Jack B. Bedell
A Beating Is Rarely the Worst Thing You Can Get
It was never something he’d cared about before, so I was a little shocked when my son came in the other night wanting to know the worst beating I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it was gore he was after so much as it was curiosity over what I considered true brutality.
I thought about sending him to the Gatti-Ward trilogy, but those fights weren’t beat downs either way, just wars of heart. Maybe on a different day I’d say Lewis-Tyson, but that fight was such deliberate violence it was more like watching a force of nature erode Tyson’s façade. Bugner, Cooney, Vito Antuofermo, Cobb, Wepner—those guys all took beatings, sure, but they did their damnedest to give as much as they took.
Trying to give my son an answer, I was actually stunned by how few examples of true brutality I could offer him from the catalog of fights I’d seen over the years, so I settled on a fight I’d watched with my dad, one I knew he hadn’t come across yet, Billy Collins, Jr. vs. Luis Resto, mostly for the post-fight fallout, and not the course of the match.
Before he went off to check the fight out, I told my son a little bit about how much promise Collins had as a prospect, how everyone watching the fight assumed it would be a gateway fight for him, especially against a fighter like Resto who’d long been relegated to the role of journeyman in his career. A cakewalk. Until the first punches were thrown, that is.
From the jump, Collins landed some sharp punches, and his movement was crisp and efficient, just like you’d expect from an undefeated fighter on his way to a title shot. If you could’ve watched an isolated feed of Collins only, I’m sure you would’ve thought he was cruising to an easy win on points. But that would only work if you ignored the impact of every single punch he was taking.
Even Resto’s jabs left marks on Collins. His eyes were swollen by the end of the second round. By the sixth, Collins’ cheek bones stuck out past his nose that seemed to get flatter and flatter each minute. I mean, Resto’s punches landed like a heavyweight’s, and that was never his calling card. Watching the fight with my old man, I remember thinking it was the fight of Resto’s life, or some kind of turning point in his understanding of leverage and power after hiding behind technique and pace his whole life.
By the end of the bout, Collins was standing but broken in ways we wouldn’t know until years passed, his life fell apart, and he ended it crashed into a culvert.
When my son finally went off to his room to catch the fight for himself on YouTube, I told him to stay focused on Collins’ corner when the final bell sounded, not to get distracted by Collins’ face. I wanted him to see what my dad and I missed when we watched it, to keep an eye on Resto’s gloves, too, to see what Collins’ people saw when he came to their corner to pay his respects, how they grabbed Resto’s arm and held him still until they could get the commissioner into the ring, how quickly it all turned sensical once Resto’s gloves were confiscated, how empty and criminal those gloves looked hanging so limp over the top rope with all their padding taken out. And, mostly, I wanted my son to see how being cheated is the worst beat down a fighter like Collins could ever get.
Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Brawl Lit, Moist, and other journals. He’s also had pieces included in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Ghost Forest (Mercer University Press, 2024). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.
Banner Art:
from Stag at Sharkey’s, George Bellows, 1909
