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How many of us remember that awful night in 1980, when Johnny Owen, ‘The Matchstick Man’, slumped to the canvas never to recover after a gruelling 12 rounds against Lupe Pintor? It is one of those events which tends to polarise views on boxing – but no one could fail to be moved by the poignancy of what happened.
This book covers the lead-up to that night, the self-doubt in the mind of Johnny Owen himself (hence the title of this book ‘The Big If . . . ’) and the terrible burden that Lupe Pintor carried on his shoulders for 22 years until he met Owen’s father in 2002.
The structure of the book very cleverly intertwines the lives of the two boxers (from very different backgrounds) and the actual boxing match, round by round. Even so the linearity and chronology is still very clear and this format adds much to maintain the storyline, and indeed the tension.
Pintor’s reunion with Johnny Owen’s father, Dick Owen, in 2002 only covers the last 15 pages of this book, but the emotions that those pages convey (relief, resolution, forgiveness and a commonality of emotion and grief borne over many years) is almost unbearably poignant. Both had great concerns about the meeting, so many years after the event, and yet when they met, the resolution was a natural release of emotion.
Of Pintor’s visit to Wales to unveil Johnny Owens’s statue, the author conveys the range of emotions in the minds of Johnny’s relatives, and, as the author puts it, ‘He hoped that his visit proved enlightening, that it conveyed the ugly, simple truth that boxing would always be fraught with risks.’ Pintor has no pictures of his glory days as a boxer on his gym walls in Mexico. ‘He is defined by his past, but lives in the present.’ The events of that night haunted him as much as anyone.
The book includes inevitably a discussion on the pros and cons of boxing as a sport or otherwise. It is summed up in one sentence: ‘The debate is interminable, the conundrum unsolvable.’ And yet there is no stated condemnation at this point, as Johnny Owen lived his life for boxing and ultimately died for it. But this does not negate the acceptance of the risk involved and the enjoyment of the participants.
Before he died in 2005, Dick Owen, Johnny’s father, penned his own thoughts on events since 1980, and those words, a fitting finale to this book, are printed in full. This book is very well written and thoroughly researched, and is a very fitting and moving account of that tragic event of 1980.
Ken Jones
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
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