What a rush it must have been for Lenny Mancini to know that his son’s greatest ambition was to fall in his footsteps. In the 1970s, almost no American thought like that.

Now it’s virtually against the law.

There was a good fighter of the 1980s out of Youngstown named Doug Dewitt, who I followed as a much as I could. My friend, Tony “Cyclone” Cygon had 9 wins under his belt when he went against a bigger dude from Youngstown at the Pikesville Armory. That was a tough fight to watch. The guy came from that hard place in Ohio, but Tony went the distance, never taking a step back. I didn’t realize the poetry of that until watching this story.

Mancini was a better boxer than he or others give him credit for. The art of keeping a good boxer against the ropes is complex and involves shelling, wing blocking, shouldering, shifting, bobbing and weaving and a high work rate with both hands. It’s like stage managing a hurricane. I’ve been on both sides of this style divide at a much lower level and failed at both and have therefore learned what both can do to you. And I’d much rather be Ray than have him bang my body every time I jabbed.

Sociologically, this is a very well done documentary on every level. The media is truly exposed as the agent of emasculation that it is in the final quarter of the documentary. The brutal empathy and uncanny symmetry between Deuk-Koo and Raymond was tragic in its expression, as if they should not have met but have reigned in their own worlds as indomitable spirits. The thing is, as Raymond so honestly relates nobody knows anybody better than the guy they fought. This is how you make remarkable men, but it hurts. In the end, this story is not about Achilles but about Hector and the fact that he was born again.

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