In Which We Attempt to Praise Buzz Bissinger
Obviously, I travel in certain circles on the web (certain very elite circles ... I mean, if you’re not on the forums over at the World Boxing Video Archive, then you are nowhere baby). But in my travels, I have not yet seen one, not ONE, defense of ole Buzz Bissinger and his “you confounded kids” anti-blog Black Bart rant the other night on Costas. ↵↵Which occurs to me as a challenge. And so, this afternoon, I come to praise Buzz Bissinger, if only for the fascination of what’s difficult.↵
- ↵↵⇥↵⇥It’s very clear to me that Buzz has crossed over to the Dark Side of the Force and I dig that. He felt his rage growing one night and Darth was all, “feel your anger Buzz, feel it make you stronger…” and Obi-Wan was all “anger will get you nowhere Buzz, let it go” and then Yoda chimed in with “nowhere it will get you anger” or some crap like that and Buzz said, “I’m with the big dude in the black helmet.”
- ↵⇥He had to know he looked like an idiot up there, just had to. I just don’t see any way that he could have walked off that stage and thought, “YEAH! I really stuck it to ‘em… heh heh… he’d only read The Professional but not the newspaper columns… moron…” No way. The guy made an utter fool of himself on national television and he’s never going to be allowed to forget it. All because he was worked up to the point of a coronary and he just didn’t give a got-damn. This is worthy of praise. I have a real soft spot in my heart for all practitioners of the Sacred Tao of Damn-The-Torpedoes.
- ↵⇥As a fight fan, I couldn’t help but handicap a potential throwdown up there, and though later on Leitch in his wrap-up wrote something like, “well, of course I could have punched him in the nose,” I’m thinking, yo son, it’s best you didn’t try. I’m a pretty seasoned handicapper of the fight game, and I put Buzz at -350. That was being generous to Captain Deadspin, I thought. Had the bell rung, I think we might have had Tyson/Spinks on our hands.
- ↵⇥The name of W.C. Heinz was invoked. In a manner that I’m quite sure had ole W.C. uttering epigrammatic epithets in his grave, but nevertheless, it’s not like Heinz comes up a lot in a public forum these days, let alone The Professional, the greatest frickin boxing novel ever written.
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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