fights.
Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)
Thurs. DAZN 6 p.m. Eric Priest (14-0) vs Tyler Howard (20-2).
Fri. ESPN+ 1:15 a.m. Naoya Inoue (28-0) vs Ye Joon Kim (21-2-2).
Sat. DAZN 9:15 a.m. Dalton Smith (16-0) vs Walid Ouizza (19-2); Ellie Scotney (9-0) vs Mea Motu (20-0).
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Diego Pacheco (22-0) vs Steve Nelson (20-0).
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Eric Priest Wins Handily on Thursday’s Golden Boy card at the Commerce Casino
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Japanese Superstar Naoya Inoue is Headed to Vegas after KOing Ye Joon Kim
Eric Priest Wins Handily on Thursday’s Golden Boy card at the Commerce Casino
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Mizuki Hiruta Dominates in her U.S. Debut and Omar Trinidad Wins Too at Commerce
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Bygone Days: The Largest Crowd Ever at Madison Square Garden Sees Zivic TKO Armstrong
Jai Opetaia Brutally KOs David Nyika, Cementing his Status as the World’s Top Cruiserweight
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Don’t Underestimate Gloria Alvarado, an Unconventional Boxing Coach
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Featured Articles3 weeks agoR.I.P. Paul Bamba (1989-2024): The Story Behind the Story
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Featured Articles4 weeks agoFor Whom the Bell Tolled: 2024 Boxing Obituaries PART ONE (Jan.-June)
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Featured Articles3 weeks agoFor Whom the Bell Tolled: 2024 Boxing Obituaries PART TWO: (July-Dec.)
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Featured Articles4 weeks agoOleksandr Usyk is the TSS 2024 Fighter of the Year
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Featured Articles2 weeks agoJai Opetaia Brutally KOs David Nyika, Cementing his Status as the World’s Top Cruiserweight
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