In a time of increasingly imaginative and/or aggressive marketing efforts — from holding a book launch at Value Village to spray-painting tigers on sidewalks — Penguin Canada author Craig Davidson is upping the ante. To promote his upcoming novel The Fighter, Davidson is offering to step into the ring against nearly any challenger for a public boxing bout. “I’m dead serious,” he says on his blog. “It will be a real boxing match, four rounds probably, staged at some suitable public venue. In Toronto, most likely. We shake hands afterwards, head out for a beer, and that’s that. An experience to tell your grandkids about (I certainly will).”

Visions of Callaghan vs. Hemingway are already filling our heads, but the question is, will anyone from the CanLit community step up to fight?

If you’re interested, though, be warned — Davidson does list a few caveats. And luckily, Quillblog is disqualified by the very first of them (“If you are a noodle-armed fancy lad, I will not fight you”). We hear Michael Winter has a pugilist past, though, and hey, he’s now one of Davidson’s fellow Penguin authors to boot.

Related links:
Read Craig Davidson’s challenge