SOURCE: "The Grace of Slaughter: A Review-Essay of Joyce Carol Oates's On Boxing," in The Iowa Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, Fall, 1988, pp. 173-86.

In the essay below, Early meditates on the themes of On Boxing in literary and critical contexts, contrasting the spectacle of boxing with wrestling.

Boxing ain't the noblest of the arts….

   —middleweight champion Harry Greb, whose loss to Tiger Flowers in 1926 permitted the first black ever to hold the middleweight title

God didn't make the chin to be punched.

   —Ray Arcel, boxing trainer who numbered among his students the legendary Roberto Duran

At that time [Georges] Carpentier was only 14 1/2 years old and I, 21 years old. So his first fight was with Georges Salmon at the Cafe de Paris, Maison Laffitte, and he was making good until the 11th round then he blew up. That was really because he was inexperienced on the square circle … but again...