Dylan’s ode posed the question of responsibility to fight fans, Moore’s manager, the ref, boxing writers, gamblers and Ramos.
Yet, don’t think Dylan was anti-boxing.
For years there’s been talk he’s owned a secret fight club beneath a Santa Monica coffee shop, and though Dylan remains mum on that, Los Angeles Magazine slipped into the place a while back and wrote about it. Sean Penn and Will Smith are said to have trained there. Quentin Tarantino has admitted getting caught flush by a Dylan punch and Gina Gershon claims to have knocked Dylan down once.
If that’s so, he should have drawn on the advice former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey gave him at his Manhattan restaurant in 1961 when he mistook the poetic songman for a pug.
Recounting their meeting in his memoirs, Dylan said Dempsey told him: “You look too light for a heavyweight kid, you’ll have to put on a few pounds. You’re going to have to dress a little finer, look a little sharper.”
When a music producer interjected — “He’s not a boxer, Jack, he’s a songwriter,” — Dempsey shrugged: “Oh yeah, well, I hope to hear ’em some of these days.”
Dylan’s most famous boxing song was “Hurricane” —in which he decried the plight of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the middleweight contender imprisoned 20 years for murder before the conviction was overturned.
Dylan also covered Paul Simon’s “The Boxer” and in 1964 his song “I Shall Be Free No. 10” included: “I was shadowboxin’ early in the day. I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay.”
Recently, he told Rolling Stone magazine that boxing is his main training exercise and for a long time he worked out with “Mouse” Strauss, the colorful Omaha-born journeyman.
“He taught me the pugilistic rudiments back a while ago, maybe 20 or 30 years,” Dylan said. “That’s not when I started though. Boxing was a part of my curriculum when I went to high school.”
At a 1984 concert in Omaha, Dylan even gave Strauss a shout-out. While it’s unlikely he’ll make reference to Moore tonight, July 10, when he plays Fifth Third Field, Dylan could have visited Springfield and seen where Moore is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery or met his widow, Geraldine, who he sang about.
He wouldn’t be able to see the public sculpture of Moore that Springfield planned to erect last year. The economic downturn has hit the city hard and the project stalled $37,000 short of its goal.
But if Dylan can’t see Davey’s bronzed likeness, he could get an answer to that question he posed so long ago.
“Who killed Davey Moore?” said Geraldine. “No one. No one made him get in the ring. He died doing what he liked to do.”
Turns out, Dylan likes doing it, too.
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