One of my vast legion of loyal readers suggested I check out CHAMPS. It's a new documentary focusing on 90's boxing and starring Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson and Bernard Hopkins. I took Matt up on the suggestion and watched it two nights ago. Uncharacteristically of me, I put it on at 12:30am and watched the whole thing and didn't get to bed til close to 2:30. Starbucks iced coffee, man.
I was never a big boxing fan. I couldn't even call myself a boxing fan, period. I've just always been aware of it as a part of existence. Passing interest from time to time. As a youth I grew up with the personalities of the heyday like Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, and good ol' Frank Bruno.
It's an alluring sport, though. And this documentary does a great job pulling back the curtain to show you a glimpse of the life pre stardom, and the pain/troubles of the life post stardom. It's pretty fucked up. Hardly any better than the backyard situation we saw with the doc' Dawg Fight. In many respects I'd say this is worse because you have a whole system of people out there pretending to support you, but really fucking you over and manipulating you for your money. You're from the ghetto, you've never had enough money to support yourself, and now you're a millionaire. You're gonna get robbed blind by pieces of shit who call themselves your friends or your team. And you can't rely on anyone to advise you otherwise. But anyway...
This is a cool doc'. Good quality. Entertaining. Watch it.
