With All Due Respect

To the best of my knowledge I have never signed a non-disclosure agreement with The Ring. I've not been asked by anyone to keep the little I know to myself. Truth be known, I don't know much more than anyone else who reads boxing websites. The editorial staff at the magazine was turned over with no warning. Respected writers formerly affiliated with The Ring are not happy about it. Doom has been cried here and there.

I'm not here to cry doom. I'm not here to say bad things about the new administration. I don't think the end of the world or even, necessarily, the end of boxing writing is at hand. I'm not airing personal grievances or attacking anyone I feel has wronged me. I do have a personal stake in what I am writing but it's not about me, not directly.

If it is true, as Stephen King once said, that writing talent is measured by having been paid money for one's work and then having used that money to pay a bill then I can only be considered talented because of Nigel Collins. He was not the first person to tell me that I was talented, to notice that I had ideas, or even to suggest that I try my hand at writing. He wasn't the first person to help me. Several other individuals had given me personal validation as a writer before. If one of them hadn't told me that I should try my hand at writing for The Ring then Nigel would probably never have known who I was. What he did was give me an opportunity and then built on that by giving me a platform. A 1200 word column on lightweight prospect Sharif Bogere became a monthly 1200 word column on women's boxing. He also gave me confidence. Helping raw but talented writers develop, he said, was part of his job. He edited my copy when he thought the backbone for an article was there but the words were lacking. When my work wasn't good enough for his standards he made sure I knew it and told me to rewrite it. He always gave me the time I needed to finish it and made sure, when it was good enough, that it was in the next issue. The fact that my column was in the magazine every month was as much because of Nigel's work as my own.

Some people gain what the Ancient Romans called "auctoritas" and "dignitas" from the positions they come to hold in life. Others led those qualities to the positions they hold and the institutions for which they work because they possess them in spades. Nigel Collins is not diminished because he was fired as editor-in-chief of The Ring. The Ring is diminished because Nigel Collins is no longer its editor-in-chief. Nothing about this is a criticism of, attack on, or complaint about the new acting editor. Mike Rosenthal is a good guy who was nice to me when I was just another noisy fan and who I believe treated me as fairly as his workload allowed when I had become a writer and he was my new editor. If he is given the time and breathing room necessary to do his job, I think he will turn out to be a pretty good editor-in-chief should he get the job on a permanent basis. Nigel Collins just happens to be that rare irreplaceable individual whose absence will always be noticed and never for the better. That's not to anyone else's detriment it's simply to his credit.

With all due respect for the business decisions that led to the editorial turnover at The Ring, firing Nigel Collins was a stupid and short-sighted move. I won't speculate about the motives because they don't matter. The results do. There is no potential upside for readers, the sport of boxing, or the magazine. The best possible result is that the damage won't be too bad. It's hardly a happy situation for any new editorial team that has to do their best to live up to Nigel's example. The differences will be clear.

Someone might say that my denials of personal animus are less than sincere. They will point out that I could hardly expect to merit the same treatment from a new editor that I got from Nigel. They will say that I was lucky to get what I had, while I had it. It might be suggested that I didn't deserve it

My reply is that boxing is not precisely a healthy sport and that the old sources of writers, the newspapers and sports magazines, are drying up. Someone has to develop the future writers just as someone has to develop future champions. The people who say that Nigel went above and beyond the call of duty in trying to help me establish myself and find my feet are not disproving my point.

That is my point.