Customer Reviews

Bert Sugar on Boxing: The Best of the Sport's Most Notable Writer

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a solid collection of articles on boxing covering boxing from many angles-mini-biographies of great boxing legends, the great fights, and social commentary. I enjoyed the book but it is lacking in a couple of areas. First, it would have been nice to see a fresh new piece by Sugar on the state of boxing today. Second, there really seemed like there should be even more. He covers a lot of great fights but there are a lot of great fights missing. Finally, I was disappointed that there didn't seem to be a lot of "inside " information in the articles, especially the ones on the great fights. It's a nice, if not great, collection of work.

Bert Sugar - Let's Face It You Have To Read It

Anyone who has poked around the literary side of the sweet science has heard of Bert Sugar.

Anyone who has an interest in boxing has seen the hat and cigar at press conferences and sitting ringside.

Let's face it - Bert Sugar is as much a part of boxing as Angelo Dundee or Doc Brodus or the name Sugar (as in Sugar Ray, Sugar Shane etc)

One of my favorite lines is that Bert Sugar has been covering fights since Cain and Abel!

This is a good book. It's a compilation of some of Sugar's works - 4 sections - sections 1 (Rants & Raves), 2 (The Fighters) & 3 (The Fights) are a collection of articles and section 4 is a brief history of sorts.

It's a really good read and I enjoyed it.

What I have to say next I feel somewhat sacrilegious saying but - I enjoy the Thomas Hauser books more (ex: A Year At The Fights and/or A Beautiful Sickness) and would recommend them before this - that is not to say skip this - you HAVE to read Bert Sugar - it's like saying you're a boxing fan, but unfamiliar with Rocky Marciano's fight record - but if you're a Hauser fan you'll also enjoy Bert Sugar.

I have been a fan of Bert Sugar as long as I've been a fan of boxing. I loved hearing him tell a good boxing story, punctuating his thoughts with the point of his cigar. As an authority on boxing and an iconic character, Sugar has provided me with a lifetime of entertainment. But that is before I read this collection and the "fit hit the shan" as Bert would say - this collection is good but does not represent the best of Mr. Sugar. The fault isn't with his fine writing style, his effortless wit, his abundant boxing knowledge. No, the fault lies in the selection of stories and editorials. Some are brief, which is forgivable, and some are redundant, which is not. The photographs are a bit lackluster, it would have been nice to see some pictures of the fights he describes instead of Bert mugging for the camera with a fighter or two. Now, I can't complain too loudly, since I didn't pay full price for this book and it is a fine addition to my library, but I pulled out my old Boxing Illustrated's from the early 70's and my Ring magazines from the early 80's and read much better work by the man known as "The Greatest Boxing Writer of the 20th Century." Enjoy it for what it is, a pedestrian collection with uninspired photographs from an author capable of much better.

I haven't tried Bert Sugar before but I will buy more of his books after reading this one.

The book consists of a collection of his articles over the years, some of the stories are short, some are fairly lengthy.

I think that the strength in Sugar is not so much his readable writing style, it is the way he occasionally adds little nuggets of information on certain boxers. He is a breezy author and his books are not difficult to read at all. I liked the stories on the fighters especially John L Sullivan.

I would have liked to have seen more modern stuff in the book as that was where Sugar stands out, he knows the inside story on some fighters.

The best section is Chapter 1: Rants and Raves - this is how the book could have been presented, a series of boxing articles.

He would write a good auto-biography.