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"Charles Farrell's many personal encounters, questions, insights, and experiences as an observer of the sport… add a multifaceted richness to [this] essay collection…. Readers will find its vibrant psychological, social, political, and personal revelations are just the ticket for a read that is solid in its facts, unexpected in its focus and connections, and thoroughly delightful in its novel approach to boxing."-Midwest Book Review
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 ironclad street credibility—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.
About the author
Charles Farrell has spent his professional life moving between music and boxing, with occasional detours. He has managed five world champions, and has played and recorded with many of the musicians he most admires—Evan Parker and Ornette Coleman among them. His first book,
(Low)life: A Memoir of Jazz, FIght-Fixing, and the Mob, was published by Hamilcar in 2021. Farrell lives outside of Boston.
