The personal Website of Andy Schön of New York. Now in its 16th year on the Web.
Following, watching, and attending professional boxing has been a hobby of mine since March 10th, 2007, when I casually attended to an event at Madison Square Garden on a free ticket from a friend whose friend's employer was sponsoring the event. Since then, I've been to seven more professional boxing events - almost always in ringside seats, and certainly not for free. :-)
I think I like boxing because it's arguably the purest form of legal sport competition in most countries today. In a way, all sports are seemingly arbitrary proliferations of rules to remove the game - to various degrees - from direct competition between one human and another as would organically occur in feral. Sure, boxing is certainly not completely free of rules and tools, but compared to other legal sports, it's probably the highest on that scale of purity. No balls being thrown around, no bases, no wholesale restriction of body contact. Don't get me wrong, I certainly enjoy basketball, baseball, etc., as well, but the above is perhaps the root of boxing's appeal to me.
At the events where I'm able to avoid being seen with my camera by a guard that cares, I take rogue photos, featured below.
- 2008 Feb 23: Klitschko vs. Ibragimov @ Madison Square Garden
- 2007 Nov 10: Cotto vs. Mosley @ Madison Square Garden
- 2007 Oct 06: Peter vs. McCline @ Madison Square Garden
- 2007 Sep 29: Taylor vs. Pavlik [I] @ Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City
I successfully passed security to enter with my camera this time. However, due to our excellent 7th row seats, a guard standing at Pavlik's corner shut down my photography just prior to this epic main event when I took out my camera. :-( I guess I'll have to shoot from the bleachers next time if I want to get any photos at Boardwalk Hall.
- 2007 Sep 07: Judah vs. Vazquez @ Hard Rock Biloxi
- 2007 Jul 14: Gatti vs. Gomez / Cintron vs. Matthysse @ Boardwalk Hall,
Atlantic City
An "opinionated" security woman on her first day on the job took the opportunity to exercise her sudden power in order to shut my photography down prior to even entering the arena. I would so love to have had photos of Gatti's very last match of his career (one of my favorite fighters of all time), not to mention the stunning Cintron KO in 2 (another of my favorite boxers). :-(
- 2007 Jun 09: Cotto vs. Judah @ Madison Square Garden
- 2007 Mar 10: Ibragimov vs. Mora @ Madison Square Garden