I recently finished an amazing book by Boxing News editor Tris Dixon, entitled "The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing's Wastelands." I cannot recommend the book highly enough. I picked it up from the publisher for $20, but it is available on Kindle for $9.99. The hardcover version apparently won't be available from Amazon in the U.S. until April.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Nowhe...ustomerReviews
If you are familiar with Lawrence Ritter's iconic baseball book "The Glory of their Times," Dixon did with boxers what Ritter did with baseball players. In the early 2000s, Dixon made two separate, month-long visits to the U.S. in search of as many old-time boxers as he could find. While on a very bare-bones budget, Dixon invested in an open Greyhound bus ticket on each of his two trips that allowed him unlimited rides on Greyhound buses to wherever he wanted to go in the U.S. and Canada for a month at a time.
Dixon spent time in Atlantic City, Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Miami, California, Toronto and a whole lot of ghettos and small towns, usually sleeping in Greyhound bus terminals, on the buses or $30 a night dive hotels while trying to track down boxers from the 1950s through the 1990s. Dixon frequently washed and shaved in bus terminal bathrooms when he would go several days without a hotel room.
The theme of the book is that most of the boxers Dixon tracked down were contenders or cult favorites who have long been forgotten by the public. The result was absolutely fascinating. Dixon tracked down over 40 different boxers and the meetings varied wildly.
Many of the boxers Dixon located suffered from mild to severe dementia, and far too many were down and out without much to show for their careers. Dixon was put in contact with some of the men featured in the book through sources in the industry. Others were located through local gyms and still others were located through phone books and cold-calling.
If you love boxing and want to read something far different than just a standard bio, Dixon's book is tremendous.