"The Friday Night Fights are on the Air!"

"A merrie heart doth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

 
       When I was a kid in the Sixties, I learned to love boxing. Boxing was called the sweet science, in those days. I learned to feel that way because every Friday night in prime time, for free, a TV show called “The Friday Night Fights” would air. Usually, I wouldn’t know the fellas who populated the televised ring -- a cast of young, up-and-coming athletes; fighters in their prime; and tired has-beens to fill a card. But the fights were free! And I learned to look forward to hearing, “The Friday Night Fights are on the Air!” I was not alone; you can find many references to watching the fights on home TV if you watch I Love Lucy(Ricky and Fred did it), or The Flintstones(Fred and Barney did it), or The Honeymooners(Ralph and Norton did it -- without a Fred.)

       And the best thing about it was I met great fighters and great men in the ring. Guys like Floyd Patterson with the “peekaboo” style(a black American boxer who defeated Ingemar Johansson of Sweden for the world title, right in my living room!) and Smokin’ Joe Frazier and huge George Foreman and “I am the Greates’” Cassius Marcellus Clay(so named when he beat Sonny Liston in 1964, a fight referred to on The Dick Van Dyke Show), who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Again, these fights were televised in prime time on national TV and were big events, like the Super Bowl or the World Series. I think that’s one reason Ali became as well known as he became. His greatness was there for everyone to see.

       Then, boxing began selling tickets in pay-per-view, closed circuit theatres, and the fights became the property of those who could afford them. I lost track. Until, many years later some generous friends paid for my wife and me to see a fight in which one fighter, Mike Tyson, bit off the ear of another, Evander Holyfield. The fights weren’t what they used to be.

       That’s the last fight I saw on TV. So you can imagine how I was reminded of those exciting days of my youth, when I ran across a headline from a Yahoo news report: “Neighbor tells what happened in the Martin-Zimmerman fight.” Immediately, I was transported to my youth, and I tried to rack my brain to remember two recent fighters named Martin and Zimmerman before I turned to the article to read about the action in the ring. Sadly, I soon realized that Yahoo had been talking about that unfortunate killing in Florida. I wish that fight had never happened.mm