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A boxing match is a play without words, which doesn´t mean that it has no text or no language, only that the text is improvised in action, the language a dialogue between the boxers in a joint response to the mysterious will of the crowd, which is always that the fight be a worthy one so that the crude paraphernalia of the setting – the ring, the lights, the onlookers themselves – be obliterated. To go from an ordinary preliminary match to a »Fight of the Century« – like those between Joe Louis and Billy Conn, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns – is to go from listening or half-listening to a guitar being idly plucked to hearing Bach´s Well-Tempered Clavier being perfectly played, and that too is part of the story.
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