Rock and Roll With The Punches: Boxing Rock

"Some day, they're gonna write a blues for fighters. It'll just be for slow guitar, soft trumpet and a bell."

- Sonny Liston

Boxing has always been the best sport at the Hollywood box office. But did you know that boxing rocks?

Boxing rocks and boxing rolls. More in a rocking boxing blues shuffle.

No other sport has such a collection of rock and roll songs.

Baseball has John Fogerty's "Centerfield".

Bill Walton was such a fan and friend of the Grateful Dead that the band stopped studio sessions of their "In the Dark" album to watch Walton play Boston Celtic playoff games.

Jerry Garcia, surrounded by a sweet smelling haze, screaming for Bird to fire up a three pointer. Surreal.

Bill Belichick's loves Bon Jovi's music.

When Mike Tice praised ABBA, hard-core Minnesota Viking fans knew he was doomed.

How does a coach motivate a team blaring "Dancing Queen"?

Warren Zevon's and Mitch Albom's "Hit Somebody: The Hockey Song". The tale of a Canadian hockey goon with the eternal question of what else can a farm boy from Canada do might be the best sports song ever.

Or at least the only one with David Letterman singing a lyric.

But Boxing rocks best. Boxing rocking with a blues beat.

Paul Simon's "The Boxer" is the best known. The sad tale of a poor pug being pummelled and punched  and coming back for more.

"In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his tradeA/nd he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down/or cut him 'til he cried out in his anger and his shame/  "I am leaving, I am leaving/  But the fighter still remains, still remains."

Bob Dylan's "The Hurricane" tells the tale of Reuben "Hurricane" Carter. Bob's ballad twists the tale into a traditional folk ballad and story of injustice.

"The man the authorities came to blame/For somethin that he never done./Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been/ The champion of the world."

Slickly sad songwriter Warren Zevon has perhaps the most impressive boxing song with "Boom Boom Mancini".

Zevon could turn a phrase like the great boxers fired jabs, and he land some solid boxing lines in "Boom Boom":

"Some have the speed and the right combinations/If you can't take the punches it don't mean a thing"

And the sweetly, sad last lines..

"When they asked him who was responsible/For the death of Du Koo Kim/He said, 'Someone should have stopped the fight, and told me it was him.'/  They made hypocrite judgments after the fact/  But the name of the game is be hit and hit back/    Hurry home early, hurry on home/   Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon/  Hurry home early, hurry on home/  Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon"

Miles Davis's masterful "The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions" is the best musical salute to boxing. Commissioned by boxing historian Bill Cayton, the jazz masterpiece glides along sliding slowly and sadly through Jack Johnson's troubled life.

The great heavyweights always fuel boxing's flame. Without a great heavyweight, like now, boxing flounders. To flourish boxing needs a big guy who inspires in the ring and outside it.

A box office draw. A muse. A muse with a shattering right hand and devastating left hook.

The legendary heavyweights are the ones that make their mark in the minds of singers and songwriters.

What's boxing without the Blues? Boxing and blues men go together like boxers and cut men.

"He's got a punch like Joe Louis, and other charms that I admire/He's got a punch like Joe Louis, and other charms that I admire/And when that baby startin' to love me/  Oh Lord he sets my heart on fire."

Chicago via Memphis blues singer Alberta Hunter conjured the image of Joe Louis to describe a sad, bad, and dangerous torrid affair with a mean man she can't quit.

Dire Straits lead man Mark Knopfler sang the sad song of the hard-eyed but always lost Sonny Liston, the doomed bad news bear. 

Something about Sonny still speaks to the seedier side of the Sweet Science:

"They never could be sure/About the day he was born/A motherless child  Set to working on the farm/ And they never could be sure/  About the day he died/ The bear was the king/ They cast aside."

Muhammad Ali song of life was always lively and Johnny Wakelin's "Black Superman" fit the champ like a well-worn Everlast glove.

"He floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee/

Mohammed, the black superman/

Who calls to the other guy 'I'm Ali, catch me if you can'."

In a mirror of their career crossroads, Sonny's song was a sad one, and Ali's fast and catchy.

Most boxing songs are sad ones. Heartbreak and brutality can inspire the blues.

Boxing has both. So bluesy ballads will be born as long as boxers keep coming along.

And a great Heavyweight will come along again.

They always do.