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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I was expecting from such a good writer, 12 Dec 2001
By A Customer
Kevin Mitchell's articles in The Observer are this country's most consistently entertaining, informative and insightful pieces of boxing journalism. Mitchell is plainly a highly skilled feature writer, with the rare and valuable ability to cut through boxing's tedious layers of hype and get to the core of the sport. Frankly I'd buy any newspaper specifically to enjoy his columns, which is certainly the reason I was so eager to read War Baby.But the book doesn't do justice to his obvious talent as a reporter. It's cumbersome, stretching a detailed post mortem of one of the most crazily violent fights in history way beyond what is strictly necessary or entertaining. Padded out with hackneyed phrases and overly concerend with paying tribute to fellow boxing writers, I found it to be a terribly disappointing read. Describing tough fighters as men who have 'been to the hard place', saying that the Benn-McClellan match was 'always going to be a two-ambulance fight', including lines like 'these guys missed targets like America missed the start of world wars'... It's as if Mitchell is trying to be the Raymond Chandler of boxing writers, and he simply doesn't pull it off. Sensationalistic details such as McClellan's penchant for dog fighting in no way do justice to the fight itself, or to the terrible injury suffered by McClellan. They seem to be included in order to provide a headline-worthy newspaper serialisation, and to be perfectly honest, the massively shortened version published in The Observer is all you really need to see. Mitchell's attempts at writing black American dialogue are clumsy at best, and the while the book doesn't take a moralistic stance, it does feel like the writer has overstretched himself in churning out a 184-page tome based on a single, brief incident. Editorial judgements such as the 'fact' that McClellan would have knocked out Benn if his hands had been wrapped by his usual trainer are presented as indisputable truths, and the subsequent reaction in the newspaper's letter pages bear out my view that this is a book designed to provoke a popular reaction in order to shift copies. Kevin, I'll keep reading your Observer columns because as a newpaper boxing reporter, you're the undoubtedly best in the business. But next time you write a book, I'll check out a copy in the library...
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by Donald McRae
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