i>“I’ve had fights where my hair hurt. My HAIR hurt!” – ‘Iceman’ John Scully
03.02.04 – By Ron DiMichele: A great tidal shift of emotion transpires at the end of a prizefight. Two combatants, who moments before vied to knock each other unconscious, now embrace like old friends.
“I don’t know why I do it,” says John Scully. “If it was two guys in a burning building and they both made it out, they’d probably hug even though they don’t know each other.”
‘Iceman’ John Scully forged his boxing insight through 49 professional bouts and a stellar amateur boxing career. The former light-heavyweight contender offers a unique, brutally honest, and penetrating perspective into the inner workings of the sweet science. A perspective gained only by those who have dished it out, and eaten some as well.
In ‘No Picnic,’ John Scully discusses the aftermath of battle, the often hidden view of a fighter’s post-fight experience.
“You go to an amateur tournament,” says Scully. “You get an inner-city, really rough, hard-core black kid, and you get a white kid from Minnesota. Maybe they never even say ‘hi’ to each other all week. But they fight each other, and after the fight, they hug.”
The emotion doesn’t stop at the final bell. When a fight goes the distance, a tense interlude settles in while the judges tally the scorecards.
“It’s nerve-wracking,” says Scully. “A lot of times a fighter could whitewash somebody. Beat ‘em every round. And they’ll ask the trainer, ‘Do I have it?’ You can watch a guy hitting an opponent with combinations and the other guy hits him back with one shot. To the crowd, the guy throwing the combinations is killing this guy, but to the guy throwing the combinations, he gets hit back with that one shot and he’s like, ‘Oh man, he evened the score, that one hurt.’ Until they raise your hand, especially in this game, it’s nerve-wracking.”
Fighters often have a very visible reaction to losing a fight, especially a close decision. Scully points out that the fight itself is the final act in a long process, and this accounts for the fighter’s often intense response.
“People think he fought tonight, he thinks he won, and now he’s upset… You’re running every morning! Every hour, every second of every day for weeks and weeks and weeks before the fight is geared towards this fight. Cutting the lawn doesn’t matter. Doing the dishes doesn’t matter. When it’s over, and you’re feeling all those emotions and guys are acting a certain way, they’re acting mad, you know, it’s not just that fight. They’ve been stressed out over this for weeks and weeks and weeks. This is a culmination.”
Coming out on the short end of a decision impacts a fighter more deeply than just the loss of an athletic contest.
“It’s a personal thing” says Scully. “With me, and I think with a lot of fighters, it’s like, you know, you lost to another MAN. He’s a better MAN than you. You know, he can CREAM you, he’s STRONGER than you, your kids will like him more than they like you. That type of thing. And so yeah, you don’t wanna lose. And it gets hard to deal with sometimes.”
Winning, as one might imagine, is the flip side of the coin.
“Absolute elation,” says the Iceman. “Unbelievable.”
Ironically, Scully says that one of his most satisfying fights was a loss.
“When I fought Nunn [former middleweight and super middleweight belt holder, Michael Nunn], I didn’t win the fight, but that was one of the best times I had after a fight. I fought a good fight and a lot of people thought I won. All night I was on a cloud. Because of who he was I proved I belonged, even though I didn’t win it.”
In the wake of a crushing defeat, there may be little to uplift a fighter’s spirit, but in commenting on last year’s fight between Providence, RI lightweight, Gary Balletto, and Mexico’s Goyo Vargas, Scully says losing doesn’t always mean defeat.
“I don’t know what type of mentality he [Gary Balletto] has, but even though he took that kind of beating, he should have felt good in the sense of he showed something. He showed he’s a warrior. A lot of guys better than him can’t say they’re warriors. There are a lot of guys that would have quit in his case. He didn’t do that, so he should have felt good about himself.”
The physical toll of a prizefight is often not apparent immediately following the contest.
“[Right after the fight] you look like a beauty queen compared to what you look like the next day,” says Scully.
Scully relates his own experience with post-fight disfigurement.
“These cuts? When I fought Tony Thornton, I had been cut previously in the Tim Littles fight. In the Thornton fight, they all opened up and it was bad. When I got up the next morning, it was grotesque. My eyes were so swollen…[they] were glued together from some kind of fluid. It was so swollen my finger wouldn’t go in. I literally had to dig my way through with a pen just so I could see myself in the mirror. Yeah, that was no picnic.”
In the intensity of battle, the fighter will not realize the extent of the punishment.
“I fought a guy named Art Bayless,” relates Scully. “He was a big puncher. He had knocked out Drake Thadzi brutally. A real ugly knockout. I ended up beating him, but I noticed during the fight he kept hitting me with little body shots. Every time I got inside he was digging little uppercuts to the body. And I remember saying to myself, ‘Man, this dude, he can’t punch at all. I thought he was a big puncher but these punches aren’t hurting.’ In the fight they really didn’t bother me. After the fight, I went downstairs, did interviews, whatever, took a shower. Came upstairs and we went to the restaurant at Foxwoods. I was sitting at the table and I couldn’t bend over to get my food. My stomach was so knotted up from the body shots. I couldn’t bend over I was in such pain.
Ask Micky Ward what he felt like after he fought Gatti. You have injuries and pain in places you didn’t even know was possible. I heard this when I was a kid and I thought it was an exaggeration, but I’ve had fights where my hair hurt. My HAIR hurt.”
Is it an adjustment to go back to everyday life after a prizefight?
“You don’t feel like you should have to,” says John Scully. “When you’re in a fight you’re feeling special. Especially when you’re on TV, you’re a special guy. And to go back to being a regular guy when you’ve just been in training camp for weeks and you’ve been focused. You need a couple of days to settle back into it. That next day you don’t want to do anything. It’s almost like coming back from war. With me, I wanna go see people. You know, friends, ‘Hey, what’s up? I’m back! I’m back from war! I’m here!’ That type of thing.”
To the surprise and chagrin of us all, these modern gladiators often continue fighting when they clearly should have hung up the gloves and left the glaring lights and roaring crowds behind.
“Oh man, you can’t get away from it,” says Scully. “When you hear about a guy, say Sugar Ray Leonard, who kept coming back. People say, Doesn’t he have enough money?’ He could give that money away and not know it’s gone. I said this before and it’s true, I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m training for a fight. Never, never never.”
I want to thank John Scully for participating in a series of interviews which has resulted in the trilogy of articles ‘Boxing’s Green Mile,’ ‘The Danger Game,’ and now, ‘No Picnic.’ Interviewing John has been not only a pleasure, but an enlightening journey through the entire fight process from one who has been there. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I.
The sport of boxing takes plenty of knocks, but anyone who has been around boxing enough recognizes it as a close fraternity of remarkable people. John Scully is one of those remarkable people.
“Before a fight a guy’s friends might say, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that, my boy’s going to knock you out,” explains John, “And after the fight they might still say that, but the fighter’s going to say, ‘No, relax, the guy’s all right.’ Which I think is one of the absolute greatest things about boxing.”
Ron DiMichele’s email address is: rondimi@yahoo.com