"With his trademark insider acuity, unsentimental compassion, and faultless eye and ear, Charles Farrell gives us an indelible portrait of one of boxing's great characters and a definitive account of what happens when talent runs afoul of the way things work in the world."—Carlo Rotella, contributor to The New York Times Magazine and author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights
Mitch ‘Blood’ Green had
more things going for him to make big money in boxing than nearly any fighter
in history. A six-foot-six, 225-pound heavyweight with a chiseled physique and
a traffic-stopping look, Green had street credibility for days—he was the gang leader
of the Black Spades—and four New York Golden Gloves heavyweight titles.
But his penchant for
mayhem, drugs, and chaos, while keeping him in the news, torpedoed his pro boxing
career. He lost a high-profile decision to Mike Tyson at Madison Square Garden,
got into a tabloid-grabbing late-night street fight with Tyson at an
after-hours boutique in Harlem, and then disappeared.
Until Charles Farrell
found him.
In The Legend of Mitch "Blood" Green and Other Boxing Essays, Farrell captures life in the boxing
business from its deepest interior, and offers additional portraits of characters
as wide-ranging as Donald Trump, Floyd Patterson, Bert Cooper, Charley Burley, Peter
McNeeley, and Muhammad Ali. Trenchant, fearless, and often flat-out funny, there has never
been a boxing book like this, and there will never be another.
