A courageous Government could put an end to boxing in Australia.
This week’s match between Anthony Mundine and Danny Green at Sydney’s Aussie Stadium was televised for all to see. As was the bout before it between John Hopoate and his hapless victim Frank Faasolo which lasted a mere 47 seconds.
Each boxer intended to injure his opponent. Indeed, they boasted of their intentions before the bouts. In any bout, the only way for a boxer to compete is to assault his (or, heaven help us, her) opponent.
It is unlike any other sport. Other sports have injuries, but the aim of those sports is not not to injure. Quite the contrary. In boxing the aim is to inflict punches to the head, preferably knocking the opponent out – outright assault.
Sure, there are defences to assault. Self-defence is one. Effecting an arrest or removing a trespasser are others. But it is not a defence in criminal law that the person you assault consents to it.
Boxing would be assault but for the various Boxing Control Acts in the various states and territories. No other sport needs specific legislative exemption from the ordinary laws of assault.
To get rid of boxing you would not have to ban it, but merely repeal the laws that sanction it in the face of its otherwise demonstrable illegality.
Within the scope of these laws boxers can assault each other with impunity.
But why should we continue this way?
Without the Boxing Control Acts boxers would be little better than pub brawlers who routinely get charged and prosecuted for assault. Indeed, when a death results from a pub brawl, the perpetrator is usually charged with manslaughter.
There may be a slight difference between a boxing match and and pub brawl because the boxers are at least weighed in, reasonably matched most of the time, and refereed. But injuries and death inevitably flow.
Do we have to wait for another death or serious injury?
Sixty-five Australians have been killed in the boxing ring (or died later as a result of injury) since 1901.
It doesn’t matter that gloves cushion the blow. In fact the gloves are only there to protect against hand injuries which would prevent long bouts.
None of the changes to boxing’s rules or safety measures have helped much.
There were two deaths last year in the United States.
The fundamental problem with boxing is that the aim is to land punches on the opponent’s head. The head contains the brain, injury to which is more likely to result in severe injury or death than any other organ. The skull protects the brain, but only to a limited degree. It is a bit like a yolk inside an egg. If you shake the egg enough you can break the yolk without breaking the shell. That can be the fate of a boxer’s brain.
Protective head gear does not help much.
The injury is inflicted deliberately as the essential aim of the “sport”. Even in the most physical of other sports the rules are geared to prevent injury altogether, not just limit it. Injuries and deaths in boxing are far more common than in other sports. Indeed, no participant comes out without an injury of some kind,
The only way boxing’s rules could be changed so they were aimed at preventing injury altogether would be to stop participants from hitting each other at all – in short to end boxing.
Our society condemns violence. It does so through the criminal law. But we give a special exemption to boxing. We try to impress upon all members of society that violence is unacceptable. But boxing glorifies violence. It gives applause and prizes, including Olympic medals, to those who can inflict violence to the greatest effect on their opponents.
How boxing fits with the Olympic ideal is anyone’s guess.
Unfortunately, recent films, like The Cinderella Man, are joining the glorification. Yet, James J Braddock (nicknamed The Cinderella Man because fairytale-like he struggled out of the poverty of the Great Depression to gain the world title) faced a man who had killed three opponents in the ring. That is not sport.
The Australian and British Medical Associations have called in vain for a ban on boxing since the 1990s, but no government has dared to legislate that way.
Proponents of boxing say a ban will drive it underground or cause young men to fight in other ways.
But if boxing is not televised and the big money falls away, boxing, like bear-baiting and cock-fighting will disappear.
Once a brave Government removes the special right that boxers have to assault people and someone starts to prosecute boxing promoters for inciting assault, boxing will end without a special ban. And we will be the better for it. And so would the boxers who are frequently exploited. Many are put in the ring at an age when they cannot know the risks.
Giving boxers and their promoters immunity from prosecution for assault is inexcusable, especially with modern medical knowledge of its dangers.
So which brave Government will act? After boxing ends, people looking back would regard its resumption as alien as the reintroduction of smoking in the workplace; slavery; circus animals or any number of harmful, brutal and degrading practices.
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