Whether a participant or a spectator, the relationship with boxing requires a certain degree of illusion, the kind often mastered by a stuntman or a football player’s wife. It requires an ability to ignore signs. It requires the ability to always find the lucky one.
From a boxer’s point of view, they must deceive themselves that they are invincible, infallible and will, despite the history of the sport and all available evidence, would never become one of the boxers or be injured by it, broken bones, or, sadly, killed by it. In order to train, focus, and then keep it all together for the night, they must suspend cynicism and, over time, they must become experts in the art of lying to both themselves and everyone around them. .
Likewise, for those who watch these boxers and call it sport or entertainment, we have to put aside the reality of what we’re actually watching and focus instead on the two that: sports, entertainment. After all, if we can’t deceive ourselves in this way and pause our own cynicism, we may stop watching people fight after the first major injury or death we witness. on the ring. Or maybe, who knows, we’ll be examining the first sign of performance-enhancing drug use in a sport where the primary goal is to knock an opponent unconscious.
The fact that we didn’t exploit in those moments says a lot about us and about the sport as well. This sport, which is more durable and persistent than most, has formed over the years the habit of pushing hard on each black spot it accumulates, as well as injecting kerosene into each of its open wounds. , to then look as good as new. The storm has passed and a new war needs to be sold. However, it’s us who come back, who are more likely to distance themselves from it, and can remind ourselves that a sport that involves humans hitting each other on the head is probably not the case. the healthiest and most effective way to pursue. However, we still watch it over and over again. We watch fights over the weekend after serious injuries or deaths, and we watch matches featuring boxers we know have definitely failed drug tests. performance-enhancing and therefore, by anyone’s standards, forever unreliable, tarnished, and dangerous.
I suppose we watch because we’re all as delusional and obsessed as people who see boxing as their profession. We see, moreover, because, frankly, is the alternative? ARRIVE Are not clock? To watch cricket instead? No need to think. Regardless of the risks involved and regardless of how many drugs the opponents have used, a fight is still a fight at the end of the day and we all love to fight, or so we are supposed to.
The promoters say that if you just focus on that, the fight, then everything will be fine. In fact, these days, I find myself increasingly writing reports of fights where a boxer failed a PED test and having to pretend that the information is somehow less relevant than the belt. is under threat. Usually, in writing these reports, I am trying to express some kind of admiration, albeit somewhat reluctance, for this particular fighter’s latest performance and victory, a task that becomes more difficult when the boxer in question is widely celebrated and achieves great things in sports.
In that situation, what is the right course of action? Do we completely ignore the PED violation and just let the past be in the past? Or are we impatient to mention it, thus undermining their recent victory? Admittedly I favor the latter approach over the former, but it still doesn’t make me proud or satisfied in any way when I use it. It is merely an unwelcome reminder that many of the great feats that we witness in the sport today, and have witnessed over the years, have been marred by an asterisk. display and the line “Yes, but…” written somewhere in small print.
Worse yet, there’s now so much mystery surrounding boxers’ diets and training camps that we can’t believe it as we wait for the first bell. For me, the introductions before any so-called super fights have unfortunately turned into a question of “Okay, which of these fighters is clean?” rather, as was the case when I was young and mute, “Okay, which of these fighters will win?”
I guess that has more to do with growing up and gaining insight and experience in the sport, than it is simply a consequence of the sport showing a blue screen due to the its own inferiority to the PED. (Or maybe, in fact, it’s part of both.) However, certainly with a greater understanding of performance-enhancing drugs and an increasing number of failed trials, all we in recent years have had to deal with the filth of this sport. secretly and accepting, no matter how painful, that so many of the boxers we grew up admiring who took part in the fight night weren’t the skinny, mean, and clean fighting machines we be trusted. Now more educated, with sharper eyes and more expensive binoculars, today we have a better understanding of what we see and what we have seen, and as a result it is difficult to see. saw too much smoke and continued to pretend there was no fire. burn somewhere. The smoke can get into your eyes and the smell can linger on your clothes, but at least, by 2023, we know why.
Let’s face it, we all have someone we admire, who we know, deep down, has deceived us with their actions and, worse, is at risk. opportunity to permanently harm another person in order to get rich and take the lead in the competition. But in the end, what do we do with this understanding or doubt? We sit and watch. We celebrated. We believe in them and dream.
Then one day we wake up.
