Norman Mailer exlained why the media falsely portrays boxers as unintelligent

The problem is alot of them are from impoverished backgrounds, didn't have access to a good education, used their talent to get themselves out of poverty and then get fleeced by the business aspect of the game because they had no opportunity to gain financial literacy and are generally young so they don't have the life skills get to manage large sums of money they earned all at once. Exactly. And most are very generous kind souls and overtrusting of expoiters and scammers. Managers and promoters deserve a small fraction of the earnings of a top fighter but they end up taking way too much. Like Buster Douglas lawyers scammed him by contracting him to pay them a percentage of the massive Holyfield payday instead of a small flat fee. Most lawyers should work pro bono with a boxing legend like Buster not stealing a percentage of the giant payday he dedicated his life to getting. So many crooks in boxing they should all be hung.

I actually think fighters are the brightest athletes of all. They have to be. They have to make the quickest decisions for defense and offense, which moves to make to evade a bomb, which combs to throw to score points. One mistake can be fatal. Take a guy like Mike Tyson, no education to speak of but he dedicated his life to boxing and look what he became. A flat out pugilistic genius. We can only wonder what Mike would have become had he grown up with an upper class family with a access to everything. Probably a great success in any field.