SPECTATOR SPORT
Boxing is vile
Simon Barnes
I HAVE a bad reputation. Years ago, after I had covered a fight in Atlantic City, the rumour went around the press corps that I had hidden for the duration of the punch- up beneath my desk. Subsequently, the Observer ran a piece that fell short of per- petrating this falsehood, but called me 'a somewhat sensitive soul'.
Well, not being a somewhat insensitive soul, I found the spectacle of two giants try- ing to cause each other permanent brain damage with lethal weapons — that is to say, padded fists — rather unpleasant. I have always taken an abolitionist line on boxing it is not so much a sport as a public death duel — and have said as much in print. But now I find roles reversed. Hardened boxing writers, hard-eyed, non-abolitionist chief sports writers are suddenly behaving like swooning virgins after the proceedings at the weekend when Mike Tyson bit a chunk out of Evander Holyfield's ear dur- ing a heavyweight championship fight. Demeaning and disgusting, said one. An indelible stain on boxing, said another. A funereal night for boxing, added a third. Speaking for myself, I would far sooner be van Goghed than concussed. I have man- aged the second feat on two occasions in my glorious sporting career, once when heading a cricket ball a good 20 yards, and again when making a graceful headfirst dis- mount from a galloping thoroughbred. An ear is only an ear, after all. But the brain — well, in the immortal words of Woody Allen, it's my second favourite organ. (I once quoted that to a young lady I rather admired, and she responded with admirable coldness, 'It's my favourite.' But that is by the by.) You can't get more disgusting than dis- gusting, and professional boxing is already disgusting. You can't bring something into disrepute if it is already utterly disrep- utable. Boxing is vile: it is supposed to be. If it wasn't vile, people wouldn't pay money to see it: Tyson was to be paid $30 million for this fight, but after this ear-munching he is likely to get a mere $27 million.
The reason boxing remains somehow publicly acceptable is partly because it makes a lot of money for a lot of people, and partly because the brain is an internal organ. If we could see the brains of boxers and the damage that is done to them as a matter of routine, the business would be unbearable. Recent work on the brain of a dead boxer, Bradley Stone, demonstrated that boxing can have a permanent and dam- aging effect from the day you take it up. In other words, you simply cannot make boxing more stupid, more dangerous, more uncivilised. It is one of those things that looks nothing much on television. You must sit beside the ring to witness the power of these men. For those of us with brains in our heads, to sit ringside is a thor- oughly disturbing business.
The objection to the matter of Holy- field's ear is one of aesthetics. The ear is an external organ, one that bleeds in public. The further objection is one of etiquette. Tyson behaved with unacceptable frank- ness. He dropped the pretence that he was taking part in a sport, a noble art. He acted as if he was in a fight. And the boxing writ- ers, with one accord, drew back their skirts in horror.
Many of them have spoken up about what ought to happen to Tyson, 'if boxing were a civilised sport'. Boxing is neither civilised nor a sport. If it were, no one would bother with it. Meanwhile, those boxing people who protest their shock and their horror are reflecting the same sort of innocence you fmd in those who walk bold- ly through a door marked 'brothel' and emerge several hours later with the ghastly and shattering truth that the place is full of naked women.
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