Boxing

Subject: Boxing

You have often heard how my day starts early with the radio alarm springing into action at 5am. Saturday mornings are special since the radio switches immediately into a program hosted by two well known boxing columnists Mike Costello and Steve Bunce.

The program reminisces about boxing, its fighters and the history of some of the gladiators or the ring past and present.
In today's world and the disdain people have for fighting, much of the glory two equally matched men have when they contest their skills to fight each other is couched in near revulsion by many who would like us to match our disagreement by using that famous description, "handbags at fifty paces". In other words ensure no one gets hurt.

I have railed often about the changes to our world brought on by opinions which lie in the minds of a certain type of person who asks that all conflict were resolved by dialogue. That a man's propensity to fight a physical battle as a means of resolution is an absolute anathema. I'm not sure this isn't yet another factor in the feminisation of the West but in my day a scrap in the school yard was a perfectly normal way of sorting out a disagreement.
Growing up in the 40s and 50s ones heroes, coming from Yorkshire were cricketers Len Hutton being our super hero. Leeds football team were ultra competitive with players like Billy Bremner and Norman Hunter known for taking no prisoners. It was an age when the forwards, the expensive goal scoring assets in a team could not, like today expect protection from the referee. Hard tackling was as much admired as was the silky skills of the centre forward and Leeds United were known for their robust play.
But the men who were most respected and glorified were the pugilists, the boxers drawn mainly from America but with some local home grown giants.
British Heavyweight champion Bruce Woodcock (a Yorkshire lad) and Don Cockell's brutal fight against Rocky Marciano in the 50s. Middleweights Randy Turpin and Freddy Mills these were our most admired sportsman as I listened to the fights on the radio with my Dad. Joe Louis the "Brown Bomber" and the cultural animosity in his fights with German Max Schmeling were fights when nationhood was on the line and white v black was uppermost in many people's minds.
Today's broadcast was of a later era, the era of the four Kings. Ruberto Duran, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard. Middleweight boxing at its best these men fought each other and then again in return bouts, fights never to be repeated in there guile or ferocity, in the sheer unknown as each fight produced a remarkable contest. I remember walking around Zoo Lake in Johannesburg discussing the fighters with a friend Mike Mills. Both of us recalling our thoughts and impressions, both of us in awe of what we had witnessed. The skill of Leonard, the punching power of Hearns, the ferocity of Hagler and the animal-ism of Duran. Who was best was a matter of conjecture and still is as today's radio broadcast showed. One thing was not in doubt as now in an age when men begin to doubt themselves, these were superheroes to us living in a time untainted by the complexity of a modern world when 'gender definition' seems to encompass whatever you wish to call it.