Learning to Box,

On the homepage of this website, I assert that recreational boxing is something that we initially learn from our fathers, uncles, or brothers. The transmission of this rudimentary skill is seen as a right of passage. It teaches a boy the value of being able to stand up for himself in the face of adversity and to defend himself against those who would attempt to do him harm. This point is well made by this cartoon.

So, a set of boxing gloves is produced and the elder, who may not have any skill other than what he learned from his elders decades earlier, inculcates the skills to the youngster. However, without a sense of restraint, the understanding that violence done to another in defense is justified only as a last resort, these skills creates a tactically superior, amoral fighter, who is liable to be awed by the power he now possesses without understanding its need for judicious application. So the elders say one should fight only when talking it out or walking away has failed.

This gives rise to a "boy code" that says its then O.K. to fight, but not to throw the first punch, the fight is over when someone is down, you hit in the face as a last resort, you never, ever, fight dirty and when the fight is over, its over. You may not be friends, but you will not behave as enemies. Some people will cry "naive, you place the boy at a disadvantage. The world does not work that way" . Yet, how many playground fights has the code diffused because both contestants, while steadfast in the belief they were the aggrieved party, would not be the first to throw the punch? If the confrontation takes place doesn’t the code constrain the extent of the violence?

My father’s prohibition against fighting, his insistence of turning the other cheek, seemed absolute. Boxing gloves were not a gift that appeared any Christmas for any of his five sons. They really didn’t need to, most of the neighborhood kids had them. I learned from watching and imitating them. A neighborhood parent had a fun club for his sons, John and Michael, and their friends to whom he taught the essentials of boxing with two pair of oversized wine colored Everlast boxing gloves. Mr. C had boxed in the Navy. Boxing was fun for us, fighting for me was distasteful. My first real fight came in the second grade with another equally unwilling participant, Rupert Stanley at school in Massachusetts, while waiting to be let back into the classroom after recess. We were forced into it by the older boys, neither one of us really wanted to fight, but we did fight and I lost, my rudimentary skill short circuited by inculcated restraint. A couple of decades later I would recall someone saying "you never forget your first fight, your first loss, and your first victory." I do recall it, with the same vivid detail as my first competitive boxing match at the YMCA three years later.

The transmittal of this knowledge is not only a right of passage, some see it as an obligation. Last year I read Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn, a gritty novel about surfing in Southern California’s Huntington Beach, Surf City USA. The story centers on the Ike Tucker, a callow kid from central California who leaves the home of his Uncle Gordon, and comes to HB in search of his sister and the three men who may have caused the death. Along the way, he gets caught up in the surfing subculture, which can be marked by violence. These circumstances caused one reviewer to compare Ike to the Nick Adams character created by Ernest Hemingway.

In the novel, Ike has a couple run ins with Morris, a motorcycle riding hoodlum. In their first encounter, Morris sucker punches Ike. In their second encounter, Ike is more prepared, relying on self-defense moves learned from his Uncle Gordon.

"Come on...let's see your moves.^''Morris took a quick step forward and swung, a kind of openhanded round-house designed to rupture Ike’s eardrum. But Ike was ready for it this time, after a fashion. He'd never been in a real fistfight in his life, but Gordon had once bought him a pair of gloves and had spent some time knocking him around in back of the market, trying to show him a few things. One of the things Gordon had taught him was that a lot of guys carry their right too low when they throw a left, and that if you come up under it, hooking, you can often land a good punch. And that was what Ike did. He wasn't exactly sure why. He knew he hadn't a prayer of winning a fight with Morris, that he would be smarter to let it end quickly, but there was just something about that fat, greasy face, the half sneer, the memory of lying on the sidewalk...swallowing his own blood. He stepped under the blow and hooked for all he was worth, throwing it off his hip the way Gordon had taught what Gordon would have called hooking from the ankles he felt the punch land with a sharp pain and jolt that ran up his arm and into his shoulder.

While I won’t offer any literary criticism of the novel or its insights to surfing subculture (my kid brother was the surf rat in our family), I do agree with the observation that too many fighters and boxers do drop the right when throwing a left which creates the opportunity Gordon told Ike to look for in an opponent. It is an opening that I have always looked for in boxing. I recall coaches who would tell kids just starting out to lay the right fist alongside the cheek and not to move it, as if it were glued in place. Only then would the coach allow the student to throw the left jab. Inevitably, the student would fall into the habit of dropping the right as they launched the left. The coach warned them not to do this and stopped the lesson to allow them to reposition the right. After two or three warnings, the coach would gently slap the unguarded cheek of the boxer with the focus mitt as the right dropped. The slight sting of the blow accompanied by the sound effect of the sharp "craaaack" made by the focus mitt on contact demonstrated why the right should not be dropped. The shocked look on the student’s face gives way to the look that they now get the point the coach was trying to make. Many coaches feel that this is a lesson that needs to be taught and learned early in a boxers education along with other fundamentals such as proper stance and basic footwork.

But I digress from the main point of this essay. Recreational boxing means that we do it for fun. So when is it proper to apply this knowledge in anger? Can violence ever be just? In surfing the web to research this article, I came upon two sites which address different aspects of this question. In the first story, the writer enjoys a life-long association with boxing, which he learns from his father, but confronts his own propensity for violence outside the ring, recognizing it as a condition that he calls "the werewolf." As a father, he passes his knowledge on to his sons, with the admonishment never to use it in anger. The consequence will be no more boxing. The father’s dilemma. What does he do when the application of force is seemingly justified? The second webpage examines a similar question from a Christian perspective, When someone picks on my child, should I tell him to fight back or turn the other cheek?

Do you have a perspective on this issue you would like to share. If so, please email me at oldbxr@mailcity.com.