In the third grade at P.S. 166, that august institute of lower education on West 89th St. where I majored in messing up my desk, I learned several things. The first thing I learned was that love is cruel. This insight came when Miss Witzman, homeroom teacher and object of my lust, announced her intention to marry at year's end. Marry someone other than me, that is. I learned the second thing when fractions wormed their incomprehensible way into my arithmetic textbook. Math was not for me.

Freddy

I learned my final lesson from a young gentleman named Freddy, a 4 ft. 8 in. bruiser. In our school playground, with what seemed like the whole school watching, he taught me I wasn't a fighter. The cause of our battle has long since been forgotten (at least by me--Freddy, who got into rows like this almost every day, has probably forgotten, too) but the humiliation of my disfigurement--just a bloody nose, really--lives with me today.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't feel my psyche has been permanently damaged by this unfortunate incident. It's just something that has bothered me.

Sting like a Butterfly

So I watched fights instead and became a boxing fan, or more specifically, a Muhammad Ali fan. And not just any Ali fan--but one who got genuinely excited about his bouts with the likes of Al "Blue" Lewis and Jean Pierre Coopman (surely you remember the Lion of Flanders). For me Ali always symbolized the best in boxing--the dexterity, grace and mental toughness it takes to be a great fighter. Ali also took a punch better than anyone in the history of the sport (unless you count George Chuvalo, who nobody does).

So when I saw the flyer for an introductory meeting of the Harvard Boxing Club asking for "Boxers (Experienced or Interested in Learning), Fight Fans, and Film Buffs," I knew it was time to make my move. In the oxymoronic, or just plain moronic, role of a participant disguised as a journalist, I made my way to the Lowell Junior Common Room last Wednesday.

Grungy Pugs

Walking over to Lowell House, I wondered what I might find. What I really wanted was a seamy, unknown and disreputable underworld existing in close, but uneasy, proximity to the halls of academia. My visions of toothless pugs who divide their time between grungy gyms and Soc Sci 33 was irrevocably shattered when I walked into the Old-Ivy confines of the Lowell JCR.

Instead of a group out of On The Waterfront, I found an assemblege more familiar, the staff of the Harvard Law Review. For every dirty sweatshirt and leather jacket there were at least two tweed sport coats.

Balboa Would Be Proud

Presiding over this dignified conclave was Ron DiNicola, another disappointment to my fantasies of illiterate pugilists. Rocky Balboa's mother would have wanted her son to look like Ron, handsome and unscarred. He talked about a sport he loved and one in which he had achieved considerable success. In 1975, he had won the lightweight championship of the Marine Corps, an organization whose members are noted for their willingness to battle.

"Boxing is the granddaddy of one-on-one sports," he said, and he went on to discourse on what makes a good fighter. "The best fighters are the best liars. Every boxer is scared in the ring, but the one who doesn't show it usually wins."

George Jackson, who is working on the club with DiNicola, said he would like to see Harvard field an intercollegiate boxing team "if the interest is there." Both of them stressed that physical conditioning is the boxer's paramount concern, as well as his formidable foe.

Fighting the Elements

"Unless you've felt that cold window in the morning before you go out to do road work, you really don't know what it is to be a fighter," DiNicola said. "It's not easy."

But I'll be there, at least at the beginning. And with a tutor like Ron, maybe I'll go the distance. And if I do, Miss Witzman's husband had better look out.