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

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Despite their apparently unbridgeable backgrounds, Cravan and Johnson were remarkably similar. Both men were nomads who had crisscrossed the world; both men were provocateurs who had been thrown in jail more than once. And, of course, both men were boxers, although Cravan gloved up mostly in salons and ateliers when boxing was a fad among artists such as Picasso, Braque, and Miro. In fact, his only distinction as a fighter was winning the amateur light-heavyweight championship of France in a walkover.

One last similarity brought them together in Barcelona: both men were on the run. Despite his riotous approach to life and art, Cravan was obsessed with avoiding conscription and thereby the killing fields of Europe. As the carnage spread across Europe, Cravan wound up in Spain, where he and Johnson hatched a plan to meet in the ring. They made arrangements not as opponents but as co-conspirators: Johnson, low on cash, looking for a quick fix, and Cravan, a rootless draft dodger trying to amass ship fare to New York City, where even the bohemian crowd of Greenwich Village would be startled by his sociopathic antics when he got there.