From Our Authors | October 06, 2023

Recently, TMR intern Michael Fegan interviewed Alexander Ramirez about his essay “On Defeat and Diego,” which was a runner-up for the 30th Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Ramirez’s personal meditations on prizefighting first appeared in TMR issue 44.2 (Summer 2021). You can read the essay here.

Michael Fegan: Boxing and writing are very different activities. What got you into writing?

Alexander Ramirez: I probably got into writing because there was always plenty of reading material in my home. I read newspapers and magazines and comic books. My dad had subscriptions to Ring Magazine and KO Magazine. He collected back issues of Sports Illustrated. So, when I think of sports, I think of sports literature, too. I remember the 1990s well, and I remember missing plenty of games and fights on television, and the only way I could experience them was through the words of a sportswriter.

MF: In your notes “From the Author,” you discuss how boxing can illuminate social issues. For instance, Jack Johnson’s career can help us think about “race relations in America at the turn of the twentieth century.” Can you expand on the social value of boxing?

AR: Everyone I have ever known seems to be reeling, in one way or another, from the major world events of the twentieth century. For example, both sides of my family were transplanted to California because of the Bracero Program instituted during the Second World War. The popularity of state-sanctioned pugilism sprawls across the twentieth century, creating vivid portals into the past. It’s one thing to hear that Jim Jeffries, former heavyweight champion of the world, was persuaded to come out of retirement to challenge Jack Johnson, the first Black man to hold the title. It’s another thing to learn that more than six hundred writers were on hand in Reno to transmit more than a million words of copy through Western Union; that the fight was staged on the Fourth of July; that the band played a song called “All Coons Look Alike to Me” as Johnson stepped through the ropes to defend his title. To understand why the identity of the World Heavyweight Champion was important to people at any given point in history, you’ll also have to learn a great deal about geopolitics. Adolf Hitler was deeply invested in the outcome of the return match between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis. An expatriated James Baldwin saw fit to return to the United States to sit ringside and report on Sonny Liston’s second demolition of Floyd Patterson. Whenever people collide with money and each other, stories burst into being. Accessing these portals have helped me understand why the world is the way it’s been throughout my lifetime. And the history of prizefighting is more than a ledger of wins and losses and title changes and gate receipts. I’m convinced that many of the stark truths of contemporary American life are embedded in this history.

MF: Throughout “On Defeat and Diego” you refer to boxing as a language. What does this mean to you, and do you think that this language can express certain things better than verbal language?

AR: Boxing is body language, certainly. There are standard rules of engagement, so all practitioners will find an expression that suits their bodies and their temperaments. James Toney held his guard differently than Winky Wright. George Foreman used his jab differently than most. Roy Jones Jr. flouted many rules with great success for a long time. They were all athletes of the highest caliber, and the ways they performed defined their character. Pugilists and pundits will sometimes refer to the boxing ring as a “chamber of truth,” and I love the metaphor. Fighters will face resistance. They don’t get a teammate to step into the ring with them and take on some of the responsibility. There’s no debate or interlocution portion of a boxing match. Once the promotional tour is over, the combatants have their mouths stopped by their mouthpieces. As a boxer, you just have your hands. Your opponent has hands, too. And that reality makes the result of the contest undeniable in most cases.

MF: As someone who knows the language of boxing, how is your interpretation of it different from a more casual viewer of the sport?

AR: I’ve noticed that some fights and their results can be effectively illegible to the casual viewer. That is, the casual fan will sometimes grossly misread what they’ve witnessed in a boxing match. Over the years, I’ve noticed that the second fight between Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson seems to be one contest that many people are able recall. This was the fight where Tyson was disqualified for biting a chunk of Holyfield’s ear off. And what the casual fan seems to take away from that spectacle is the madness and barbarism of the offender. It doesn’t seem to occur to the casual viewer, at least not at first, that Tyson was simply looking for a way out—that he wanted to quit. Tyson was a phenomenon in the eighties. He was one of the sport’s finest knockout artists. But Holyfield possessed a strength of character that he could never overcome. Tyson knew, of course, that biting ears was against the rules, and that’s precisely why he did it. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t a big, bad barbarian. Holyfield was just better. And Tyson’s actions that night were nothing less than an acknowledgment of his opponent’s mental and physical superiority. He conceded that fight.

MF: Do you have any ongoing projects? What can we expect from you in the future?

AR: I took “On Defeat and Diego” with me to Colgate University as an Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in 2021, and I spent my time there researching and writing essays in the same vein. My work on that collection is ongoing, and I suspect that the sport of boxing—and pugilism at large—will wring words from me forever. I’ve been writing short stories and scripts and essays since I was a boy. I do it because I don’t know what I think about anything until I face the blank page and write it all down. I’ve published fiction and nonfiction and refereed articles in irregular cycles for years now. You can expect me to continue that for as long as I live.

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Alexander Ramirez, an Olive B. O’Connor Creative Writing Fellow at Colgate University from 2021-2022, received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His writing has appeared in the Potomac Review, The Journal of American Culture, and Image Journal, among other publications.

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Michael Fegan is a 2023 fall intern at the Missouri Review. He is a senior at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he’s majoring in English and Ancient Mediterranean Studies.