Читать книгу Sporting Blood. Tales from the Dark Side of Boxing онлайн

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“Pryor,” Acevedo continues, “had a family tree whose branches were gnarled by tragedy. Its roots were blood-soaked. One of his brothers, Lorenzo, was a career criminal who once escaped from Cincinnati County Jail. Lorenzo eventually wound up doing hard time for an armed robbery conviction in Ohio. Another brother, David, became a transsexual hooker. His half-brother was shot and paralyzed by his father. His sister, Catherine, stabbed her lover to death. As if to solidify the epigenetics involved in the Pryor family—and to concretize the symbolism of the phrase ‘vicious cycle’—Sarah Pryor had seen her own mother shot and murdered by a boyfriend when Sarah was a child.”

In a little more than two hundred words, Acevedo has painted a portrait. Do you still wonder why Aaron Pryor had trouble conforming to the norms that society expected of him?

In a chilling profile of Tony Ayala Jr., Acevedo writes, “In the ring, he was hemmed in by the ropes. For more than half his life, he was trapped behind bars. The rest of the time? He was locked inside himself.” Ayala spent two decades in prison in conjunction with multiple convictions for brutal sexual assaults against women. Acevedo sets up the parallel between Ayala's misogynist conduct and his ring savagery with a quote from the fighter himself about boxing. “It's the closest thing to being like God—to control somebody else,” Ayala declared. “I hit a guy and it's like, I can do anything I want to you. I own you. Your life is mine, and I will do with it what I please. It's a really sadistic mentality, but that's what goes on in my mind. It's really evil. There's no other way to put it. I step into that dark, most evil part of me and I physically destroy somebody else, and I will do with them what I want.”