The Boxer

NPR recently covered women's boxing on their morning show. It's a subject where I sometimes think I'm in the minority but I really hate the sport. And let me add, lest someone thinks I'm discriminating, I hate the sport whether involving women or men. While we're at it you might as well throw in cage fighting and all manner of mixed marshall art fighting. And let me add, lest someone thinks I'm discriminating, I hate these types of combative sports regardless of species: I have equal disregard for dog and cock fighting.

I'm not sure if I object from a purely scientific/medical perspective or simply from a moral/social perspective. I guess there's something about a competition in which the objective is to inflict a substantial brain injury on your opponent that, well, just leaves me cold. But that is the objective, create a substantial enough concussion to make the entire system shut down. Maybe it's because I grew up in a household where my Father had a severe aversion to physical confrontation. Boxing, wrestling, and all forms of fighting were intolerable to him.  Then again, perhaps it's because I tend to be a social liberal and think encouraging combat in any form is demeaning. Or maybe it's just that I find it somewhat predatory that most of the participants are recruited from disadvantaged backgrounds.

I don't buy the argument that it channels people's violence into acceptable avenues of release. The argument fails on the fact that there is still a substantial injury inflicted on another. Such "channeling" of violence still leaves another person bloodied and unconscious. Instead, such contact sports promote and elevate violence from the evolutionary recesses of human development. These "sports" generate billions of dollars by appealing to the desire to watch two people hurt each other. Elevating that behavior to sport, and promoting that behavior as entertainment is pure exploitation. I would argue both the participant and the observer are the victims.

Arguing that violent sports allows escape from the behavioral boundaries society places on us also falls short in my book: What it is we're escaping from when participating in violent sport is our responsibility to view life as precious and our responsibility to promote and nurture a sense of respect and caring among people.  Just like in raising a child:  It's much easier to simply smack a kid for misbehavior then it is to stay engaged, teach, modify, and correct.  Poor naive me, I still think hitting another person demeans one's humanity-- regardless of whether it's done in the name of discipline or whether in the name of recreation. Regardless of what you get paid to do it or how many want to watch, beating someone up as entertainment is obscene human behavior.

Today's essay question: Why do we tolerate publicly televising the beating of another person to a bloody pulp while at the same time find it intolerable to televise sex?