Isn't that silly. Imagine the Lakers playing the Knicks for the championship without a scoreboard: Nobody knows who's in front until the buzzer has sounded and the referee has added up the ones, twos and treys. There could be no four-corners offense to kill time, no hurry-up offense to close the gap.
But then with boxing's secret ballot, neither the crowd nor players can see if the judges are calling the fight or jumping to Don King's service. Remember the travesty of the Olympic boxing in Korea. This is the real stuff.
Liebling told of Pierce Egan, who wrote in the 1820s of "pageant scenes of trulls and lushes, toffs and toddlers ... setting off for some great public, illegal prize fight." And of the painter Rowlandson's print of the 1811 fight between Tom Cribb, the champion, and Tom Molyneaux, "an American Negro ... In the foreground of the picture, there is a whore sitting on her gentleman's shoulders, the better to see the fight, while a pickpocket lifts the gentleman's reader (watch). Cribb has just hit Molyneaux the floorer ..."
Listen, do you smell Las Vegas or Atlantic City?
