Archie Moore had fought more than two hundred professional bouts. The man across the ring at Stillman's Gym had fought none. George Plimpton, editor of The Paris Review, quit smoking and trained for six months so the light heavyweight champion of the world could hit him for three rounds in front of a packed house. He left with a broken nose and a story for Sports Illustrated.

Then he kept doing it. He joined the Detroit Lions' training camp as a quarterback and lost thirty yards in the plays they let him run. He built a career out of signing up to lose. Then he wrote down every defeat, and readers loved the books because he failed in them.