Shadow boxer biography
The Shadow Boxer
When he's not belting it out in amateur boxing bouts (I thought Canadians just did hockey), Sevigne dreams of becoming a great writer, feverishly dashing off poems to arts publications. No surprise, Heighton also started his literary life as a poet, so he waxes a lot about the search for transcendence or some such jazz. But brother, can the guy write about boxing. Like a boxer himself, Heighton varies his verbal attack, writing in short, choppy, fragmentary jabs, then unleashing a torrent of words in great haymaker paragraphs that run for a page or more.
After his father's death, Sevigne, in his mid-20s, sets out for the big city -- Toronto!!! -- to make his fortune as a novelist. He hooks up with Eddy, a friend from high school, who has big plans to start a radical and revolutionary literary magazine (tho he can't settle on a name for it that's sufficiently radical and revolutionary). Eddy's prone to saying things like "Nobody knows what postmodern means -- that's what's so postmodern about the term!" Eddy gets Sevigne a job writing pithy but shallow capsule reviews of great novels (which is absolutely NOTHING like what I do here on goodreads, just so we're all clear). Sevigne finds the arts scene in Toronto is less about art than catty gossip, fashionable drugs and fashionable fashions, and being seen at all the hippest clubs. Still, hot se
Shadowboxer
2005 film by Lee Daniels
This article is about 2005 film. For shadowboxers, see shadowboxing. For the opera by Frank Proto, see Shadowboxer (opera). For the song by Fiona Apple, see Shadowboxer (song). For Mansionair album, see Shadowboxer (album).
Shadowboxer is a 2005 crime thriller film directed by Lee Daniels and starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Helen Mirren, Vanessa Ferlito, Macy Gray, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mo'Nique, and Stephen Dorff. It opened in limited release in six cities: New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Richmond, Virginia.
Plot
Mikey and his stepmother Rose are contract killers and lovers. The two continue with their line of work even though Rose is suffering from cancer.
Organized crime kingpin Clayton suspects that his pregnant wife Vicki may have been unfaithful, so he hires Mikey and Rose to kill her. Upon entering Clayton's mansion, Rose heads for Vicki's bedroom while Vicki is on the phone with her best friend Neisha. But as Rose enters Vicki's bedroom, Vicki's water breaks and she goes into labor. Taking pity on Vicki, Rose uses her prior medical training to deliver Vicki's baby, a boy she later names Anthony. Afterward, Mikey and Rose drive Vicki and her infant son to a local motel.
On Rose's request, Mikey calls Dr. Don, Clayton's private doctor. Dr. Don arrives with his drug-addicted nurse/lover, Precious. Dr. Don provides medical assistance to Vicki and her baby before leaving. Over Mikey's objections, Rose insists that they take Vicki and her infant son to a safe place. The four end up in Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, Neisha arrives at Clayton's mansion, demanding to know where Vicki is. Clayton becomes nervous that Neisha knows too much and pays Mikey to kill her, which he does by poisoning. Mikey and Rose then move Vicki and her son to a house in upstate Pennsylvania. Mikey carries on with the contract killings alone as Rose has become too ill to accompany him.
At the baby's fi
Shadow Boxer: A Billy Nichols Novel
Shadow Boxer
Every boxer wants to be somebody, and everyone dreams of being the champ, and once it looked like Alex Ramos might be both. He had that big wide smile, a way with the ladies and a pair of hands that could hurt any fighter alive. He was adored, too, a South Bronx kid that everyone in New York cheered like a favorite son. Boxing fans clapped each other on the shoulder congratulating themselves on every knockout as if they had flashed the leather themselves. Nothing fueled the lore more than broadcaster Howard Cosell’s nasally and deliberate voice introducing Ramos to a new audience in the late 1970s; the next great middleweight champion in waiting. If Cosell said so, then that’s the way it was.
Photo courtesy of Alex Ramos.
And for a while, that seemed to be true, devastating knockouts in the amateurs culminating in four New York City Golden Glove championships, followed by a quick start as a pro. But not everyone handles success well, and maybe that’s why things came apart, why he never reached the level to which his talent could have taken him.
Or maybe it was something else, something that wouldn’t go away, something that slowly scraped away at the heart of who he was. Legal problems began to make more headlines than his KOs, and his career first slowed then plateaued, then went into steep decline in the late 1990s as his troubles mounted and old friends turned away. And just when his life seemed to be on the ropes, Jacquie Richardson showed up to keep him on his feet and then help him get medical help as the years of fighting began to catch up with him. If there was a problem, she would solve it, cobbling together lives from the broken minds and souls that once laced up in professional boxing rings.
She knew what kind of damage a man could endure in the ring and cause outside of it. And she knew the legal system. An assistant to the district attorney in Ventura County, California, Richardson focused on sex crimes. She had years of knowl