EAST HARTFORD, Conn. _ Some memories are lost; time, especially time in boxing, can blur them. Some cannot be obscured easily.
Marlon Starling hasn't forgotten what it feels like to have thrown a punch that ended a man's life, nor the pride of being the best in the world, with the belts to prove it. And he knows what he lost that one time he forgot his own No. 1 rule in the boxing ring: "Protect yourself at all times."
I asked the former welterweight champ to meet for lunch last week in East Hartford, not far from his home, along a route he frequently jogs to keep himself in enviable shape as he approaches his 61st birthday. He repeats himself some, which frustrates him, and occasionally loses a train of thought, the inevitable toll taken by 52 professional fights squeezed into an 11-year career. But even in mask and plastic gloves, he has his style, dignity, the cackle and the ear-to-ear smile that belies a man who was so successful in so brutal a business.
And he has his memories of that decade of prominence in the ring.
"I was out there to work," Starling says, "and I loved it. I loved my job. To this day, I haven't found a job that I love like boxing. You know, I had to run, in the winter time, the summer time. I got punched in the nose, but I loved it."
Count me as one who believes Marlon Starling deserves better than to be forgotten, especially in these parts, deserves a chance to offer what he can offer, certainly deserves to have a writer call on him now and again to ask how he's doing, ask him to recount for a new generation the ride from Bellevue Square to the top of the world and back again.
The 1980s, an era of great fighters, were his heyday. His career ended with a loss to Maurice Blocker in Reno, Nev., 30 years ago this month, and Starling says his greatest regret is that he didn't fight longer _ that, and not fighting Sugar Ray Leonard, with whom he used to spar and is still in touch.
Mention of Johnny Duke, who trained him at the Bellevue Square Boys Club, brings tears to Starling's eyes. "Duke was my father, my brother all in one," Starling says. "Duke was a good man. He taught me how to deal with all kinds of people. Johnny Duke saved my life."
So, too, does the mention of Willie Pep, the legend of legends in Hartford boxing, who came to all his fights.
