“She’s beautiful, oh, she’s beautiful! Mabel’s beautiful. She’s a baby, oh, she’s a puppy!”
The way bare-knuckle boxing legend Bobby Gunn dotes on my 7-month-old French Bulldog/Boston Terrier mix makes me regret we’re not in the same room; I have a feeling they’d get along great. But even through the screen of my laptop, his genuine affection is clear.
I showed Gunn Mabel after finding out he has a French Bulldog of his own, a 12-year-old named Max who accompanies him everywhere. Gunn is just as enthusiastic when offering up this tidbit about Mabel’s terrier side: “Man, them dogs were bred for hunting rats, you know.”
It’s as if he can’t resist recognizing a fellow fighter beneath the cuteness. According to writer Stayton Bonner, whose book “Bare Knuckle: Bobby Gunn, 73-0 Undefeated. A Dad. A Dream. A Fight Like You’ve Never Seen” came out Tuesday, Gunn’s gentle side is never far from the surface, even in the most forbidding environments.
“When I first met Bobby, I went to see him train at Ike and Randy’s gym in Patterson, New Jersey,” recalls Bonner. “This was not an Equinox. You had to go through like a chain-link fence, past a couple of pit bulls. It was an old auto body shop. But he would bring this…
