Sugar Ray Robinson—best of boxing's best—was once interviewed by a board of inquiry concerning a fighter he killed in the ring. I believe this was around 1951-52, when ring fatalities were soaring to ten a year. When asked if he knew that his opponent was "in trouble" Ray responded in words to the effect that it was his job to get men in trouble. His KO rate took a dive after this experience, as virtually all boxers—a few nuts like Tyson and Ali excepted*—have a deep empathy for their opponent—which is ironically a requirement for effectively assaulting them.

*In Tyson's case his blinding rage, and in Ali's case his towering ego, prevented them from empathizing with their opponents.

Once, while boxing a man who I was getting the best of, I was working my way in for the finish while he was loosing heart. The spectators—only a few, as it was a private affair—noticed this turn of the tide and began urging me to finish him. I immediately became angry at them, for the very simple reason that I had more in common with him than with them. He at least had the guts to be in there. I carried him the rest of the fight, let him get back into it and let him hit me so he could walk off with some pride left. This was entirely unspoken. I claimed to have gassed out from his earlier body work.

He had his doubt.

They had their disappointment.

I retained my moral autonomy.

In speaking with Shayne and Ishmael this past week, as they coached me on shooting and tracking, they both told stories of guiding for clients [not all, but enough] who regarded them as their proxy aggressors in some situations that struck a similar sour note in their hunter's heart.

It is an item of some interest, that in ancient Rome, among troupes of gladiators who were often called upon to slay each other, that these men took care of each other's burial through funerary associations, so that they would not be fed to the beasts, which in turn were slain by beast hunters and fed to the crowd. In modern times MMA and boxing fans wax similarly bloodthirsty over the dedication of their prize-fighters to inflict temporary death upon an overmatched opponent and have no patience for a man who carries an opponent, when in a healthy society he would be lionized.

How far have we gone down the twisted road to Rome's immoral fate.

I wonder, as a science-fiction writer, if our social managers will one day manage to remove this empathy for the opponent from the minds of their proxy aggressors [police, military], just as the officers in World War I eventually prohibited the German and Allied soldiers from visiting and playing soccer with their counterparts in No Man's Land on Christmas.