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

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Pryor had a family tree whose branches were gnarled by tragedy and whose roots were blood-soaked. One of his brothers, Lorenzo, was a career criminal who escaped from Cincinnati County Jail and eventually wound up doing hard time for an armed robbery conviction in Ohio. Another brother, David, became a transsexual hooker, while 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.

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As an eight-year-old already at sea in chaotic surroundings, Pryor was molested by a minister. Shame was never far beneath the surface of a man who would eventually earn millions of dollars and worldwide fame as one of the most exciting fighters of his era. On the streets of Mount Auburn and Avalon—where race riots in 1967 and 1968 left bloodstains caked on the sidewalks—Pryor was left to his own devices in a time and place where social services barely existed. As a young boy, he was virtually homeless for years, couch surfing when he could, sleeping in doorways or under awnings whenever his mother locked him out of the house. He was an Over-the-Rhine dead-end kid before finding refuge in a boxing gym as a teenager.