It’s a approaching that time of the year again where you need to get some stocking fillers and if the person you are looking to buy for is a boxing nut, you won’t go far wrong by wrapping this up in some Christmas paper.
If I asked you to try and squeeze in the definition of a journeyman on Twitter’s 140 character space, you would probably be stuck on two counts – firstly, not enough space, but more poignantly, you would struggle to get a definition which is accurate. Test yourself now in under 20 seconds – What’s the definition of a journeyman?
The book interviews a good subsection of Britain’s more recognised journeymen and a few who have been on the circuit for ages, but have almost kept below the media radar. It’s very interesting to hear fighters talking about how they can make a constant £1,500 for a fight and are happy to fight 30 times a year, losing pretty much each one. You do the maths… it will equate to more than most European and some world title challenges. Other fighters are scared to win a title because it will take the shine off their journeyman status and they will no longer become easy canon feed.
Looking at the likes of Johnny Greaves, Jody Meikle and Max Maxwell, they book will help you to address a number of questions. Did they start off wanting to be journeymen? At what point did they realise this would be their vocation? Could they have won title honours? How do they manage to fight 100 fights without sustaining serious injuries whereas many world title fighters will struggle to go past 30 fights? What’s the attraction of jumping into a ring, sometimes at an hour’s notice and then getting beaten? Why is it that journeymen are an essential ingredient to the sport of boxing? Journeymen by Mark Turley addresses this and much much more, by shining a torch into many of the dark, murky corners of boxing, including addressing taboo topics such as match fixing.
Mark Turley has manage to piece together some great stories from some polar opposite journeymen. I’d certainly recommend getting a copy.
