By Norm Frauenheim-
Mike Tyson wants to fight four-rounders. So, does Evander Holyfield. I’ll let you figure out where that leads. The public imagination is capable of just about any fantasy these days. There’s not much else to do.
The imagination is an escape, a refuge from the tragedy of a pandemic that kills those we love, those we admire and those we wish we had known. There are no baseball standings. No NBA box scores. No opening bell. There’s only the obit page. It’s endless, columns of names, some celebrity and some anonymous, yet all gone.
There’s been a lot of talk about business-as-usual this week. That would be nice. Something to hope for. Pray for. But, for now, it’s another fantasy, just like Tyson-Holyfield 3. The obit page says that intensive care and funeral homes will be doing most of the nation’s business for a while.
Jimmy Glenn’s name is on that page today. Glenn, 89, died early Thursday after a long battle with coronavirus. He was an amateur boxer, trainer, a cut man, manager and bartender. It was his bar, Jimmy’s Corner near New York’s Times Square, that has become a defining piece of real estate for a sport that has seen it all.
Glenn had seen it all. Or at least most of it. He used to talk about fighting former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson as an amateur. Patterson won.
“But I went the distance,’’ Glenn told The Sweet Science in 2005.
He could have been a contender, too.
For 50 years, his bar became a gathering place for the contender in all of us.
The walls are covered with the posters and memorabilia that decorate scarred gyms everywhere. History fills the place like a shot glass. Tourists step in to gawk. Fight fans gather to debate or celebrate what they’ve just seen at Madison Square Garden. Writers are there to drink in the history and any other potent spirit.
Like so much else about boxing, the place is a mix of fact and fable. Among all of the photos, there’s one of Muhammad Ali, overlooking the bar. Then there’s a still from Raging Bull, the classic film starring Robert De Niro in his role as Jake LaMotta. The movie’s closing scene was filmed at Jimmy’s Corner.
Jimmy is gone.
His Corner is still there, a heartbeat for a sport and world in desperate need of one.
