"Yo...Adrian...It's Not 1925 Anymore..."

Only two things, it has been written, are certain in life.

Death and taxes.

It occurs to me that there is at least one other thing.

Getting older.

Admittedly, that death business pretty much puts a stop to the process, but, until our particular day of destiny and/or deliverance arrives, we all watch the little taxicab meter of our mortal existence clicking away as it adds up the cost of our individual journeys.

Wow. That really sounded kind of Discovery Channel-ish, didn’t it?

Nothing like a quiet Sunday morning with a big ass cup of half caf to make someone go all Kahlil Gibran on you.

For a lot of people, the awareness of getting older comes in a variety of forms, most of them familiar, some of them even cliché, ranging from gray hair where there wasn’t gray hair before to aches and pains in places where we are surprised to feel aches and pains to realizing that somewhere along the way, despite our best youthful promise to ourselves not to go down that road, we have, without knowing exactly when or where we crossed over, become our parents.

There are, I’ve discovered in my own little taxicab ride, a few more subtle indications that the countdown to cremation clock is in full tick tock mode. (The philosopher on Sunday morning mood thing also apparently has me mixing metaphors with reckless abandon…)

One of those more subtle signs surfaced this Sunday. (Apparently, annoying alliteration also arrives in this arena…)

Let’s call it “really? You mean they still do that?”

Defined as the sudden and somewhat surprised realization that some event or function or even past tradition that you had, without even thinking about it, assumed had long ago faded into the cultural history books and was no longer a part of your life and times.

For example, churning butter.

Say that to anybody under the age of 30 and there’s a good chance that the response will be either a blank stare or a slight nodding of the head as they suddenly hazard the guess that Churning Butter was the band that used to open for Coldplay on tour.

My “really? You mean they still do that?” moment came last night when a friend posted on Facebook that she and her husband were looking forward to the Mayweather-Marquez match on Pay Per View.

My first thought was…hmmm…I’m not really a big tennis fan, but I thought I knew all the big names in the game these days.

Uh…no.

They’re boxers.

No, not the comfortable and often preferred alternative to jockey shorts or the classic song by Simon and Garfunkel featuring the whores on Seventh Avenue.

Boxers.

Fighters.

As in, I punch you really hard in the head and you fall down and then some guy counts to ten and I win.

With any kind of luck.

Really? You mean they still do that?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I grew up in a time when boxing was a regularly scheduled and widely accepted form of sport and/or entertainment.

Before I was even close to needing Gillette to sell me shaving gear, I knew that Gillette sponsored the Fight of the Week on TV.

I was in grade school when Paul Newman played Rocky Marciano in that movie.

All of my junior high pals and I were sure the fix was in when Sonny Liston took the fall in that fight with Cassius Clay.

My high school running buddies and I got our first real exposure to Islam when Cassius Clay became Muhammed Ali.

And, of course, there was Rocky.

And Rocky II.

And III and IV and V and…

That said, I should also confess that I was never much of a fan.

Of the sport or the movies.

Didn’t ring my bell, so to speak.

Although, I still enjoy seeing that last scene in III when Mr T’s knees start to wobble and you just know he’s goin’ down.

Not so much for the boxing, per se’, but for the great way that the film’s composer matches the soundtrack “dah-duhhh”s with each punch and/or wobble.

And now, as I sit and ponder it on a half caf Sunday morning, it occurs to me that the reason I never really cared for the sport is that I never really understood the point of it.

Which is, of course, not to be confused with the goal of it.

The goal is to not be the guy that falls down when punched in the head that starts that other guy counting to ten.

The goal is to be the guy looking down at that guy while that other guy starts counting to ten.

But even at a very young age, I thought why would anybody in their right mind want to commit their lives to the discipline of getting and staying in pristine physical condition so they can climb into a ring with another guy and punch or be punched in the head until one of them falls down and that other guy starts counting to ten?

I totally get that boxing started thousands of years ago in a much less civilized and sophisticated culture.

And I imagine that punching each other in the head was probably a pretty common way of dealing with each other in general in those days.

And just like your average punch fest in a school playground or on a city street corner, crowds naturally gathered.

So it was inevitable that somebody realized that renting a big room, roping off a playground or street corner sized space and charging people for the privilege of watching the punches fly was likely to knock people out.

Sorry, I saw that pun coming almost two sentences ago, but there was just no way to avoid it.

Boxing, as a sport, was born.

Okay. I get it. They didn’t have Tetris or Ipod or Playstation or The Shopping Channel to amuse themselves.

Low-tech times begat low-tech entertainment.

But just this morning, my watch, computer monitor, cell phone, mouse pad and weekly planner alone, all indicate pretty clearly to me that the year is 2009.

And we have Tetris and Ipod and Playstation and The Shopping Channel to amuse ourselves.

So, I think it not unreasonable to ask “why are grown men still committing their lives to the discipline of getting and staying in pristine physical condition so they can climb into a ring with another guy and punch or be punched in the head until one of them falls down and that other guy starts counting to ten?”

Because, and die hard boxing fans, please correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t this the only legal, let alone sanctioned, activity in our culture in which the sole purpose is to physically damage another human being?

I mean, shit, you might get tennis elbow or carpal tunnel from too much Nintendo, but you’re pretty safe on the brain damage front.

And you’re elbowing and tunneling yourself.

You’re not getting the crap beat out of you with the controller by some guy who wants you to fall down so that other guy can start counting to ten.

At the end of it all, I realize, it comes down to “to each his own”.

And if you’re a boxing fan and are sufficiently liquid to fork over a fair sized chunk of change to Pay Per View to watch two guys punch each other in the head, then I join you in thanking God for the privilege of living in a country where we have that freedom.

But when it comes to the actual “sport” of it, I say it again.

I don’t get it.

In fact, come to think of it, I don’t get the whole “watching grown men drive around in a circle for hours” thing either.

Having already pissed off the boxing crowd though, I’ll pony up my two cents on NASCAR some other time.