All the big hitters are here: scenes from the golden age of boxing
In 1891, in Thomas Edison’s makeshift film studio – a shack in West Orange, New Jersey – two men put on gloves and solemnly set about the serious business of battering each other senseless while Edison’s camera steadily watched. The resulting film, Men Boxing, lasted just a few seconds. There was no crowd, no purse and no title at stake; the fighters don’t even have names. Yet the entire history of modern boxing – the transformation of an act of violence into a spectator sport – was captured in that moment. Cinema had found its ideal subject and boxing the perfect machine to turn it into a global phenomenon. This is where John Sutherland begins 97 Fights, his odd, brisk, learned and frequently appalling history of modern boxing.
