Remembering the Legendary Writer Hugh Mcllvanney (1935-2019)

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By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

“Nothing meant more than reporting on Muhammad Ali.”–Hugh McIlvanney

This is a sad task and one that I feel far less than qualified to do, but it would have been very remiss of me not to write it. Towards the end of this week a Scottish writer of some renown, a poet of the pugilistic art left our world at the tender age of 84.
That he was a fellow countryman was enough, that he came from a part of my country akin to my own doubly sensitive. He was also a man I never met, but whose words have had a profound effect on myself and many others; 84 years are but a glance in this world. However, his work deserves to be stared at by generations who follow.

For Ringside Report at this time, usually I am tethered to my laptop in praise of a boxer of the past, but for this session I am here not to laud the exploit of a man with a fully functioning set of fists. I am here to talk about a man whose pen and vocal chords are part of the reason why I wanted to report.

I shall never achieve the heights of a man who was born before the second World War and died just the day before our annual celebration of the Bard of our Country, Robert Burns, but I shall owe him a debt like no other.

Hugh McIlvanney, born in 1935, died in 2019, was a man of many words; most of them poetic, all wisely chosen and every turn of phrase pondered and poured into character for view. His writing was truly beautiful, always crafted with an audience in mind and a mind in joy.

It was his tales of following Muhammad Ali that entranced me and made me want to take up the cause of the pen. He was in the dressing room in Zaire, and he was on hand after Manilla to record for us all the historical aftermath and the views of “The Greatest”. He was, however, able to tell us what he though in prose that took time to consider, his was not the easy phrase nor the sound bite – his was the epitaph seeking posterity.

Of Muhammad – he only ever called him that – he was to say, “His boxing was totally idiosyncratic, and technically at a level much lower than that of Sugar Ray Robinson. Muhammad was in a sense the eternal amateur, but he was God’s amateur, because the will was so magical, the imagination so magical, that he found a way to beat people.”

It was his mellifluous voice in sporting documentaries that made me want to be heard and revered in the same manner as he was. That he hailed from the same county as I – Ayrshire – though he followed that “other” team gave me no qualms nor envy. I may have mused that Ayrshire was big enough for the pair of us but I always knew that there were none as comparable as McIlvanney.

He had the ability to sweep you from your slumber with lyricism like poetry from where you found yourself in residence to where your head would want to settle in a dream of sporting endeavor.

He was a teller of tales but a critic of giants, Ali was not only the greatest but for him was his greatest. He was not, however, short of a phrase to quip for our own boxing heroes. Underwhelmed by Frank Bruno’s performance once he wrote that Bruno “…was no more competitive than a sheep in an abattoir.”

He was a constant presence at world title fights, not a respecter of threat as he once interrupted a Mike Tyson interview with the line, “Excuse me for interrupting, wee man but Ingemar Johansson,” he inquired of the interviewer in 1996, “is it with one S or two?”

His influence was such that his book, McIlvanney on Boxing, which sits on my shelf is mined as much for phrases as anecdotes. As far as sport journalism goes there are few that would argue that his place amongst the best is not only assured but demanded by those who prize any literary prowess – something that, with the advent of the internet and blogging, many are quick to believe has lessened the art and value of such endeavor.

He was at his peak whilst spending 30 years with The Observer and a further 23 with the Sunday Times. Both newspapers who valued the quality of your writing at the same level as the quality of your contact book. There were few sporting doors not open to him as people were privileged to be profiled by him, eager to be interviewed by him and knew they had made it if they got his attention – approval was stratospheric.

He was born in Kilmarnock, his heart forever in Kilmarnock and that is from where he departed our earth. He began his career in a local newspaper, the Kilmarnock Standard, before going off to the Express, the Scotsman and then the two massive papers mentioned above.

McIlvanney, whilst at the Scotsman read the collected essays of AJ Liebling which had a profound effect because it led to him becoming the sports writer we know and cherish now. Liebling’s The Sweet Science delivered us another genius to admire and follow.

He was held in such high esteem that in 2009 he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Though he retired in 2016 I know of many a sports writer who was given the opportunity of a recommendation from him for their book or a comment or two for a flyleaf that could delay publication, such was his power. He leaves a family, a legacy and a rich vein that will be mercilessly plucked, ploughed and furrowed.

Ringside Report extends our deepest condolences to the McIlvanney Family in their time of grief.

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