THE LEGALITY OF BOXING: A PUNCH DRUNK LOVE? by JACK ANDERSON
| Author | Steve Redhead |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2007.00408_2.x |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
THE LEGALITY OF BOXING: A PUNCH DRUNK LOVE? by JACK
ANDERSON
(Abingdon: Birkbeck Law Press, 2007, 216 pp., £70.00)
Violence is fast becoming a sign of modernity in sport, contrary to the claims of
the figurational sociologists who follow Norbert Elias's view of the civilizing
process. Currently the world's swiftest growing sport is cage fighting. A potent
mix of boxing, wrestling, and martial arts, performed in a ring with high cage
walls, shown live on Sky Sports, this extreme sport is already causing moral
panics about its dangers and calls from `right-thinking' members of society for
it to be banned. Jack Anderson's comprehensive book, looking at the legal
responses to prizefighting and illustrating the legal status of boxing in criminal
law theory and practice, is full of nuggets. He even finds out that a sport known
as `pancratium' was included in the thirty-third Olympiad of 648 BC.
Pancratium was what would now be called an extreme sport ± a mixture of
boxing and wrestling in which almost any offensive ploy is permitted. An early
version of cage fighting, yet practised nearly three thousand years ago! But, as
Anderson's study demonstrates, the sport media profile of boxing, especially
professional boxing, is going through a period where its legality is barely being
challenged, compared to the moral and media upheavals of the past. Contrast the
present acceptance of the sport with the furore surrounding, say, the Michael
Watson case in the 1990s, an event and subsequent law suit which Anderson's
book typically showcases very well. Although there is anguish over the long-
term deterioration of a boxing great like Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius
Clay), and anxiety about female boxing, in Britain fighters like Ricky Hatton
and Amir Khan are regional and national popular cultural icons. Boxing is, once
again, global mainstream sport media entertainment if hardly a noble art.
Anderson's carefully constructed book begins by quoting Bob Dylan's
early 1960s song, `Who Killed Davey Moore?' about a boxer who died only
days after being knocked out in his 23 March 1963 bout with Sugar Ramos, a
fight for the featherweight championship of the world. Moore had never
regained consciousness and Dylan was merciless on all those involved in the
`fight game' including the media. It was one of his most celebrated social
protest songs. Bob Dylan wrote another song about boxing in the mid-1970s,
a narrative about the tragic life of Ruben `Hurricane' Carter (`Hurricane'
from the Desire album, not performed live for thirty years). Carter,
according to Dylan, `could have been the champion of the world' if racism
and frame-ups had not put the brutalized black fighter in jail for `triple
murder'. Although the Hurricane Carter story is unfortunately not so simple
and straightforward, as anyone who has followed the long uneven history of
the case since Dylan and his Rolling Thunder band played the song live in
Carter's own jail in 1975 will know, it emphasizes that it is race more than
anything which is woven into the global tapestry of boxing. Anderson's
study could have benefited from the backcloth of a sociology of race and
sport without which boxing history makes no sense.
648
ß2007 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2007 Cardiff University Law School
To continue reading
Request your trial