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If God should punishto what they deserve, He would not leave so much as a beast on the back of the earth

THE KORAN

Chapter 1

Midway into the fifth round the kid in the blue trunks rocked his opponent with a solid left to the jaw He followed it with a straight right to the head

"He’s ready to fall," Mick Ballou said

He looked it, too, but when the kid in blue waded in the other boy slipped a punch and groped his way into a clinch I got a look at his eyes before the referee stepped between the two fighters They looked glazed, unfocused

"How much time is there?"

"More than a minute"

"Plenty of tiht out For a s as a bull"

They weren’t that suess would put theht limits for all the classes, but it was easy then Now they’ve got more than twice as many classifications, with junior this and super that, and three different governing bodies each recognizing a different chaured out that it was easier to pro to the point where you rarely see anything else

The card atching, however, was strictly non-title, and a long way rehts staged in Vegas and Atlantic City casinos We were, to be precise, in a concrete-block shed on a dark street in Maspeth, an industrial wasteland in the borough of Queens bordered on the south and west by the Greenpoint and Bushwick sections of Brooklyn and set off from the rest of Queens by a half-circle of ceetting to Maspeth, or you could drive through it dozens of ti it With its warehouses and factories and drab residential streets, Maspeth’s not likely to be on anybody’s short list for potential gentrification, but I suppose you never know Sooner or later they’ll run out of other places, and the cru warehouses will be reborn as artists’ lofts while young urban ho fro the interiors You’ll have ginkgo trees lining the sidewalk on Grand Avenue, and a Korean greengrocer on every corner

For now, though, the New Maspeth Arena was the only sign I’d seen of the neighborhood’s glorious future Some months earlier Madison Square Garden had closed the Felt Forum for renovations, and sometime in early Deceunder way around seven

The building was smaller than the Felt Forum, and had a no-frills feel to it, with untrimmed concrete-block walls and a sheet-metal roof and a poured concrete slab for a floor It was rectangular in shape, and the boxing ring stood in the center of one of the long walls, opposite the entrance doors Rows of ’s three open sides The chairs were gray, except for the first ts in each of the three sections, which were blood red The red seats at ringside were reserved The rest of the arena was open seating, and a seat was only five dollars, which o dollars less than the price of a first-run ray chairs remained unoccupied

The price was low in order to fill as many of the seats as possible, so that the fans atched the fights on cable TV wouldn’t realize the event had been staged solely on their behalf The New Maspeth Arena was a cable phenoh Cable Sportscasts, the latest sports channel trying to get a toehold in the New York metro area The FBCS trucks had been parked outside when Mick and I arrived a few e began

Now the fifth round of the final preli with the boy in the white trunks still on his feet Both fighters were black, both local kids fro frohts Both had short haircuts and regular features, and they were the sa because he fought in a crouch It’s good their trunks were different colors or it would have been tough to tell them apart

"He should have had hio and he couldn’t finish hilassy-eyed What’s his nale sheet of blue paper with the bouts listed "McCann," he said "McCann let him off the hook"

"He was all over hi away at hier There’s a lot of theet their man in trouble and then they can’t put hiot three rounds left"

Mick shook his head "He had his chance," he said

HE was right McCann won the reht was never closer to a knockout than it had been in the fifth At the final bell they clung together briefly in a sweaty eloves raised in triu a shutout, while the third et a beer," Mick said "Will you have soray chairs over on the right-hand side of the ring as you entered That way I could keep an eye on the entrance, although I hadn’t been looking anywhereI looked over there nohile Mick made his way to the refreshe I saw sonized, a tall black man in a well-tailored navy pinstripe suit I stood up at his approach and we shook hands

"I thought it was you," he said "I ducked in before to watch a couple ht I saw my friend Matthew over here in the cheap seats"

"They’re all cheap seats in Maspeth"

"Isn’t that the truth" He put a hand on hts, wasn’t it? The Felt Foruht"

"You ith Danny Boy Bell"

"You ith Sunny I don’t remember her last name"

"Sunny Hendryx Sonya, her name was, but nobody ever called her that"

I said, "Join us, why don’t you? My friend’s getting a beer, but the whole row’s e in a cheap seat"

He grinned "I got a seat," he said "Over by the blue corner Got to cheer my man to victory You remember Kid Bascomb, don’t you?"