Rose Petals In Hell: The Beauty In Between The Horror Of Boxing.

Floyd Mayweather made me quit liking the sport. Danny Garcia and Paulie Malinaggi made me understand to never quit caring about fighters.

My grandmother, Rosa Mae Johnson, was the greatest fight fan I have ever known. Running a pool hall in Tacoma from 1942–1970 ( tended bar, did the books for the numbers runners, did the books and the place itself), she was inundated by the culture of the fight game; first with the radio broadcasts of Joe Louis’s later title fights, then with the ascendancy of Ray Robinson, then with the electric charge of Muhammad Ali on color television. More than just understanding that it was something to know to work in a bar, she had a particular affinity for boxers with a certain decorum. Her fighters were men who could whop ass and be graceful. It was why she preferred Frazier over Ali ( along with Ali’s almost unforgivable colorism), and that her favorite fighter of all time was Alexis Arguello. Like the black and brown men she kept close to, she loved fighters who could take pain and not lose their humanity.

It was because of her that I was a passionate fan of the sport for most of my life( and even fought for Al Davies Boys and Girls club in 1994–1995) I’m also certain that if she was still alive, my grandmother would have stopped being a fan because of Floyd Mayweather. When the fight went down, I was on a ferry in the Salish sea, in between reading at the Cascadia Poetry Festival and featuring in the Versus Festival Of Words, and relieved that I…