Debate: Boxing

By Jake and Glenn

Lately, it is becoming increasingly impossible to turn on a television or listen to an AM radio station without hearing some loudmouthed pundit spouting off about the “evils of boxing.”  This supposedly “barbaric sport” has become the subject of great debate in our violence obsessed society.  Is boxing to blame for all of the violence on the streets, like so many of these critics claim, or is taking in a boxing match a good way to “blow off steam” after a hard day of manual labor?  This debate will attempt, and ultimately fail, to answer this question.

Jake:  Boxing is the only sport that awards players points for mimicking bees and butterflies.  Sure, baseball will give a team a couple extra runs if they have a butterfly as a player, but that is beside the point.  Boxing is a contest of not just punching, but grace, strength, endurance, and dancing.  A normal man, like Glenn or me (if we are using the word “normal” loosely), can only be punched in the skull several times before we lose consciousness.  Boxers are punched hundreds of times in a single evening and all the only negative effect they show is severe brain damage.  Boxing is a sport, and much like every sport there is a risk factor.  That is partially what makes it so exciting.  While I do agree that the boxing robots of “Real Steel” are a safer alternative to humans boxing, I am very afraid of a robot uprising and the last thing I want a robot to excel at is fighting.  Rosie the robot was just a maid, but she still killed George Jetson.

Glenn:  I was not aware the Jetsons aired the episode where Rosie killed George Jetson though I know it happened in “real life.”  Most Americans are also not aware of how dangerous and destructive boxing can be.  Muhammed Ali, the second most famous Muslim boxer of all time, boxed for his whole life and has severe Parkinson’s disease, autism and rickets.  Boxing is a sport that kills most of its participants and debases most of its fans.  Out of the many times I have been attacked by a group of men outside a sporting event, it is almost always boxing fans.  Their thirst for blood is never satiated by the match itself but rather nurtured by it.  They wander out of the arena and take out their aggression on the first left-wing protester they can find.

Jake:  Your point is riddled with more lies than “A Million Little Pieces.”  You have never been attacked outside of a sporting event.  Boxing fans might be some of the nicest, most passionate, and secretly gay people in America.  Boxing is a sport that supports transvestivism, the combatants fight over a purse.  There is also a pleasant absurdity to calling the stage on which the fights are contested a “ring,” when it is clearly square-shaped.  Boxing has gotten a bad rap as a macho, no-nonsense sporting event, but I highly disagree.  Boxing is flashier than a Liberace photo shoot.  It is a sport of pageantry, at least when it is on a grand stage.  It is also serves as a good way to get troubled youths off of the streets and out of a life of crime, at least based on some of the movies I have seen on the subject.

Glenn:  As a not-so-secretly gay American, I take issue with your characterizations of boxing fans and boxing itself.  Boxing Day, the holiday celebrated by former members of the British Empire, celebrates the day King Henry the XIV killed two children in a handicapped boxing match at Royal Albert Hall.  This is not a cause for celebration!  Boxing is a sport where promoters get rich while black and Latino fighters kill each other a la Running Man.  I have seen the same shows as my opponent that show how you can take aggressive youths off the street and “calm them down” by having them work out their aggression in the ring.  I wish it were that simple.  Out of the many times I have been attacked by a group of youth outside of a boxing gym, it is always because they are fresh off the thrill of defeating an older bully in a match watched by their family and friends.  Then they see me and continue a pummeling that continues to this very moment.

Jake:  Boxing is much more than just “letting your fists do the talking,” it’s a ballet with punching.  If my wife came home today and announced that she procured tickets to see “Swan Lake,” I would loudly groan.  If she told me she got tickets to “Swan Lake” starring Gina Carano and it was full contact, I would leap off of the fainting couch and then faint back onto it.  Punching makes everything better, especially sex.  Boxing has inspired some of the greatest films ever committed to celluloid (“Digstown,” “Real Steel,” “Raging Bull,” “The Fighter,” “Rocky IV”).  Even if you dislike sports, you still love these movies.  There is few movie experiences that rival Sylvester Stalone punching a Russian guy who might be a robot.  Boxing is an American institution and it makes little sense to outlaw it, like my debate partner and very good friend is proposing.  If we outlaw boxing then only outlaws will punch each other for money.  That is a dystopian future which I do not want to be involved in.

Glenn:  Underground, outlawed boxing might be my opponent’s dystopia but a society where boxing is marginalized and relegated to a lesser/doomed country like Spain (a la bullfighting) is my utopia.  There is a very famous scene in Escape from the Planet of the Apes where the humans of 1970s America take Cornelius the ape to a boxing match.  As the fighters punch each other and the crowd roars with blood lust the camera turns to our ape friend who simply remarks “beastly.”  I am happy to share this, and 99.99% of my DNA with Cornelius.  If someone tried to force him and I to fight each other, I would refuse.  Likewise if someone paid me hundreds of dollars to box against my gracious debate opponent.  This isn’t because I know I would lose - though I would - but rather because I don’t want to hurt people for sport.  That’s why I’m a vegetarian!