Man Must Fight

“In peace, there’s nothing so becomes a man,

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood” – King Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1. (Shakespeare)

My love affair with boxing

Boxers (pugilists) practice the "the manly art of self-defence". (Pugnus = fist, Pugnāre = to fight). The sport has been around for 5000 years, and was popular in Ancient Rome.

My father was a tough, outdoor man. A tradesman and not a book reader. He forced me to give up my piano lessons and take up boxing in an attempt to push me out of my shy, timid demeanour, and lack of confidence. I found that I loved it! The combined smell of resin, leather, sawdust, canvass, smelling salts, Vaseline, liniment and sweat still evokes distant memories of battles fought, won and lost. In those days amateur boxing was not about brutal bashing. Marquis of Queensbury rules applied and boxing was more akin to the feint, parry, block and thrust of fencing. It was about anticipation, reflexive responses, slipping or rolling with your opponents punches, footwork, ring craft, counter-punching to switch defence to attack … About adrenaline rushes but also about disciplined training regime, composure, agile responses, getting into the flow zone. I became the first South African champion ever from the Western province, was honoured in the Mayor’s parlour. I have a newspaper clipping that talks about Williams’s twinkle toes and piston-like left jab! (I'm on the left in the pic above).

I believe that through the sport I learned something about respect for one’s opponent, perseverance, losing gracefully, the development of appropriate self- esteem, and settling conflict ‘in the ring’ then shaking hands.

Boxing has its fair share of detractors. Certainly a too-high percentage of professional boxers are at risk to the neurogenerative condition of Dementia pugilistica (punch-drunk syndrome).
Since the early 1950s some medical doctors have advocated that the sport be banned.

Heroes

I loved imagining myself as the hero in countless boxing heroes-journey stories:

• Identified with Huw who learned to box and defeat the local bully (How Green Was My Valley – Richard Llewellan)

• Was thrilled by the exploits of Welsh coal miner Jimmy Wilde, who fought in the early 20th century, was inducted into boxings’ hall of fame in 1959 and was possibly the best, most courageous flyweight or any-weight boxer who ever lived. He became known as “the ghost with a hammer in his hand”. Years later, his skills were echoed by heavyweight champion Muhammed Ali who latched onto the power of visualisation when he said “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see”.

• Excited by Baby Jake Matlala overcoming the odds, at a height of 1.47 meters, or 4-foot-10, becoming the shortest boxing world champion ever. 

• Watching movies depicting lives and struggles, such as Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby, The Hurricane, Cinderella Man …

• Being disappointed when Roberto Duran gave up and walked to his corner during his fight with Sugar Ray Leonard saying no más (no more)

• Sharing Willie Toweel’s pain. After drawing with Robert Cohen for the World Bantamweight title (previously held by his brother Viccie Toweel), he defended his South African Featherweight title and knocked out Hubert Essakow who soon after died of brain injuries. He was a religious man, was never the same again, subsequently held back when he had his opponents in trouble.

• Being glued to the radio listening to what is said to be one of boxing’s all-time classic fights – Arnold Taylor versus Romeo Anaya. Arnold was bloodied and beaten, knocked down four times, yet found the strength to somehow get up and knock out Anaya in the second last (14th) round, and win the World Bantamweight championship.

• Watching ancient Muay Thai in Thailand and being riveted by its tradition, ritual and spiritual inner - strength component

Relatively recently I found out about Nelson Mandela’s love of boxing.

In Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela he says, “I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it. I was intrigued by how one moved one's body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a match…
Boxing is egalitarian. In the ring, rank, age, colour, and wealth are irrelevant . . .”

Another African hero, Dr Kachinga Sichizya - guitarist, singer, author, and Zambia's first brain surgeon, who preaches a message of love - was the top boxer at his university and loves the sport.

Gene Tunney who was World Heavyweight champion during the 1920s, defeating idolised Jack Dempsey twice (perhaps a reason for his lack of popularity), likened boxing to a strategic game of chess, was passionate about the arts, opera and literature, and known for being fleet of foot and rapid-fire jabbing, wrote “As a West Side kid fooling around with boxing gloves, I had been, for some reason of temperament, more interested in dodging a blow than in striking one”. He was bullied at school and steered into boxing by his father. Tunney wrote Man Must Fight, which title is borrowed for this article.

To think on

I suppose some subconscious driver was at work to trigger the writing of his piece – perhaps our daily news being saturated by conflict around the globe.

Humanity seems to carry a primal, animal instinct to fight brutally at the personal, tribal, country and institutional levels (including religious crusades and jihāds). From road - rage to wars. Any day’s news confirms this. We know that we each have an inbuilt flight or fight response mechanism. This may be nurtured and driven by honour, power, control, greed, upholding macho status, fear, being the protector. In Western culture we put wealth, strength, influence and winning on pedestals. Fear, weakness, failure do not feature in our abundance. We fight for causes, the truth, freedom, struggle against injustice and oppression, defend territory, overcome bouts of disease and inner demons, to progress . We have a propensity for self - preservation. We find justifications and rationalisations for our actions when we need to. We seek to impose our wills, and resist backing down or turning the other cheek.

This fighting goes beyond the mere physical and may be overt and passively aggressive – witness angry disputes, the military model that characterises some businesses, political ‘infighting’, snide remarks, put-downers and other forms of psychological abuse. Our legal system is more geared towards the adversarial than mediation. On two occasions I've been involved in David and Goliath conflict with big corporations, both lengthy and dibilitating (part of their tactics) and prevailed. Even certain business practices and behaviours may be viewed forms of violence against society and the environment.

If not directly involved, we find ourselves in someone else’s corner or engaged spectators, sometimes baying for blood. "In the brightly lit ring, man is in extremis, performing an atavistic rite or agon for the mysterious solace of those who can participate only vicariously in such drama: the drama of  life in the flesh. Boxing has become America's tragic theater" (Joyce Carol Oates  On Boxing  Dolphin/ Doubleday 1987).
Warrior and Protector archetypes are deeply entrenched in our psyches.

In the grand scheme of things, our efforts at handling conflict, resolving real or perceived collisions of interests, achieving peace and harmony have been puny, to say the least. One of my favourite writers, Theodore Zeldin, says, “So far, humans have used three strategies to deal with their enemies: fight them, run away or somehow manage to love them. But none of these methods has been particularly successful, and the world is still full of enemies”. (An Intimate History of Humanity Vintage 1998)

Richard Rohr (in his newsletter on Contemplation - 7th September, 2014) states that our lower level minds are dualistic. It 'takes sides', is judgmental and oppositional: "Whatever is unfamiliar, or whatever it does not already understand or agree with, is judged as totally wrong". So we need to develop a higher level of consciousness.

These are such huge issues. Whether or not fighting in any form is justified, perhaps there’s a fourth strategy and it’s worth considering:

“What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don't they come from the cravings that are at war within you?” - James.4:1

 A RESPONSE FROM SAUNDRA KELLEY

Fighting is something about which I have mixed emotions. As a child, I sat many an hour with my grandfather watching what he called “wraslin,” on television. To me, those oily, sweating men bending themselves into impossible positions and contortions was almost comical, and considering it was on American television, it probably was.

On a trip to the state of Alabama with my grandmother, we came upon a heavily loaded Ford Falcon. Drawing close, we saw a man with curlers in his golden hair, the car dipping dangerously on the side where he sat. Passing, we realized that little Ford was loaded with wrestlers on their way to a match, and one looked a lot like a wrestler nicknamed “Gorgeous George.” On a red clay back road in south Alabama, we had discovered the secret to his blond curls – pink hair rollers! Seeing him later on the screen, however, revealed a powerful man who could fight.

Later, growing up on stories about champion boxer Muhammad Ali, the man who was almost too beautiful, with a perfect physique and lightning quick moves gave me a different angle of what it meant to fight. It seemed he fought for the art of it, an art form painted in bright red blood, which eventually damaged his brain function. Watching him dance around the ring, striking his opponent, taking blows, avoiding others, and winning was always exciting, but not the blood; not the injuries, not the potential for death that could follow.

Hardwired into modern man, according to Graham Williams in his newsletter Man Must Fight is the desire for battle. Growing up in South Africa, his father, a tough outdoorsman, forced his son to forsake the piano and to use his hands in the manly sport of boxing. Boxing as he learned it, however, is not what we see in today’s commercialized moneymaking syndicate sport. According to Williams, “Marquis of Queensbury rules applied and boxing was more akin to the feint, parry, block, and thrust of fencing. It was about anticipation, reflexive responses, slipping or rolling with your opponents punches, footwork, ring craft, counter-punching to switch defense to attack … About adrenaline rushes but also about disciplined training regime, composure, agile responses, getting into the flow zone.”

The approach Williams describes from his youth, seems drastically different from what we see today, which is truly a blood sport. As an example of the honorable sport of boxing, he shares the late Nelson Mandela’s words about boxing. In Long Walk to Freedom, “I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it. I was intrigued by how one moved one's body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a match… 
Boxing is egalitarian. In the ring, rank, age, colour, and wealth are irrelevant . . .”

What Williams shows us is a way to use our physicality in an intelligent, managed way to resolve conflict and come out of it shaking hands. Who does that now?

Saundra Kelley, Storyteller & Author
423-946-9359
http://www.saundrakelleystoryteller.com

saundrakelley.blogspot.com

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