BoxRec

Glyn, without sounding antagonistic i've always wondered what the deal was with the Trevor Berbick obituary in BM. Instead of a pic of his fight with Ali or Thomas, a snuff pic of his corpse face down in a pool of blood with his head hanging wide open was instead selected. A brutal, horrific and heartless choice, especially considering i know his children were reading all the material in the magazines and websites covering his death.

What was up with that?

Anyone else have an opinion?

think we need to define terms on snuff a tiny bit. it's not like the killing was staged for the cameras. snuff is a bit of a myth (check out the excellent book 'Killing for Culture' by David Kerekes) that came out of Video Nasty hysteria in the '80s with unregulated video tapes etc. Obviously, executions on Iraq TV could be considered snuff. But I just don't think anyone is stupid enough to incriminate themselves by filming a murder and passing it round.

He was hardly a nice guy was he. More pictures of Rapists like that are welcome IMO.

a cautionary tale then. this is what happens to you if you don't pull your socks up after fighting tyson.

Good question and one that I have asked myself. My reasoning at the time was that this was a photo that I knew would not be shown elsewhere and that there was a certain violent morality to it given the life that Berbick had drifted into — and this was no angel. However, at the end of the day, who am I to pass judgement? I couldn't honestly say whether or not I'd use the same shot again. I think I'll always wonder about that decision.

Did Berbick family ever complain about the photo in the issue?

They got hot and bothered when thesweetscience's Michael Wood (I believe) wrote a somewhat blunt blog entitled Berbick Was No Great. They responded leaving comments on the site. Bit of aggro with that, so I'm guessing the pic didn't go down well.


Anyway regardless of taste, it was an extraordinary pic. Don't get many like that.

We never received any complaints from the Berbick family at BM. But from what I understand there are very different opinions of Berbick within his own family. He was reportedly quite an abusive character and it was a family member who killed him in the end. But that's not to say, as OR suggests, that there would not be members of the family who loved him. Perhaps they did. I really don't know.

Autobarn wrote: Anyway regardless of taste, it was an extraordinary pic. Don't get many like that.

I remember it well; it was a gruesome reminder of how violent death can be.

Berbick will be always tarred with the brush of rapist, and perhaps this was the reason there was only a very muted outcry over the choice of image.

Killed from behind, in the dark, while stupidly drunk. Shades of Battling Siki.

Was he a rapist though? I'm not saying he wasn't.

But i'm not even sure Tyson was a rapist with the evidence we have. Or not convinced anyway. Suspect of a woman who goes up to a mans hotel room at 2AM, and has cried rape before. How much do we know about this babysitter who said Berbick raped her? Did she have any axe to grind? Any of us men could get 'tarred with the rapist brush'.

Anyways, fair response from Leach.

I think it's fair to say that had Berbick not lived the life he had, I would not have even thought about using that picture. His actions seemed to indicate little respect for others and I probably responded in kind. However, I'm not convinced I was right to do so.

I have a question to ask Glen (with respect) - why are you editorials so tabloid and facetious?

You are clearly better informed and can write better?

My take is, I have no problem.

It's a reality, it's the brutality of life, why NOT show it?

Is Glen gonna answer E or what?

And I'm sure glynn is very appreciative of your kind words poodlepoo

I like the editorials as well. I think there was one that brought up an old Calzaghe quote saying he wanted to be like McCallum and co, and not just be a WBO champ. Priceless.

overhand_right wrote:Was he a rapist though? I'm not saying he wasn't.

But i'm not even sure Tyson was a rapist with the evidence we have. Or not convinced anyway. Suspect of a woman who goes up to a mans hotel room at 2AM, and has cried rape before.

If you want to read Teddy Atlas's book, don't read below....





SPOILER


To answer the above comment, I always thought that Tyson wasn't guilty of rape until I read Teddy Atlas's book.

The reason that Teddy Atlas left the Tyson camp was that Tyson attempted to rape his wife's sister, a 14 year-old girl, and D'Amato covered it up. Atlas then took a gun to the gym to kill Tyson and was prevented from doing so by Dave Wolf, was calmed down and attempted to be paid off by Cus.

Some people may say that this is Atlas speaking out his ass (remember that such an accusation has never been refuted by Tyson, or any lawyer).

Read into that what you will.

I'd be interested to know how many men are 'tarred with the rapist' brush. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but from what I know of Tyson I don't find it difficult to believe he raped her.

I also love the editorials of Britain's best endowed writer. Good to see Mr Leach with feature articles in the last 2 editions too. A reponse to the pleas of your admiring public perhaps?

Thanks for the kind words Autobarn and Matt W, and apologies for the slightly "facetious" initial reply E, but (with respect) spelling one of my names wrong (the shorter one, at that) doesn't really suggest that you have read my editorials carefully enough to provide that accurate a critique. However, I'm happy to discuss the matter if you want to.

Have you really found the whole 17 years' worth of them "tabloid and facetious", as you have stated, or just some of them?

If it is the former, you should probably just skip straight to the next page because you probably just don't like my writing, which is absolutely fine, dandy and acceptable to me — you can't please all the people all of the time.

If it is the latter, I'll happily hold my hands up and say that yes, some of them have been "tabloid and facetious" — just like some of them have been, by my own admission, utter unmitigated crap and some of them have been, in my opinion, not too bad.

I am not a robot and the quality of my work has definitely varied, as has the style, depending on all manner of factors that one might reasonably expect to come into play over the course of 17 years. I've had good periods and bad periods, and I've had bad periods that have lasted years - that's life. But who knows E, maybe one of the good periods is just round the corner!

All the best fella

jamesmcdonnell wrote:My take is, I have no problem.

It's a reality, it's the brutality of life, why NOT show it?

Erm, how about out of respect to his family or to avoid traumatising his grieving children?

One might argue that Berbick, even based only on the evidence that made the public domain, did not treat his own family with a great deal of respect - and again, he was killed by one of his own family.

Not an easy situation to read.

Glyn Leach wrote: Not an easy situation to read.

Stop being facetious Glen!

And for my two penneth, I love Glen Lech's column at the start of that Boxing Weekly magazine....


"T.M.K"

Playing devil's advocate there, by the way - as I've said, I'm still not convinced that my using that photo was correct under the circumstances, even if I understand why I did it.

But for sure, two wrongs don't make a right - just because Berbick traumatised his family doesn't give others the right to also.

Interesting subject OR, well done for raising it.

overhand_right wrote:

jamesmcdonnell wrote:My take is, I have no problem.

It's a reality, it's the brutality of life, why NOT show it?

Erm, how about out of respect to his family or to avoid traumatising his grieving children?

I don't think he was exactly on best terms with his family, and in any case, are they likely to be picking up a copy of boxing news in Jamaica?

Boxing Monthly! Not News...