In His Own Words

"The editors at Sports Illustrated said, 'We would like you to box somebody.'" George Plimpton--the founding editor of the Paris Review and the "participatory journalist" who spent his career inserting himself into unlikely situations for which he had no training--is remembering one of his athletic exploits. "Archie Moore was the light-heavyweight champion of the world. I wrote him a letter, asking him if he would... go through a three-round exhibition [with me], and somewhat to my surprise he... said he'd be delighted to. He turned up in New York and spent the day with Peter Maas, an old friend of mine. Or so I thought.

"At one point during the day they were having lunch and Moore said, 'Hey, who is this guy I have to fight tonight?' And Peter Maas was suddenly seized by this absolutely satanic idea. He said, 'You've never heard of this fellow? Well, let me tell you something about this fellow. He's a tall, scrawny-looking fellow, but don't let that fool you. He's an ex-intercollegiate boxing champion, he's got one of the great left jabs in the business, a pulverizing right cross--but the most extraordinary thing about him is his ambition. What he truly wants to be in life is the light-heavyweight champion of the world!'...

"Archie Moore, sitting there at lunch, heard this, and he reached out and bent a spoon. And he said to Peter Maas, 'If that fellow so much as touches me, it's the end of him.'...

"I did not like the looks of what came through the ropes that night.... As you see, I am not properly constituted to fight. Very thin, delicate nose. Which bleeds at the slightest touch. I once saluted an officer when I was in the Army, and my forefinger grazed the tip of my nose and a drop of blood appeared. And not only that, but I suffer from something called 'sympathetic response,' and that means that when you're hit, you weep. Well, the fight started, and in the middle of the first round Mr. Moore let out a very stiff jab, and my nose went and sort of sat down on my cheek, and there was an enormous amount of sympathetic response. And I think Archie Moore was rather started by this. He'd never been in the ring with someone both bleeding and weeping at the same time.

"So the fight lasted about two and a half rounds. My trainer threw in the towel after a while. And he was nice, actually, Archie Moore. But for a time there, I got a sense of what it was like to be in the ring with a great champion."

For a time, the audience at Plimpton's January 21 Seattle Arts & Lectures event got a sense of what it was like to be in the ring with a great champion of American letters. Plimpton, 76, threw in the towel last week.

frizzelle@thestranger.com