Boxing: A Concise History of the Sweet Science

333 Pages·2014·16.04 MB·English

by  Gerald R. Gems

Boxing
Boxing
A Concise History of the Sweet
Science
Gerald R. Gems
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
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Copyright © 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data Gems, Gerald R.
Boxing : a concise history of the sweet science / Gerald R. Gems.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-2990-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-2991-4 (ebook) 1. Boxing—History. 2.
Boxing—Social aspects—History. I. Title.
GV1121.G47 2014
796.8309—dc23 2013040171
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America.
To my father (1918–2005), regimental boxing champion
and still my hero.
CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Ancient Boxing
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Boxing
Chapter 3: The Relationship between Boxing and Social Class
Chapter 4: The Social Construction of Race
Chapter 5: The Concept of Ethnicity
Chapter 6: Religion
Chapter 7: Gender
Conclusions
Appendix 1: Boxing Sanctioning Bodies
Appendix 2: Weight Classes
Appendix 3: Boxing Rules
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Christen Karniski, acquisitions editor at Rowman & Littlefield, for
offering me the opportunity; to Professor Gertrud Pfister for her research
assistance and the procurement of European sources and photos; to Professors
Jan and Terry Todd for their contribution of photos from their vast collection; to
Frank Di Benedetto for the LaMotta-Robinson photo; and to research assistants
Aubrie Luesse, Derek Nelson, and Zach Heerspink.
INTRODUCTION
Pierce Egan first called boxing “the sweet science of bruising” in Boxiana, his
account of the early nineteenth-century prizefighting scene in England, but there
has long been a fascination with the brutal confrontation of individuals in a
demonstration of physical and psychological superiority. Greek and Roman
sculptors depicted the athletic ideals of the ancient era in the form of boxers.
Hieronymous Mercurialis used Roman boxers as illustrations in his Renaissance
work De Arte Gymnastica, in 1573. Egan’s Boxiana (1812) is copiously
illustrated with the boxing heroes of that time, while Thomas Eakins, George
Bellows, and LeRoy Neiman have captured the continued appeal of boxers and
boxing in the modern era. Their works address the norms, values, and social
transformations of society over the past century.
Despite the inherent brutality and countless human tragedies occurring in the
ring, some see a work of art in the choreographed performance of ducking,
feinting, footwork, and the rhythmic staccato of punches. Sugar Ray Robinson
brought a particular elegance to the sport both inside and outside the ring.
Muhammad Ali exhibited a flair and exuberance that extended well beyond the
battleground. Sugar Ray Leonard borrowed from both in what has been termed
“a poetry of physical action.”1
Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian poet, playwright, and winner of the Nobel
Prize in 1911 (1862–1949), explained that “in the boxer’s stance, one of the most
beautiful positions taken by the male physique, all the muscles of the body
become legible. From head to toe not a single ounce of strength is wasted. Every
ounce is directed toward one or the other of two massive fists, each supercharged
with energy.”2
Writers, both male and female, have been particularly attracted to the human
drama that unfolds in the boxing ring. For them, “a great fight is a masterpiece
of suspense, in doubt until the closing moments.”3 Each round presents a scene in
a drama that might increase or relieve tension, a Darwinian struggle, a physical
and a psychological contest, a public display of human limitations that involves
strategies and counter-strategies of pure combat without weapons other than
one’s body. It is a type of nonliterary expression, a craft, and in its best forms an
art. “Boxers converse with their physiques how the seemingly inarticulate
become poets with their bodies.”4 David Scott, professor of literature, even
claims that “boxing has given literature as many great novels as baseball, cinema
more classic films than football, and criticism more meaningful essays than
tennis.”5
Robert Musil, an Austrian writer also nominated for the Nobel Prize (1880–
1941), explored the celebratory aspects of great fighters. “If one were to analyze
a powerful mind and a champion boxer from the psycho-technical point of view,
it would in fact turn out that their cunning, their courage, their precision and
their combinatory ability, as well as the quickness of their reactions on the
territory that they have made their own, are approximately equal. . . . But apart
from this there is one other advantage that . . . a boxer [has] over a great mind,
and that is that their achievement and importance can be indisputably assessed
and that the best among them is really acknowledged as the best.”6
Some writers have sought a more graphic rather than vicarious experience by
entering the combat zone. Lord Byron took lessons from prizefighter John
Jackson. He noted on March 20, 1814, that he had “[s]parred with Jackson again
yesterday morning, and shall tomorrow. I feel the better for it, in spirits, though
my arms and shoulders are very stiff from it.” Later that same year on June 19,
1814, he stated: “My mornings are late, and passed in fencing and boxing, and a
variety of most unpoetical exercises, very wholesome, &c., but would be very
disagreeable to my friends, whom I am obliged to exclude during their
operation.”7 Paul Gallico, one of the premier sportswriters of the interwar era,
tested himself against heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey in the ring, which
resulted in another knockout for the champ. Heavyweight writers such as Ernest
Hemingway and Norman Mailer sparred with boxers, but George Plimpton’s
participatory brand of journalism led him to fight a three-round exhibition with
light heavyweight champion Archie Moore at the famed Stillman’s Gym in New
York in 1959. Plimpton prepped for the encounter by reading The Art and
Practice of English Boxing, published in 1807, and by hiring a professional
trainer. The bloodshed began in the first round. It was not Moore’s blood. The
boxer graciously carried the writer through the remaining two rounds without
any serious threat to his life.8
Trevor Wignall, a British sportswriter, co-opted Egan’s characterization in his
own publication, The Sweet Science, in 1926, but the term was best popularized
by A. J. Liebling, whose The Sweet Science went through multiple printings and
is considered among the best sportswriting ever produced for the general public.
This social history of the “sweet science” is intended as a scholarly synthesis of
the sport, not so esoteric as to be incomprehensible to the general public but
offering some critical and analytical explanation for the evolution of the sport.
Scholars have taken an interest in the sport later than have artists and writers, but
they are no less keen on deciphering its racial, ethnic, social, and gendered
nuances and meanings. Sociological analyses began in 1952 (Weinberg and
Arond) to determine who boxed, when and why they boxed, and what the results
were (factual, cultural, medical, and moral). Historians, anthropologists,
psychologists, physicians, ethicists, and sociologists have produced a plethora of
studies in search of answers since that time.9
Over the past half century, boxing has waxed and waned as the sport provided
a public stage for the transition in race relations, both in the United States and
throughout the world, in the decades following World War II. Italian American
boxers symbolized the “great white hope” versus the encroaching social tide of
blacks and Hispanics, a battle played out in the ring and on the streets of urban
America. Muhammad Ali represented not only a clarion call for individual,
religious, and civil rights in the United States but a global test case for newly
independent countries in Africa and Asia that had been former colonies of the
white, Western powers. The rise of great black, Hispanic, and Asian champions
thereafter sustained an interest in boxing throughout the latter decades of the
momentous twentieth century, but the fracturing of boxing’s administration due
to regional and disparate governing bodies, the continued presence of corruption,
and the lack of a charismatic heavyweight division have diminished its current
relevance. Youth are more drawn to the mixed martial arts and ultimate fighting
championships that proliferate in the varied forms of new media.
A. J. Liebling, great chronicler of “the sweet science,” predicted as much with
the advent of television. “The immediate crisis in the United States, forestalling
the one high living standards might bring on, has been caused by the
popularization of a ridiculous gadget called television. This is utilized in the sale
of beer and razor blades. The clients of the television companies, by putting on a
free boxing show almost every night of the week, have knocked out of business
the hundreds of small-city and neighborhood boxing clubs where youngsters had
a chance to learn their trade and journeymen to mature their skills. Consequently
the number of good new prospects diminished with every year, and the peddlers’
public is already being asked to believe that a boy with perhaps ten or fifteen
fights behind him is a topnotch fighter. Neither advertising agencies nor brewers,
and least of all networks, give a hoot if they push the Sweet Science back into a
period of genre painting. When it is in a coma they will find some other way to
peddle their peanuts.”10 Baseball’s minor leagues suffered the same slow death,