Boxing is Not Dead. We are...

It’s an archetypal weekend evening in Brooklyn, New York. At the roof of the Barclays Center, green waves of sod embellish the dome…a monument of gentrification and the influx of suburban millennials. My body vibrates with the pulsating sounds of a subwoofer playing Nas while I watch New Yorkers stroll towards little funnels into metal detectors as security herds us into the venue. I am here for Wilder vs. Stiverne. New York was the epicenter and birthplace of pugilism in the new world, a receptor for immigrants willing to fight for their piece of the American dream, a hostile, filthy city with good intentions…mainly the intent to make it in America. Before millennials appropriated boroughs as hashtags. It was a cultural maze each representing different immigrants and cultures and craftsmen where commonplace incidents of bloodshed were as routine as young girls stopping today for a selfie on the Brooklyn Bridge. Slums filled with men who were fighting for a new life and mainly lost but continuing past the 15th round with the hope that their sons or daughters would reap the rewards of the new world. Adolescents boys were warned not to drift too far from their hovels, and daughters were told not to talk to boys outside their borough. Young men were taught early on that crossing a bridge or a park could result in a bloody lip or broken nose. It was a different time; our mothers expected their sons to return home with a black eye or bruised cheek. Our fathers laughed with pride as their sons shadowboxed fantasizing about being the Heavyweight Champion of the World. Everyone knew who the fastest man on the planet was and everyone knew the Heavyweight Champion of the world. The people believed that there was a value in taking a punch to the face, a rite of passage, a consoling value for those who left their old worlds which did not find a better world immediately. You had to roll with the punches or take one to get one.

The charge has been made against boxing that it is a dying sport — the gloves, the trunks, the mouthpiece and the swinging robe of a fighter introduced holds no merit in America anymore or that fans no longer have any interest in it. They perhaps are right but New Yorkers, Angelinos of other cities with rich histories of immigration still have their ancestor’s spirits, a reflection of something lost today, the willingness to be punched in the face and fight.

There is value in being punched in the face: a perfectly straightforward statement. The idea seems to threaten a contemporary man, as though they find their feet on the edge of a cliff, a kind of panic paralyzes their primitive features. I once tried to describe to a friend of mine who hadn’t been punched in the face or boxed the respect men gain for each other in the ring or the world. There is an acknowledgment that “it only takes one.” My explanation disturbed him and made him defensive as he asked me with perfect innocence, “you think we as men would treat each other better if everyone had their ass kicked once?”. Yes, contemporary men continue to hold the image of a fighter, and in many ways use verbal intimidation to perpetuate this image, their threats no longer insisted on an actual physical fight or punch but demanded the respect nonetheless. They are ignoring the fight people had, blindly looking past the reality and toughness of our forefather’s culture, which despite the vicissitudes of their history had refused to give up or perish without a fight. We are now witnessing, in fact, the beginning of a disconnect between the sympathetic nervous system; the primary function is to activate the physiological changes during a fight or flight response. Biologically, the fight or flight reflex is still here, but modern man has no purpose for it besides the theater of a threat. It is an excavation of the male ethos.

One of the things, perhaps that distinguishes men from the past to today was their comparative ability to feel. Unlike a slam dunk, the act of seeing a fight involves the whole body and evokes our senses — — it is not an abstract, I’ve never dunked a ball or danced in the end zone, but there was no one from my block in Norwalk California who has not had a punched to the face. There is a great distance between feeling and the perception of a fight. The feeling and perception for those who’ve been in a fight are one and the same thing. The reasoning of a man who has never been punched or punched back is idealized, a division between fantasy and the moment where times slows down as your sympathetic nervous system takes over. The image of a stream of blood or body shot is only felt by those who seen their blood or fought the urge to take a knee, for these men violence was not anesthetic it was a lesson of humility, sympathy, respect, and empathy. Thus, for the man willing to fight, it is not a concept, it is a growing pain, it is a process.

National Amateur Champion Cam F. Awesome recently tweeted, “Society attempts to teach using empathy…But nothing teaches “I shouldn’t have said/done that” quite like a punch in the face.” A punch teaches the soul to live with the conviction that lights won’t always turn green, excavating the ego in our male ethos that compels men to yell the outlandish statement “I’ll knock him out.” A loss fight instills humility and vulnerability; etching a hierarchy of respectful manners with gestures that carry into our everyday lives. Of all the male platitudes, the ego and assumption that we are willing to fight remain the most fragile of our deceptions. That deep barreling voice that works on children counts for nothing in that devastatingly moment where the macho lie we told ourselves is challenged. At this moment, the veil of the tough guy has lifted. No mean scrawl will work, no loud voice will do here, no profanity or alpha male body language can stop a man who is willing to fight. There is no turning back, and a desperate plea however long will not postpone that moment where you pushed a man who is comfortable with a fight to raise his fists. Flashing before your eyes someone has pulled your card — -the one you marked in vain from ego, done for the wrong reason, there because somehow you managed never to get a black eye. Now the seemingly macho act which had shamed and shunned others with is being taken to task. The sad fact remains this moment could have been avoided had you had your ass kicked. Men who have experienced this lesson carry the courage and lessons of their fight. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they see a husband might be a consequence, if they decide to refer to a woman in a derogatory manner, they know a brother, uncle or cousin could be waiting for them tomorrow, they are acutely aware of a potential receipt from all wronged parties. To live a life without having your ass kicked is never to know self-respect or respect for others. It is a life of warm milk with cookies.

Outsiders are right to refer to boxing as a dying sport but lack the self-reflection to see it’s not boxing, it’s the man in them that have died. It appears we are approaching the point where this generation has no relationship with the equalizing act of eating a knuckle sandwich. Society can no longer relate to the vicious nature of boxing. The landscape of the ring has never been so unfamiliar, incapable of relating to a hard puncher or true grit. To them, a prize fight is anachronistic, barbaric and archaic. The only reason men join boutique boxing gyms today is aesthetics: They want to look better in skinny jeans, v-neck tees or tailored suits. We’ve created a society preoccupied with the nuance of man, where men grow beards in an attempt at masculinity yet never had a punch to the face. The fate of the twenty-first-century man, stifled by technology, the uniformity of a suburban paint palette and an age where he has been marketed too since his birth doesn’t jive with Friday night fights or a Saturday at the Barclays. He fantasizes about making pitches to the Shark Tank, preoccupied with business or technological feats. I’m willing to bet that more American men know who Mark Zuckerberg is than Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua. We’ve moved so far from fight or flight that it is more compelling to write about gaming, than the bravado of boxers who fight. If Ernest Hemingway were writing today, I’m afraid it would make more sense for him to write about the new iPhone than the spectacle of a prize fight.

To deny that man has softened is to deny how detached we are from the brutality of Mike Tyson. Any honest man will concede this — -even the men who’ve taken so much pride in fabricating their personas via social media. Long before a political debate, it had already been accepted to say just about anything in public without repercussions. The thin line which man once walked tightly has dissipated, leaving a blur where the fear of getting punched in the face no longer exists. We have seen our playgrounds stripped of dodgeball and where everyone is given participation trophies. We are a culture so insulated by technology that the idea of a physical consequence seems barbaric. At this rate, we will one day have personal yelp ratings. As of today, boxers and MMA fighters are the only people left who get hit for messing up.

~TD Sambrano