So, you want to ban boxing? by Terry Dooley Feb 28th 2008

Imagine the scene. You meet a new person and are in the process of getting to know him or her. You go through the usual banalities of where you live, work and play. You then go into your interests. If you are like me, boxing will be pretty much at the top of your list. You impart your love of boxing only to be met with the sniffy response, “Boxing. It is a horrible and violent sport. Barbaric.”  You could decide there and then that a person who asks you your interests only to crassly denigrate them is not worth talking to. Or you could mount a defence of the sport, especially if the person in question advocates an outright ban on boxing, or suggests that it is morally wrong.  Unfortunately their line of attack will always be, “boxing is two men hitting one other until one is left unconscious”; this leaves us in a position of constant defence. You are left trying to justify the sport when it should be affirmed.  So, we will imagine we are defending boxing against some sniffy assault, and will do so without having to take their interpretation of the sport as given. Instead of skipping over the violence of the sport we can meet the person head-on by defending the sport with an attack on their notion of violence. The person dismisses boxing by stating that it is a violent sport. You point out that the word ‘violent' is a cousin of the word ‘violate' which itself means ‘infringement' or ‘transgression'. You can only infringe on a person if you encroach on them personally, this entails that they have not given their consent to your actions. If you hit me without permission you are violently assaulting me.  Violent acts are acts that take place against the wishes of the other person; it is a one-way street, in this way you can see how rape is the worst possible crime, you completely violate another person. Give the other person permission to sleep with you and it is not rape, it is no longer a violation. We can say that a boxing match ends in a violent assault when one boxer has completely negated the other and takes him out, but this is not out-and-out violence, it is pragmatics, taking out an overmatched opponent is the best thing you can do for them.  So, how can boxing be a violent act when it is a two-way process between consenting adults? It is not a violent assault on a defenceless person, not least because the other boxer is trained to defend himself. Foxhunting is a one-way attack, which is why it is wrong, if the fox had extendable thumbs and machine guns it may be a little more interesting.  We dismiss the other person by pointing out that boxing is not a violent sport, a violation cannot occur without permission, like Dracula being unable to cross our door without our consent. With the denial of boxing as violence in place the other person may charge boxing with the crime of being a sport in which people are harmed, and doing harm to another person is a wrong thing. This is not quite true.  I do not like visiting the dentist. When I visit the dentist he does me harm, he causes me pain. On the other hand he is doing it for my future benefit so I give him permission to harm me for my own benefit. Now, if my dentist can harm me for my benefit how can boxing be then classed as harmful?  Blows may physically harm a boxer but he may also receive a life-changing amount of money or glory in return for this harm. This money may mean that he can live better in the future, so he consents to harm in order to receive benefits. Boxing is not morally wrong; in fact boxing is ethically correct because it gives people the chance to improve their own life situation. Next they may say that watching people box is debasing as you are watching brutality at work, there is no place for that in the civilised world. Again the delicate nature of the person who wants to ban boxing is at work here, they object to seeing it more than the existence of the sport per se.  There are far more brutal spectacles on TV. Reality TV is akin to a documentary on the family of early man. People are destroyed by the shows, humiliated for our entertainment, without the boxer's recourse to self-defence. Surely this is more brutal than boxing. As is the constant war coverage we see on TV. With that said I have an option open to me. If I think reality TV is brutal and degrading, plus the news is vicarious and shallow, I can decide not to watch them both. I advocate that the person so repulsed by boxing does the same when the boxing is on. They can not do this. They still cling to the idea that hitting a man in the head causes such long-term damage that it necessitates a stoppage of the sport. This is nonsense. Boxing is a sport. So is motor racing. It would be absurd for traffic police to chase Lewis Hamilton around the track complaining about his speed.  Athletes are extraordinary people; in some sports they step outside what is legal and perform in that zone while the rest look on in envy at the high wire glory walk of the athlete, the abolitionist is trapped by their own ressentiment. A car crashing in a motor race is far more dangerous than boxing, as is lawn green bowling, in terms of fatalities. So why begin the ban with boxing? Why not go for the other sports first and work your way down, because boxing is a viscerally easy target.  Still, it is as not deemed as acceptable as motor racing, which stems from the days when the people who could afford cars raced them against one another, it was an elitist sport; boxing is the version of this impulse practised by the people cannot race cars for fun, it is the sport of the working man.  The desire to ban boxing to avoid fatalities is wrong on many levels. So, you ban the sport of boxing, this does not entail that you get rid of fighting. Men like to gather and fight. So, the sport goes underground, the medical stringency is lost - the fatalities increase.  Yet you no longer feel the same repulsion. Nor the selfishly altruistic desire to help us help ourselves. If you ban boxing to stop fatalities the sport goes underground and the fatalities increase, the people who have banned the sport on safety grounds would no longer care because they no longer have to see boxing on TV or in the papers.  It is the same type of thinking that leads the middle classes to desperately search for PC terms to describe ‘travellers', yet they would be on the phone to the police screaming “get those gypos off my lawn” if a Romany family settled next door to them. It is hypocrisy; the people who want to ban boxing want it out of sight and out of mind. Finally the person who thinks so negatively about boxing may just blurt out that it is uncivilised, an anachronism no longer fit for the civilised world. You point out that at the dawn of time boxing was present in one form or another, it also reached a peak during the early days of civilisation.  One of our earliest existing artworks is a painting of Minoan boys in a boxing pose; they stand in this combat pose without a PC social commentary attached. In Ancient Greece - the dawn of our Western civilisation - Pindar wrote poems about boxing, young boys boxing as well, in his ‘Pythian Odes'.  Socrates spoke about boxing when philosophising, the philosophers of the day spent their time in Palaestrae's, gymnasiums where they would watch the athletes train. If we proudly take from our Greek heritage democracy, philosophy, tragedy, poetry, sculpture (the study of human form, one aspect of boxing as shown by Hellenistic boxer sculptures from 100BC) and history (with Herodotus the father of historians) then why leave boxing behind? Especially as it was one of the most admired pursuits of that time. It has also remained strong throughout the ages, constantly engaging minds from all walks of life.  Also to be taken into account is that the Police Force and the Armed Services have traditionally had boxing teams. The sport is masculine and it attracts the same type of people who join our own police force, who join our armies and navy also - young men are also taken from the harsh environment of the streets and find discipline plus sanctuary in boxing.  Are the Police Force and Army to be classed as an uncivilised anachronism of past times? Would the person who wants to do away with boxing do away with the Police and Army? No, those institutions underpin society, and the urge towards boxing underpins these institutions.  The type of men who go into boxing are the type of men who defend your country and your home, take them away and who will do this for you? Your neutered husbands? So, we have shown that boxing is not immoral, it is not violent and it is not uncivilised. We could leave it at that but why not go for the knockout? Why not affirm boxing? Boxing first gained proper recognition in Ancient Greece, previously it appeared in image (the Minoan boys from 1600BC) but in Greece it appeared in text also. If Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato then we can take comfort from the fact that Plato admired the sport, he said a philosopher should be like a boxer, proficient in attack and defence.  Athletes were revered in those times and none so more revered than fighters, the men who stepped outside the norms and took their destiny into their two hands. If athletes died during sporting pursuits they were deified as near-gods. This is why boxing was once linked with nobility, boxers did not sit around waiting for handouts, they went in there and fought for what they desired. Boxing is the purest philosophical pursuit; pure competition. In the hands of abolitionist what was once gold is reduced to base metal. Boxing is also an artistic pursuit. Those who see it and merely see chaotic violence are similar to those who hear jazz and only hear noise. When it hits the heights boxing is better than every form of art rolled into one. Stories are written, songs are sung (‘The Boxer' is a great song and the boxer Jack Johnson inspired a fine Miles Davis album), photographs are taken and boxing itself amounts to men using their hands to create great works of art, works of art that take place on a canvas. Finally, we can point out that asking about our interests before immediately attacking them is a violent impulse on the part of the other person, it is an inverted version of the drive that leads people to compete, boxing abolitionists do not compete, they only judge and snipe, in doing so they show the incivility that they accuse boxing of possessing.  Boxing is going through good times, it is coming more to the fore in the public eye, and this is good. Boxing also constantly walks the razorblade, fatalities can happen; one high-profile fatality and the people who sneer at boxing become fully-fledged abolitionists.  A clarion call for a ban may come from some MP or journalist looking for an easy target after a tragedy. At this point the people who seek to ban boxing show how truly inhumane they are in comparison to us boxing fans. We circle the wagons and tend to our own yet the abolitionist will use the stricken figure of the brave boxer as a bloody pulpit to score their political points, all the while assuring us this is done out of compassion. What was once seen as a noble pursuit, despite its danger, is rendered ignoble in the hands of the abolitionist purely because they live cautious and uniform lives.  As a person who loves boxing I often meet people who shake their head and state, “it is a violent sport”, I meet them head-on and go for the jugular, not only defending but affirming our sport, because it is the sport all others aspire to, for me it is also the sport that perfectly encapsulates, and provides metaphors for, every aspect of our dramatic human existence. It is raw. It is engagingly fascinating. If boxing upsets you turn it off, this is a free society after all, you have that option, so take it, we have the option of following boxing so we take it gladly, we go about our own business only to be attacked by you, the person who cannot understand the sport. Yet boxing also makes us disciplined and tolerant, so we tolerate your ignorance but seek to discipline you out of your error.

Go back Comment on this article | Send to a friend | Print

BAN BOXING Feb 29th 2008, 16:36:57 by duffyk Great piece. If you happen to be a woman people are even more incredulous. They look at you as if you have two heads!! Let the fools wallow in their shallowness....   ban boxing Feb 29th 2008, 07:45:55 by chrisnewman good article mate although this should also be posted on more mainstream forums - we are hardly likely to get any of the do-gooders reading it here on britishboxing.net! (BBN - You'd be pleasantly surprised by how many people read BritishBoxing.net)   Ban boxing Feb 28th 2008, 14:37:41 by silverback1976 Boxing is an art,it takes skill,fitness,commitment & most of all COURAGE.I bet the people who want it banned wouldn't even go 1 round in the ring.Think of all those kids on the verge of self-destruction and a life of crime that found boxing and are now model citizens & rolemodels to future generations.If its taken away we lose our proud history and the do-gooders have won,so keep fighting for the good of us all...   ban boxing Feb 28th 2008, 11:04:42 by scalsy1981 good stuff mate, i totaly agree. if you dont like it dont watch it, i f'ing hate big brother! so i dont watch