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There are many modern fans who, in the processes of espousing boxing's sporting superiority or just gushing over their favorite pastime, like to describe boxing as a primal sport. A throwback to a more primitive era of man when even minor disagreements were settled with closed fists and open wounds. Indeed, this was true of men as recently as the beginnings of this very century, and it neatly and necessarily paralleled boxing's true heyday atop the Holy Trinity -- alongside horse racing and the only modern holdover, baseball (which now, alongside basketball and football, has displaced boxing and trackplay as the most relevant forms of competitive entertainment) -- of American Sports.
For a good 75-80 years, the most famous American at any given time was usually whoever happened to be the then-current heavyweight champion of the world. (Indeed, at the height of his career, a boxer like Max Baer would make more money in one non-title fight than Babe Ruth would make in 10 seasons with the Yankees. A heavyweight bout (or lightweight, if Benny Leonard was involved) was also one of the only events that would completely fill the stands at Yankee Stadium in a time when, besieged by our Great Depression, most Americans saw baseball tickets as an unnecessary frivolity).
Now, most arguably, boxing's relevance in the modern world is waning in light of certain changing social circumstances that distance the average man, more and more, from any kind of commonplace violence. Sure, we perceive of the world as a dangerous and violent place, but these are more abstract concepts -- the mismatched cultural pitfalls, broadscale military matters, and nigh-mythical bogeymen of far-off lands -- not applicable to most of our day to day existences. Nevertheless, that primal, instinctive, guttural element of boxing remains, nudging, however gently, at a common, universal remembrance of a bygone masculinity.
Norman Mailer, one the foremost writers on the subject of professional prizefighting to ever grace us with the presence of his cagey, wife-stabbing, undeniably-manly, unstable-sparkplug-like self said it best:
Furthermore, I'll relate any of you to a tremendous (if necessarily brief and unfortunately incomplete) view of modern boxing, under the dressings of both a tribute to the late Norman Mailer and a sociological commentary, that appeared not long ago in Esquire magazine: Nobody writes -- or cares -- about boxing the way Norman Mailer did, because no one fights anymore...
But, despite all this, it is wrong to leave the discussion content and sated on notions of primal brutality and baser combat and mano a mano tête-à-têtes, because there is more to boxing, of which I'll touch upon in a later post.
For a good 75-80 years, the most famous American at any given time was usually whoever happened to be the then-current heavyweight champion of the world. (Indeed, at the height of his career, a boxer like Max Baer would make more money in one non-title fight than Babe Ruth would make in 10 seasons with the Yankees. A heavyweight bout (or lightweight, if Benny Leonard was involved) was also one of the only events that would completely fill the stands at Yankee Stadium in a time when, besieged by our Great Depression, most Americans saw baseball tickets as an unnecessary frivolity).
Now, most arguably, boxing's relevance in the modern world is waning in light of certain changing social circumstances that distance the average man, more and more, from any kind of commonplace violence. Sure, we perceive of the world as a dangerous and violent place, but these are more abstract concepts -- the mismatched cultural pitfalls, broadscale military matters, and nigh-mythical bogeymen of far-off lands -- not applicable to most of our day to day existences. Nevertheless, that primal, instinctive, guttural element of boxing remains, nudging, however gently, at a common, universal remembrance of a bygone masculinity.
Norman Mailer, one the foremost writers on the subject of professional prizefighting to ever grace us with the presence of his cagey, wife-stabbing, undeniably-manly, unstable-sparkplug-like self said it best:
"[Boxing] arouses two of the deepest anxieties we contain. There is not only the fear of getting hurt, which is profound in more men than will admit to it, but there is the opposite panic, equally unadmitted, of hurting others."
But, despite all this, it is wrong to leave the discussion content and sated on notions of primal brutality and baser combat and mano a mano tête-à-têtes, because there is more to boxing, of which I'll touch upon in a later post.
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