The Twilight Rounds

Advance Praise

“From his first published piece in a post-WWII college literary magazine, through a writing career that paralleled the Golden Age of Television, Rod Serling, best known for his work on the phenomenally successful The Twilight Zone series, also possessed a lifelong passion for boxing. As a writer, he identified with fighters, who both knew that ‘win, lose, or draw—you left everything you had to give on the blood-splattered canvas or the typewritten paper.’ Christopher Benedict’s new book, The Twilight Rounds: Rod Serling Explores the Dark Side of Boxing, seamlessly intertwines a fascinating biography of Serling’s short life, with a well-sourced, enjoyably cerebral, and engagingly visual examination of Serling’s unforgettable boxing-related stories and characters of page and screen.”

~ Catherine Johnson, boxing historian and author of Then the World Moved On: The Brutal Truth Behind the Max Baer-Frankie Campbell Fight

Additional Reviews

Christopher Benedict’s new book, The Twilight Rounds: Rod Serling Explores the Dark Side of Boxing, focusses on a writer who once proclaimed, ‘I’ve always liked fighting and fighters.’ The beauty of Benedict’s book is that it is more than just a biography of Serling the writer. Of course, we learn about his life, but Benedict also goes on to look at Serling’s influence on writers that came after him. We are also given profiles of a variety of fascinating characters in some way connected to the man himself or his work. Reading Benedict’s book, with Christopher as our expert guide through the boxing-related stories and characters that Serling created, is a highly informative and entertaining journey. He has done a fine job in bringing his subject to life; both Serling’s work and the man behind the typewriter.”

Steve Hunt, host of the Boxing Movie Podcast and author of Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s

I found this to be a fascinating look at how Rod Serling’s time in the boxing world helped shape the emotional depth and tension of The Twilight Zone. His early experiences in the boxing ring obviously left a lasting mark on his writing; shaping the tension, resilience, and moral complexity found throughout The Twilight Zone, but also impacting future writers who would take a page from Serling’s writing manual. Here, Christopher Benedict reveals how the grit of the sport more directly fueled his storytelling and how he used stories and characters from the ring to create vastly different tales, and it certainly managed to draw me in to that world – even as someone with no boxing knowledge whatsoever!”

Emi O’Sullivan, co-Host of The After-Hours Podcast