What do you think?
Rate this book
The Hardest Game
Thirty years of ringside reporting from one of the world's most honored sportswriters
A living legend on both sides of the Atlantic, British sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney is best known for his incisive ringside boxing commentaries. Employing a writing style as muscular as it is graceful, McIlvanney never fails to infect the reader with his enthusiasm and sense of awe for the sport, while at the same time revealing the deeper truths at work in all such extreme expressions of human will and physical prowess. As one critic put it, "The genius of McIlvanney is his ability to magnify and precisely delineate those elements of sport that contain fundamental truths about the human condition."
First published in 1983 to great acclaim, this sport classic is reprinted with the addition of recent dispatches to span 30 years of ringside reporting. The Hardest Game includes McIlvanney's commentaries on such immortal bouts as "The Rumble in the Jungle" (Foreman vs. Ali, Zaire, 1974) and "The Thriller in Manila" (Ali vs. Frazier, Philippines, 1975), and the most memorable fights in the careers of Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, and others.
"Anyone who admires writing as muscular as it is graceful should buy this book." -- The Daily Telegraph
A living legend on both sides of the Atlantic, British sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney is best known for his incisive ringside boxing commentaries. Employing a writing style as muscular as it is graceful, McIlvanney never fails to infect the reader with his enthusiasm and sense of awe for the sport, while at the same time revealing the deeper truths at work in all such extreme expressions of human will and physical prowess. As one critic put it, "The genius of McIlvanney is his ability to magnify and precisely delineate those elements of sport that contain fundamental truths about the human condition."
First published in 1983 to great acclaim, this sport classic is reprinted with the addition of recent dispatches to span 30 years of ringside reporting. The Hardest Game includes McIlvanney's commentaries on such immortal bouts as "The Rumble in the Jungle" (Foreman vs. Ali, Zaire, 1974) and "The Thriller in Manila" (Ali vs. Frazier, Philippines, 1975), and the most memorable fights in the careers of Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, and others.
"Anyone who admires writing as muscular as it is graceful should buy this book." -- The Daily Telegraph
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 21, 2001
3 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 20, 2011
My favorite writer on boxing, whose prose is simultaneously vivid and insightful. The Hardest Game is masterful for its muscular, descriptive prose, keeping me company on more than a few trips. Every time I need an inspirational injection for my own writing, from an unquestioned master of the craft, all I need to do is read a few paragraphs of this work. Here is a quick peek at McIlvanney’s take on Carlos Monzon. “There is a frightening strength in the elasticity of those long muscles. Monzon's method is related to profound confidence, the conviction that he has the animal authority to dominate almost any man they put in front of him”. The Scotsman is simply a masterful writer, and this would have been a five star book if not for it's unnecessary fixation on heavyweights.
September 20, 2021
For years I've heard people say that Hugh McIlvaney is the best boxing scribe on either side of the Atlantic. It's never right to judge someone by hyperbole rather than objective standards, but it is human, and perhaps inevitable. And as I read these articles on boxing—all of them good, a handful genuinely superlative—I kept thinking that there's no way in hell McIlvaney deserves the mantle worn much more comfortably by the likes of a Mark Kram Sr. or a Springs Toledo.
Both of those other boxing journos are Americans, however, so it could be the bias for fellow countrymen shading my opinion just as some kind of latent patriotism seems to color a fan's perception of a fight when the match in question is a cross-continental affair.
That said, I think my main issue with McIlvaney is an overly-precious prose style, that and a tendency to "take the piss" (as the Brits say), usually at the fighter's expense. He's not as pun-happy as the cigar-chomping Bert Sugar, but he resorts to a cheap joke here and there. Also, at first blush his trick bag of metaphors and similes seems quite deep, provided one only reads an article or two of his, but it wears thin in a collection, where, what once seemed quite clever, starts to come off as a bit hackneyed and redundant.
He's at his best when examining his own ambivalence about the "manly art," and in those essays where he probes the myths of boxing's greats, like Ali and Tyson, to find some simpler truths about men whose mantles of invincibility were eventually stripped from them. His examination of the British heavyweight as a sort of pugilistic bridesmaid to America's bride is also poignant, and makes for especially ironic reading these days where the British have come to dominate the heavyweight scene. I wonder what old Hugh would make of that were he still alive, or, assuming Heaven exists, what kind of pleasure he derives from that fact today?
In any case, recommended, with minor reservations. With photos, too.
Both of those other boxing journos are Americans, however, so it could be the bias for fellow countrymen shading my opinion just as some kind of latent patriotism seems to color a fan's perception of a fight when the match in question is a cross-continental affair.
That said, I think my main issue with McIlvaney is an overly-precious prose style, that and a tendency to "take the piss" (as the Brits say), usually at the fighter's expense. He's not as pun-happy as the cigar-chomping Bert Sugar, but he resorts to a cheap joke here and there. Also, at first blush his trick bag of metaphors and similes seems quite deep, provided one only reads an article or two of his, but it wears thin in a collection, where, what once seemed quite clever, starts to come off as a bit hackneyed and redundant.
He's at his best when examining his own ambivalence about the "manly art," and in those essays where he probes the myths of boxing's greats, like Ali and Tyson, to find some simpler truths about men whose mantles of invincibility were eventually stripped from them. His examination of the British heavyweight as a sort of pugilistic bridesmaid to America's bride is also poignant, and makes for especially ironic reading these days where the British have come to dominate the heavyweight scene. I wonder what old Hugh would make of that were he still alive, or, assuming Heaven exists, what kind of pleasure he derives from that fact today?
In any case, recommended, with minor reservations. With photos, too.
April 10, 2025
Spanning just over 30 years, this book is essentially a series of dispatches from McIlvanney’s illustrious career. One of the absolute best books about the sport, covering a wide range of fighters, trainers, promoters and events on both sides of the Atlantic.
January 5, 2023
I came for the content but stuck around for the writing. Hugh McIlvanney is quite the scribe.
June 11, 2008
Outstanding collection of essays by an acute observer of the sport.
The section on Ali's career is the best short form summary available
The rest of the book is equally well constructed and compelling, and his two essays on Johnny Owen should be required reading for everyone, not just fans (and critics) of the sport.
The section on Ali's career is the best short form summary available
The rest of the book is equally well constructed and compelling, and his two essays on Johnny Owen should be required reading for everyone, not just fans (and critics) of the sport.
January 18, 2012
Simple amazing
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews