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Fight Sports and American Masculinity: Salvation in Violence from 1607 to the Present PDF

300 Pages·2015·47.885 MB·English
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Fight Sports and American Masculinity This page intentionally left blank Fight Sports and American Masculinity Salvation in Violence from 1607 to the Present Christopher David Thrasher McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina ♾ ISBN 978-0-7864-9704-1 (softcover : acid free paper) ISBN 978-1-4766-1823-4 (ebook) LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE © 2015 Christopher David Thrasher. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, i ncluding photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover: There Was a Man: Abe Lincoln Licks Jack Armstrong (from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum and Allen County Public Library) Printed in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com To my wife—I could have done it all without you, but I am grateful that I did not have to. Acknowledgments If I have accomplished anything in life, it is only because people have been nice to me. For anything worthwhile within these pages, I give all credit to my benefactors. All errors are entirely my own. I am grateful for the priceless archival assistance provided by the entire staff at the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas at Austin. I would never have been able to finish my doctorate without the guidance and support of my advisors at Texas Tech University. I thank Dr. Gretchen Adams, who provided me with insights into early American history and more importantly into the cutthroat realities of academia. I appreciate the efforts of Dr. Barbara Hahn to help me understand many aspects of Southern, eco- nomic, and technological history. If I ever bump into you on Bourbon Street, Dr. Hahn, the drinks are on me. Special thanks go to Dr. Zachary Brittsan, who expressed no hesitation in assisting with a project far outside his area of primary expertise and often provided words of encouragement that meant more than he will ever know. I express my undying gratitude to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Randy McBee. No scholar could ever ask for a more patient, more kind- hearted, or more unapologetically demanding mentor. I reserve my deepest thanks for my parents, David and Theresa Thrasher. From the moment of my birth, they indulged my curiosities, encouraged me to fall in love with learning, and convinced me that the answers to life’s mys- teries lay within the yellowed pages of long- forgotten books. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments vi Preface 1 Introduction: Global Fight Sports from Prehistory to 1607 13 I. “To Cut Out the Tongue or Pull Out the Eyes”: Fight Sports in the Americas, 1607–1810 29 II. “A Boxing We Will Go”: Boxing Takes Root in the United States, 1810–1915 49 III. “With the Energy of a Trip- Hammer and the Vehemence of a Sioux”: Asian Martial Arts Come to the United States, 1850–1941 99 IV. “We Live in Our Heroes”: Boxing Reigns Supreme in the United States, 1915–1941 140 V. “Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting”: Asian Martial Arts Gain Unprecedented Popularity in the United States, 1941–1981 166 VI. “We Shall Not Stand by Helplessly”: The Birth of Mixed Martial Arts, 1981 to the Present 198 Chapter Notes 237 Bibliography 280 Index 290 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface Throughout America’s past, some men feared the descent of their gender into effeminacy, and turned their eyes to the ring in hopes of gendered sal- vation. In 1888, the writer and pugilist Duffield Ossborne ended his defense of the arena with a stirring call to action. Come then! Let thinking men who value their manhood set themselves in array, both against the army of those who, unmanly themselves, wish to see all others reduced to their own level, and against the vast following who, caught by such spe- cious watchwords as “progress,” “civilization,” and refinement,” have unthinkingly thrown their weight into the falling scale. Has mawkish sentimentality become the shibboleth of the progress, civilization and refinement of this vaunted age? If so, then in Heaven’s name leave us a saving touch of honest, old- fashioned barbarism! That when we come to die, we shall die, leaving men behind us, and not a race of eminently respectable female saints.1 Ossborne’s comments highlight many of the themes of gender and civ- ilization in this work. In this essay, titled “A Defense of Pugilism,” he speaks to “thinking men who value their manhood.” He then suggests that these men are opposed by those who “unthinkingly” value a warped sense of civ- ilization which robs men of their masculine identities. He mocks “unmanly” opponents, suggesting that if civilization is now tied to femininity, then men should retain a sense of “old-fashioned barbarism” so that, as he states in his final sentence, “when we come to die, we shall die, leaving men behind us.” Ossborne clearly sees manly identity as something under assault, as some- thing more valuable than “civilization”—or at least as some define civiliza- tion—and he defends boxing as a force with the power to preserve masculine identities.2Ossborne’s call was largely reiterated nearly a century later by the sportswriter Curry Kirkpatrick, who presented his appeal in Sports Illus- trated. We shall not stand helplessly by and allow a great American institution to be so threatened by the cottage- cheese mentality pervasive in society. Is Don - 1

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