The Sound and the Fury: Behind the Fire Brigades of London and New York Boxing at Madison Square Garden

Boxing comes down to one sound: the visceral smack of leather on flesh.

That sound links my dad’s army boxing days to me taking photographs ringside in Madison Square Garden six decades later. In between, it was the soundtrack to a painful early life lesson.

Summer holidays in the Scottish town I grew up in meant running wild between breakfast and sunset. Games were physical, playing out over building sites and the old coal bing. One hot afternoon we decided to box, inspired by our adoration of Muhammad Ali.

A random selection of boxing gloves was laid out in a corner of the housing scheme not overlooked by windows, and bouts were decided. How I – the smallest – came to be paired with the biggest in the first bout escapes me now. Whatever the reason, I found myself in the middle of a ring of feral, howling children. I had, based on the cartoon-physics notion that the biggest gloves would hit the hardest, chosen a pair larger than my head. My opponent had on flimsy gloves that were little more than a tight red skin over his bony knuckles.

The bout was over quickly. We don’t remember pain, but I do recall the sound of my massive gloves slapping enthusiastically against the other boy’s head, while his fists hit my face with audible cracks.

My dad shook his head at my cuts and bruises when he got home from the coal mine that night.

“Right,” he said wearily, and fetched a pair of proper boxing gloves from the attic.

As he taught me the basics over the next few weeks, he told me about his love of boxing. My dad learned in the army, fought for his regiment, and later watched bouts in Edinburgh, alongside his brother and friends. He described blood spattering over the ringside spectators, but mostly he talked about the sound of punches landing.

At the end of that summer, my dad watched silently from the front door as me and a different but also larger boy, wheeled and punched at each other with bare fists. Finally, the other boy fled.

“You did all right,” my dad said, then went back inside to continue reading the newspaper.

These dusty, distorted memories hit me like a jab in the face when I step into Victory Boxing gym in Hell’s Kitchen one sleety morning, to be greeted by the thunder of feet in the ring, and the thumps of punches landing.

I am there to photograph the New York Fire Department team train for their upcoming Madison Square Garden event. It is meant to be a one-off visit, but there and then I decide to document it to the end.

The Battle of the Badges started in the 1980s, when the FDNY battled the NYPD for the title once a year.

“When the police backed out,” says club president Bobby McGuire, “We added the word ‘International’ and invited all comers: we’ll fight anyone, any time, so long as it’s for a good cause.”

This year sees challenges accepted from across the US, and as far afield as the London Fire Brigade and the Garda Siochana in Ireland.

Proceeds go to various charities – with over $250,000 raised to date – but this is a serious business.

Two mornings a week, for months, first responders stream into the gym: some before work, others straight from a shift, to be put through a punishing warm-up. Then, it’s into the ring for sparring.

“You never know who will be fit on the day,” firefighter and co-coach Mike Reno says. “It’s the nature of the job: firefighters get injured.”

By the time of the unofficial weigh-in and press launch at Mustang Harry’s Irish bar, steps from Madison Square Garden, excitement is high.

Firefighters rush in wearing dress uniform, visibly on edge at the prospect of live TV interviews. Then they change into shorts and vest tops for a photo op on the scales.

A week later, when they arrive at Madison Square Garden, the FDNY boxers are wound tight as bowstrings. MSG has a way of overawing whatever events are staged there, but also elevates them. The famous lights, the sheer scale of the venue, the stories that have seeped into the brickwork, make spectators and fighters alike feel like they’re in a movie.

The pipes and drums of the FDNY Emerald Society shake the arena as the home team marches down and into the ring for the opening ceremony.

The background roar pauses briefly to allow a trio of singers to perform The Star Spangled Banner, then resumes even louder.

Fourteen matchups are on the card, and the ring announcer whips the capacity crowd into a frenzy. When the first fighters strut out, they’re met with a wall of sound.

Bouts consist of three two-minute rounds. It doesn’t sound much, maybe, but to anyone who’s ever laced up gloves, it’s a punishing eternity. Boxers come in to their chosen tune: an Irish fighter bounds up to Rocky Road to Dublin, and when an FDNY favorite struts in to a soundtrack-glitch silence, the outraged howls from the crowd raise the roof.

The crowd is fiercely partisan – some fighters’ families wear tees emblazoned with their fighters’ names, or wave giant banners – and gleefully boo non-local fighters and any and all decisions they don’t like.

Shouted instructions from boxers’ corners compete with unsolicited roared advice from the crowd. Referees in crisp white shirts dash in to separate boxers, or to check on their fitness to go on.

Because the boxers wear head guards, the blood – though copious at times – doesn’t spatter the crowd. But the sound echoes and vibrates through the canvas, just as my dad described.

The FDNY team loses some hard-fought bouts early on, then picks up wins as the night continues. Fighters clamber down from the ring for a quick medical check, then embrace families and supporters, either in celebration or commiseration.

By the time the first knockdown of the night happens, in the final bout, the crowd has already thinned out.

I reluctantly leave at midnight, behind a trickle of jubilant fighters and their families, with the sound of punches hitting bodies still reverberating in my head. For a moment, I’m not stepping out into the smells and chaos of Midtown on a Friday night, but back in the middle of that circle of shrieking kids, 3,500 miles and many years away.