Having already written a ebook about maniacal South American fighter Edwin Valero, Don Stradley probably skilled déjà vu when poring over the troubled story of Argentine middleweight Carlos Monzon.
Just like the hot-headed Venezuelan, the fighter they referred to as “Escopeta” carried horseshoes in his gloves and lived a reckless life past the ropes, the place he usually fell foul of the legislation. In A Fistful of Homicide: The Fights and Crimes of Carlos Monzon, Stradley rattles via the boxing legend’s hovering highs and crippling lows, sketching a compelling portrait of a gifted however self-destructive soul who remodeled from a feral Santa Fe avenue child right into a famend world champion.
Sports activities followers will likely be drawn to the work because of Stradley’s appreciable powers of description: he’s most likely probably the greatest combat writers working right now. And there are few higher topics than Monzon, a darkish artist who pulverized a slew of rivals throughout a thirteen-year unbeaten streak that stretched from 1964 to the tip of his profession in 1977. Alongside the way in which he made fourteen profitable title defenses and established himself as an all-time nice within the middleweight division.
“It was most likely in Santa Fe that his chilly glare was developed,” writes Stradley in an early chapter. “Within the many years to return, Monzon’s depraved stare would turn out to be chillier and scarier. It might take time, although, till his bodily energy was sufficient to again up his intense expression, however the finish end result was a glare that might turn out to be his trademark: a chilly, imply look that mentioned FUCK OFF.”
Not like the authors of many boxing biographies, Stradley is just not solely in thrall to his topic. Though the superior victories over Napoles, Valdes, Benvenuti, et al are eloquently chronicled, he observes that Carlos didn’t at all times win rave critiques: “When he’d first gained the title, there was reward for his uncommon fashion, the way in which he waited to strike, as one author put it, with the persistence of a sniper. As time handed, nevertheless, there was an inclination to level out his benefits in dimension, and little else. Remarks trickled in from English-speaking commentators throughout Monzon’s bouts that he was ‘crude however efficient’ and ‘awkward however will get the job performed.’”
One can sense Stradley’s sneer later within the ebook when he notes that “Monzon turned a greater fighter in retirement … The boxer who had usually been dismissed as a classless thug was now revered as an all-time nice.”
After all, Monzon was an all-time nice, of that there could be little question. Stradley in the end agrees, marvelling on the 87-3-9 ledger “Escopeta” compiled regardless of battling “arthritis, a rising reliance on alcohol, and sufficient private issues to present most males an ulcer.”
Regardless of its comparative brevity at 128 pages, A Fistful Of Homicide manages to be a number of issues without delay: a personality examine of a brooding, malevolent archetype; a easy however absorbing boxing biography; and a pulpy story of a hideous crime barnacled with conflicting testimonies. To Stradley’s credit score, he pulls the diffuse supply materials right into a coherent complete and, like Berserk, his biography of Valero, the ebook could be consumed over the course of some hours.
All through, the reader beneficial properties perception into what made Monzon such an all-powerful presence within the squared circle, and likewise what a chunk of shit he was outdoors of it: abusive, smug, delinquent. He was a product of brutal poverty who “created a masks for himself, a sort of grandiose, omnipotent bully who was at all times in management… like all narcissists, his picture was fragile; he was by no means removed from changing into fully unhinged.”
These aware of the Monzon story know the way it all turned out: a dozen years after his retirement, the burned-out, coked-up ex-champ was convicted of strangling his ex-girlfriend, mannequin Alicia Muñiz, earlier than tossing her off the balcony of an house within the resort metropolis of Mar del Plata. Six years later he died in a automobile crash whereas on furlough from jail, bringing the curtain down on a wild cautionary story.
Of the aftermath of the homicide, Stradley generously quotes from Argentine columnists and first sources like Monzon’s son Abel, whereas additionally bemoaning the tawdriness of the entire tableaux: “Finally, the Monzon story turned much less a chance for sociological debate than a morbid peep present, an opportunity to point out lurid images of Alicia smashed on the bricks, her naked legs nonetheless stunning even because the life flooded out of her. It was an enormous nasty dollop of Mar del Plata decadence, overflowing with floor glitter and low cost movie star.”
Though the one individuals who definitively know what occurred between Carlos Monzon and Alicia Muñiz are not with us, Stradley presents readers his personal idea of what unfolded, this being that Monzon, “an offended, illiterate man consumed by petty jealousies,” flew right into a rage when he realized each how far he’d fallen and that Muniz would by no means reconcile with him. Based mostly on the post-mortem stories, it’s a reputable speculation.
In direction of the tip of the ebook, Stradley brings the story updated, summarizing a thirteen-part biopic entitled Monzon that aired in Argentina in 2019 and just lately appeared on Netflix, and considering the varied warring factions within the fighter’s homeland, these being the feminists who vandalize Monzon statues and protest his deification, and the apologists who play down his violent nature whereas portraying him as a type of cursed saint. Curiously, this latter group contains Susana Giminez, the glamorous actress who usually skilled Monzon’s wrath first hand.
“Monzon’s actual legacy,” concludes Stradley, “stands out as the ongoing stress between those that idolize him and those that want to overlook him.” — Ronnie McCluskey
