Boxers

I quote without permission from an excellent Paul Simon song:

In the clearing stands a boxer,
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."
But the fighter still remains

The song is actually symbolic - it is about taking blows from life, consistently being beaten up by, and wanting to be free of it, and yet knowing there is nowhere else to turn.

Like a journeyman boxer in the ring.

Friends are often surprised by my interest in boxing, but for those who emerged from working-class families in the north of England, it should not be so surprising. Life always had a hard edge, and proving your toughness was one way out of life's quandaries. Anyway, boxing is not pure slugging. Some boxers are extraordinarily skilful at their art.

But the majority of boxers are journeymen. They fight down the card every time, they win some, lose some, once in a while get thrown in with a contender for "match practice" and get pasted. It is a payday, though one with the danger of dementia setting it later in life if you get hit too hard too often. Check out one time contenders Kenny Lane and Ralph Dupas if you want confirmation of that.

Some people even lose their life in the ring, or after the fight has finished. Check out Benny Paret, Johnny Owen, Bradley Stone as tragic examples.

For a contender, you can see the point - the financial rewards make the risks seem worthwhile. For the journeyman though? The money is not amazing, the dangers obvious, eventually as you get older and you slow down, the defeats become more common, the pounding taken often gets worse.

And then there is the one-time contender who seemingly cannot accept that he never quite made it, and becomes, to his detriment, a journeyman. In some ways his situation is even worse that the normal paid pro - he is still a name, and the quality of the opposition that he has to face is better. He is, though, expected to give the rising star a test, but not beat him.

Take the case of Billy Waith for example.

A Welshman from Cardiff, he set a record of fighting eliminators for a shot a British titles at four different weights. He could box, often beautifully, he was also capable of landing the occasional stinging punch that could bring a fight to an end. The box-fighter, almost in excelsis.

That said, he was never quite that good. Against top-flight opponents, he would acquit himself with guts, determination and no little skill, but eventually he would lose. Look at the people he fought - he ducked nobody. A sad indication of this though is the fact that he undoubtedly went on too long. In the last 3 years of his career (retiring at the age of 34), he lost 6 out of 8 fights, being stopped three times. The defeats do not look too bad on paper - he did not fight "nobodies", but the accumulative effect has to be questioned. I hope that nearly 30 years after his final fight, he is still in good shape.

As with Lane and Dupas, though, who is to know what impact being hit hard on the head so many times can have? You can admire the bravery, the guts and the determination, you wonder what drives people to earn a living like this. At the same time when someone from the anti-boxing lobby grabs you and argues for the abolition of this "sport", it is extraordinarily difficult to justify it.

It will not stop me watching and enjoying the occasional fight, but the intellectual dilemna over this also leaves me with occasional doubts about myself and the sort of person that I am.