Sunday, April 30, 2017
Jack Dempsey, Harry Houdini, and Benny Leonard Sparring
Jack Dempsey, Harry Houdini, and Benny Leonard Spar Boxing
| Harry Houdini | |
|---|---|
Houdini in 1899
|
|
| Born | Erik Weisz March 24, 1874 Budapest, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | October 31, 1926 (aged 52) Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Peritonitis[1] |
| Occupation | Illusionist, magician, escapologist, stunt performer, actor, historian, film producer, pilot, debunker |
| Years active | 1891–1926 |
| Spouse(s) | Wilhelmina Beatrice "Bess" Rahner (m. 1894; his death 1926)[2] |
| Relatives | Theodore Hardeen (brother) |
| Signature | |
 |
|
Harry Houdini preparing to be chained and locked up in a box and lowered into the East River, NYC July 1912.
Dempsey and Firpo, 1924 painting by George Bellows
Dempsey authored a book on boxing titled Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defense and published in 1950. The book emphasizes knockout power derived from enabling fast motion from one's heavy bodyweight. Dempsey's book became and remains the recognized treatise in boxing.
During World War II while
in the Coast Guard, he co-authored How to Fight Tough with professional wrestler
Bernard J. Cosneck. The book was used by the Coast Guard to instruct
guardsmen on close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, incorporating boxing, wrestling, and jiujitsu.
Joanne Shaw Taylor - Wild Is The Wind (Planet Rock Live Session)
To
celebrate the announcement of Joanne Shaw Taylor's November 2017 UK
tour, check out this previously unseen performance from her Planet Rock
live session last year! Get early access to tickets in our pre-sale from
9am Wednesday 15th March at planetrock.com/tickets
For more like this, subscribe to our channel: http://youtube.com/planetrockradio
celebrate the announcement of Joanne Shaw Taylor's November 2017 UK
tour, check out this previously unseen performance from her Planet Rock
live session last year! Get early access to tickets in our pre-sale from
9am Wednesday 15th March at planetrock.com/tickets
For more like this, subscribe to our channel: http://youtube.com/planetrockradio
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Ernest Hemingway’s suicide because of CTE
This article implicates Boxing as a cause of his injury but goes on to blame war, car accidents, and other traumatic injuries, while providing no examples of him Boxing his way to brain injury. Andrew Farah was kinder than Jonathan Rendall, on Oct 31 2004articl in "The Sweet Science" who called Hemingway "a rabid self-mythologizer who had no real boxing ability".
Unkind words indeed. "Papa" Hemingway acquired many 'haters' over the years.
Ernest Hemingway helps a soldier with his rifle during the Spanish Civil War in December 1937
Ernest Hemingway in Paris, October 1959.
Behind Ernest Hemingway’s suicide, nine concussions that incapacitated his brain, forensic psychiatrist concludes
Joseph Brean 04.28.2017
Ernest Hemingway’s depression and psychosis were a textbook case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head, according to an American forensic psychiatrist who has written what he calls the “first comprehensive and accurate accounting of the psychiatric diagnoses” that led to the Nobel laureate’s famous shotgun suicide in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1961.
In his new book Hemingway’s Brain, Andrew Farah, chief of psychiatry at High Point Regional Health System at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, refutes earlier theories that Hemingway was suffering from bipolar disorder, manic depression or even an excess accumulation of iron known as hemochromatosis.
By reviewing medical records, memoirs, biographies and even Hemingway’s changing writing style, Farah focused on nine major head traumas, the first of which was sustained in Italy during the First World War, when a shell landed three feet from Hemingway, knocking him out, killing a soldier right beside him and blowing the legs off another. Years later in Paris, he accidentally pulled a skylight cord too hard, thinking it was the toilet flusher, and the whole fixture fell on his head, leading his friend Ezra Pound to write him: “How the hell sufferin tomcats did you git drunk enough to fall upwards thru the blithering skylight!!!!!!!”
Other concussions came in a London car crash during the Blitz blackout, from a fall on a fishing boat and from a plane crash in East Africa, all symptomatic of the author’s swashbuckling lifestyle. The result was, as Farah describes it, “an illness whose cruelest trick was to incapacitate the mind, yet all the while preserve insight into the sufferer’s plight.”
Contrary to the common story that modern psychiatry failed America’s greatest living writer in his moment of need, Farah concludes that Hemingway in fact received the best care known to medical science at the time. But it was for the wrong illness, based on a false diagnosis.
Shortly before he shot himself Hemingway had received two courses of electroconvulsive therapy, which should have had a 90 per cent chance of improving his presumed illness of depression and related psychosis. But Hemingway got worse, and quickly, because while electroshock improves depression, for those suffering organic brain disease it acts as a stressor on a vulnerable nervous system, accelerating the patient’s decline.
In his research, Farah said he saw this decline in Hemingway’s handwriting and could discern the changes in his writing, some of which became a bland imitation of his former self, in line with the old joke that nobody imitates Hemingway like Hemingway.
Farah describes, for example, the writing of the posthumously published Paris memoir A Moveable Feast, which stalled to the point that Hemingway basically cancelled it. He contrasts this anguished experience with the writing in 1927 of Hills Like White Elephants, perhaps Hemingway’s greatest short story with its elegant dialogue between a man and a woman obliquely discussing abortion, and how the prose was refined over and over again in a process that required a cognitive capacity that over time was lost to him.
“We all think of the Hemingway persona, but what the CTE did, later in life, was it simply solidified and locked in the very worst aspects of that persona. It made him irritable, volatile, difficult, challenging, all that,” Farah said in an interview. “People talk about how, psychologically, he was trapped by the persona like a spy out too long, believing his own cover, or acting that way because people expected it of him. I think he was biologically incapable of breaking free from the nastier aspects of that persona, simply because of the CTE.”
CTE was once known as dementia pugilistica, for the “punch-drunk” boxers who exhibited it, but it was largely unknown in Hemingway’s time and its symptoms were often dismissed or misdiagnosed. One effect is to make a person less able to tolerate alcohol, which also figures in Hemingway’s various diagnoses. But Farah sees his alcoholism as a part of a the larger puzzle, a secondary consideration rather than the primary problem.
Farah is not the first to doubt the depression diagnosis. Others have diagnosed bipolar disorder, such that it gets frequently repeated as true, but Farah points out Hemingway never had a manic episode, and his depressive episodes were situational. Another theory was hemochromatosis — an excess accumulation of iron — and doctors even considered a liver biopsy to be sure, but Hemingway’s normal blood iron levels argued strongly against it.
Many other accounts of his mental state have been psychoanalytical, complicated by the fact that, as Farah puts it, “our subject is not interested in helping us.”
Farah’s CTE theory is of course unproveable. Hemingway’s brain was never imaged, and his suicide physically destroyed it, preventing anything like the posthumous studies that were done on Einstein’s brain, for example.
“They wouldn’t have known what they were seeing anyway,” Farah said. “In fact, in 1961, the year he was getting his shock therapy, there was an article in the British Journal of Psychiatry, and it described post-concussive syndrome after motor vehicle accidents, but it was called ‘accident neurosis,’ in which the author argued these were people just seeking attention, and they were not really sick in an organic way. And now we know that just poisoned the well and made people look for years at these people as malingerers.”
Author Ernest Hemingway ready for a boxing match.
Ernest Hemingway fishing with an unidentified friend in an undated photo.
Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/behind+ernest+hemingway+suicide+nine+concussions/13331527/story.html
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Shawn Porter vs Andre Berto FULL FIGHT HD
Brutal, action pack fight!!!
Shawn Porter vs Andre Berto FULL FIGHT HD
Friday, April 21, 2017
"Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
Check out our newest blog post "Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Medical Imaging: New Methods and Tools" http://bit.ly/2pmsJQS
Monday, April 17, 2017
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
magazineVerified account @PasteMagazine
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
Movies Reviews The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
Those who already know the story of Finnish boxer Olli Mäki will
quickly realize the irony of the title of Juho Kuosmanen’s feature
debut, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki. Though Mäki
(Jarkko Lahti) is a respected former athlete in his home country,
Kuosmanen’s film focuses on one of his failures: his unsuccessful bid
for the World Featherweight Title in 1962.
The Happiest Day, however, suggests that the evening he unceremoniously lost in two rounds against American boxer Davey Moore was, in fact, a happy occasion for Mäki, as it signaled the end of two weeks of overwhelming media hype and pressure, thus allowing him to return to his quiet life in the small town of Kokkola, and especially to his new wife Raija (Oona Airola).
Snatching a romantic victory from the jaws of physical defeat? Sounds like yet another variation on Rocky, especially with Mäki being a working class fellow who gets a shot at a major title. But Kuosmanen’s film is, above all else, a thorough dismantling of standard boxing movie tropes and attitudes.
That subversive nature of the film begins on the formal level: Shot in grainy black-and-white on 16mm, The Happiest Day commits utmost to an aesthetic of realism, with Kuosmanen and cinematographer Jani-Petteri Passi capturing scenes in detailed long takes and smooth tracking shots.
There’s neither the overheated lyricism of Raging Bull nor the pulp grittiness of a noir like The Set-Up; everything in Kuosmanen’s film feels earthy and grounded, and, unlike Bill Conti’s work in Rocky, Kuosmanen forgoes a non-diegetic music score, thereby denying us any easy emotional signposts.
The Happiest Day also builds in its pointed takedown of genre tropes through its introduction of a meta-movie angle. As part of the lead-up to the World Featherweight Title match, a documentary crew is hired to capture Mäki during training sessions and in his personal life. This crew, however, is hardly interested in capturing the real Mäki, but instead in depicting him as Finland’s great national hope, a representative of the country on the world stage.
Thus, we see the filmmakers manipulate events in order to make it look better for the cameras, directing Mäki, manager Elis Ask (Eero Milonoff) and others as if it were a fiction film. By devoting about as much screen time to this blatant bout of media manipulation as to Mäki himself, Kuosmanen indicates his desire to make us aware not only of the ways the media creates popular narratives out of these athletes’ lives, but of the kind of clichés such narratives enforce.
Even that meta-movie angle might not have come off, though, had it not been for Olli Mäki the man, depicted here as so humble he’s immediately uncomfortable when he’s forced to try to project a more confident, if not outright prideful, image for the cameras. Certainly, he’s no Muhammad Ali, to the frustration of the more ambitious and glory-seeking Elis.
Mäki’s relatively petite frame buttresses this unassuming impression, and Jarkko Lahti plays him in such a naturally self-effacing manner that at times he seems to shrink right off the screen—in stark contrast to, say, the imposing physique and presence Sylvester Stallone cut in Rocky.
All of this points to Kuosmanen’s most resonant subversion of the boxing movie genre:
its emphasis on traditionally “feminine” qualities of love and sacrifice within a predominantly masculine sport.
Mäki, at least as presented in this film, presents a fascinating contradiction—he’s a boxer who devotes much of his time and energy to beating other men up, but he’s painted from the start as a caring family man, one who becomes so overwhelmed by the love he increasingly feels for Raija that he becomes distracted from training for his crucial championship match.
With such a sensitive character at its heart, all of the image manipulation both in front of and behind the cameras inevitably comes off as macho posturing—which is, this film suggests, precisely what drives the sport of boxing in the first place.
The fact that Kuosmanen eventually generates more suspense as to whether Mäki will be able to be with the woman he loves than with whether he’ll actually become the featherweight champion of the world is enough to make The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, in its own discreet way, quietly revolutionary—at least in terms of boxing movies.
Director: Juho Kuosmanen
Writer: Juho Kuosmanen
Starring: Jarkko Lahti, Oona Airola, Eero Milonoff, Joonas Saartamo, Mika Melender, Olli Rahkonen
Release Date: April 21, 2017
Kenji Fujishima is a freelance film critic, contributing to Slant Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, The Playlist and The Village Voice. When he’s not watching movies and writing and editing film criticism, he’s trying to absorb as much music, art, and literature as possible. He has not infrequently been called a “culture vulture” for that reason.
The Happiest Day, however, suggests that the evening he unceremoniously lost in two rounds against American boxer Davey Moore was, in fact, a happy occasion for Mäki, as it signaled the end of two weeks of overwhelming media hype and pressure, thus allowing him to return to his quiet life in the small town of Kokkola, and especially to his new wife Raija (Oona Airola).
Snatching a romantic victory from the jaws of physical defeat? Sounds like yet another variation on Rocky, especially with Mäki being a working class fellow who gets a shot at a major title. But Kuosmanen’s film is, above all else, a thorough dismantling of standard boxing movie tropes and attitudes.
That subversive nature of the film begins on the formal level: Shot in grainy black-and-white on 16mm, The Happiest Day commits utmost to an aesthetic of realism, with Kuosmanen and cinematographer Jani-Petteri Passi capturing scenes in detailed long takes and smooth tracking shots.
There’s neither the overheated lyricism of Raging Bull nor the pulp grittiness of a noir like The Set-Up; everything in Kuosmanen’s film feels earthy and grounded, and, unlike Bill Conti’s work in Rocky, Kuosmanen forgoes a non-diegetic music score, thereby denying us any easy emotional signposts.
The Happiest Day also builds in its pointed takedown of genre tropes through its introduction of a meta-movie angle. As part of the lead-up to the World Featherweight Title match, a documentary crew is hired to capture Mäki during training sessions and in his personal life. This crew, however, is hardly interested in capturing the real Mäki, but instead in depicting him as Finland’s great national hope, a representative of the country on the world stage.
Thus, we see the filmmakers manipulate events in order to make it look better for the cameras, directing Mäki, manager Elis Ask (Eero Milonoff) and others as if it were a fiction film. By devoting about as much screen time to this blatant bout of media manipulation as to Mäki himself, Kuosmanen indicates his desire to make us aware not only of the ways the media creates popular narratives out of these athletes’ lives, but of the kind of clichés such narratives enforce.
Even that meta-movie angle might not have come off, though, had it not been for Olli Mäki the man, depicted here as so humble he’s immediately uncomfortable when he’s forced to try to project a more confident, if not outright prideful, image for the cameras. Certainly, he’s no Muhammad Ali, to the frustration of the more ambitious and glory-seeking Elis.
Mäki’s relatively petite frame buttresses this unassuming impression, and Jarkko Lahti plays him in such a naturally self-effacing manner that at times he seems to shrink right off the screen—in stark contrast to, say, the imposing physique and presence Sylvester Stallone cut in Rocky.
All of this points to Kuosmanen’s most resonant subversion of the boxing movie genre:
its emphasis on traditionally “feminine” qualities of love and sacrifice within a predominantly masculine sport.
Mäki, at least as presented in this film, presents a fascinating contradiction—he’s a boxer who devotes much of his time and energy to beating other men up, but he’s painted from the start as a caring family man, one who becomes so overwhelmed by the love he increasingly feels for Raija that he becomes distracted from training for his crucial championship match.
With such a sensitive character at its heart, all of the image manipulation both in front of and behind the cameras inevitably comes off as macho posturing—which is, this film suggests, precisely what drives the sport of boxing in the first place.
The fact that Kuosmanen eventually generates more suspense as to whether Mäki will be able to be with the woman he loves than with whether he’ll actually become the featherweight champion of the world is enough to make The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, in its own discreet way, quietly revolutionary—at least in terms of boxing movies.
Director: Juho Kuosmanen
Writer: Juho Kuosmanen
Starring: Jarkko Lahti, Oona Airola, Eero Milonoff, Joonas Saartamo, Mika Melender, Olli Rahkonen
Release Date: April 21, 2017
Kenji Fujishima is a freelance film critic, contributing to Slant Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, The Playlist and The Village Voice. When he’s not watching movies and writing and editing film criticism, he’s trying to absorb as much music, art, and literature as possible. He has not infrequently been called a “culture vulture” for that reason.
Source: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/04/the-happiest-day-in-the-life-of-olli-maki.html
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki offers up a new kind of boxing film.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Interview with Margaret Goodman of VADA: part 1 of 5
Published on Mar 9, 2017
MichaelMontero interviews Margaret Goodman, former Chief Ringside Physician
for the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) and founder of the
Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA). Part 1 of a 5 video series.
Link: https://youtu.be/lPgCsGkky60
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Rocky Marciano vs Ezzard Charles, I
Rocky Marciano vs Ezzard Charles. Jun. 17, 1954. Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York, United States.
Рокки Марчиано против Эззарда Чарлза, 17 июня 1954 г., 1, 4, 6, 10 и 15-ый раунды, победа Марчиано (UD)
Рокки Марчиано против Эззарда Чарлза, 17 июня 1954 г., 1, 4, 6, 10 и 15-ый раунды, победа Марчиано (UD)
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