S.L. Price Talks About the Disappearing American Heavyweight and More

S.L. Price Talks About the Disappearing American Heavyweight and More

Multi award-winning journalist and author S.L. Price likes to call himself a “parachute guy,” meaning he goes from venue to venue covering Grand Slam tennis events, the Olympics, the World Cup or the NBA Finals and then leaves for the next assignment.

Price graduated from the University of North Carolina and covered Michael Jordan’s sophomore season with the Tar Heels. A Sports Illustrated senior writer from 1994 to 2019, he earned his spurs as a columnist and feature writer at the Miami Herald and a columnist and NBA beat writer for the Sacramento Bee. The latest of his four books, titled “Playing Through The Whistle: Steel, Football And An American Town,” looks at the high school football team in the economically depressed western Pennsylvania town of Aliquippa which has produced the likes of Mike Ditka, Tony Dorsett, Darrelle Rivas and Ty Law, to name a few.

“I’ve covered a lot of big sporting events but there is nothing like a heavyweight championship fight,” said Price in a conversation that veered into the disappearance of the American heavyweight.

Consider that four of the current top 10 ranked heavyweights are from the United Kingdom.
They are No. 1 Tyson Fury, No. 3 Anthony Joshua, No. 5 Joe Joyce and No. 7 Dillian Whyte.
Only two are native-born Americans: No. 4 Deontay Wilder and No. 6 Andy Ruiz Jr.

The others are No. 2 Usyk, No. 8 Joseph Parker who is from New Zealand, No. 9 Luis Ortiz, a Cuban who has taken up residence in the U.S., and No. 10 Filip Hrgovic who hails from Croatia.

That a top-tier athlete would pick basketball, football and baseball over boxing isn’t surprising and can be explained in part by the immediate and future amount of money that’s available.

A top-five pick in the NBA is going to get a boatload of guaranteed cash in his initial contract. The NFL isn’t guaranteed money, but it’s going to be substantial, especially after his rookie contract.

Price explained why boxing, once wildly popular in the United States, can now be categorized as a fringe sport. (Let’s not say boxing doesn’t have a loyal following, because it certainly does, but the overall numbers aren’t as high as football, basketball or baseball.)

“If you look at when boxing was at its absolute prime, starting in the early 20th century until 1984, or a little after, it was central in the culture, just like baseball and horse racing,” explained Price. “We were a celebratory immigrant culture, and this is one of the few ways that immigrants came up and were able to climb on the ladder of the American Dream. I’m going to be a boxer so my son can become a doctor, so my grandson can become an artist. It was part of the ladder.”

“And I don’t think it’s any mistake that boxing is not the only one that faded. Horse racing has also become marginal, and baseball is no longer the national pastime, no matter how much they want to sell it that way. No matter how many cornfields they go into. It just isn’t. The NFL is.”

Price added: “Things do go in cycles but the fact is that this is a massive cycle that isn’t changing any time soon and the biggest reason is the rise of television,” he postulated. “The problem is the sport, as it became covered more and more, the damages of the sport became more and more apparent. The damage that it does to the human brain, which you could sense early on even before the sciences stepped up and really explained it,” he said. “It brought home the base savagery of what the sport is: that you are beating up another man in public. There is something appealing [about boxing] to the human male heart but also the heart in general [but] there is also something repelling about it and television magnified it.”

“[Boxing] is still a lower-class entryway,” noted Price, who has had his work added nine times to the Best American Sports Writing series, “but we are far more protective now…Middle-class mothers and fathers are never going to send their sons to boxing. It’s CTE on steroids [and today] there are many elements working against lower-class desperation or lack of choice.”

The turbulent 1960s saw the rise of the outspoken athlete. Muhammad Ali kicked it off and Jim Brown and Bill Russell followed suit as did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

What they were selling appealed to left-wing intellectuals, said Price.

“I’m going to speak about its social importance when it comes to something like Joe Louis and the progress of African-Americans in our country and then Muhammad Ali becomes a progressive icon because of his opposition to the Vietnam War,” he pointed out. “He was an important figure outside the ring. That made boxing palatable and fashionable for a time…Once they couldn’t dress it up as a political, social event to wholly embrace, it became a niche sport.”

Serious writers like Ernest Hemingway, Gay Talese, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer and Budd Schulberg have all been drawn to the sweet science.

“It’s incredibly appealing to a writer. It’s like a foot race. It’s all there for you. It’s incredibly appealing and the boxers are incredibly articulate,” Price said. “There is no pretense.”

Boxing is also so elemental. “Every combat sport is derived from boxing, says Price. “Tennis is boxing at a distance. You’re probing for weakness and you’re trying to score points and you’re trying to knock the guy out. It just happens with a racket and balls and not your fists. There is always something appealing about performance and exercise for power for an individual.”

There’s no denying that the American heavyweight, once the king of the mountain is, at least for now, a fading breed, something truly unthinkable just a few decades ago. Still, during the ring walk of a heavyweight fight, it’s a prelude to what’s in store and when it’s good, it’s truly outstanding.

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