FanPost

How Has Boxing Ruined You?

Gennady Golovkin Pops David Lemieux

This sport comes for us all. Either body, mind, or soul; we are all in some way ruined by this sport. Fighters have their bodies broken and minds diminished. Fans have the violence etched onto their souls, their minds reprogrammed to understand justice in a new way.

For the most part, as Max Kellerman correctly observed, boxing is represented by those on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder. In this era, that has meant many different things. Black fighters, Eastern European fighters, Latin fighters. Many are represented in this sport today. They all have stories.

Most of these stories are some variation of a rise from poverty, or circumstances otherwise compromising. They end up in the same place, generally. For all of our great champions, there a thousand fighters who are simply ruined, mind and body.

I have been ruined. When I began boxing as a way to get into shape, I broke my hand on a heavy bag. When I was a child, I watched tape of the violence. Violent men, raining violent justice upon their opponents who sought to do the same. It reprogrammed my sense of justice.

When I watch Daniel Jacobs, a cancer survivor and a survivor of a Brownsville education, I am watching the system beaten, if only for a moment. Luis Arias, an equally unlucky man in circumstance of birth, who broke bad about Jacobs was a cipher for injustice; evil men seeking to harm the flock. Jacobs was just serving justice.

In reality, I was watching a fight. A boxing match. A sport.

However, like many of you reading this, I do not come for the sport. I come for the high quality, AAA rated, no bullshit violence. I wring my hands in the aftermath of a stoppage that came too late, or upon replay of a punch landing on David Lemieux's chin when he was already on a knee, but in the immediacy of the moment I want the violence.

I can be pragmatic and impartial in the aftermath, but I'm a fan at heart. A fan of the violence. I was upset when Takam was stopped before Joshua could put him down. When Amagasa didn't get off his stool, I was disappointed that he didn't come out to fall down. I felt guilt in the aftermath, watching the fight again and recognizing that Rigondeaux was slowly beating a man to death.

That is how I am ruined. I have a taste for violence that only fight fans understand. I've wrapped it up in these narratives of justice and redemption, but that is only for justification. I want the knockouts, the cuts, the liver shots, all of it. I wouldn't change this for anything.

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