:00:21. > :00:26.They've been trying to bury boxing for 50 years, but boxing is the
:00:27. > :00:31.sport they just can't kill. In the middle years of the 20th
:00:32. > :00:32.century, the cultural potency of boxing reached every corner of the
:00:33. > :00:44.arts. Some of the greatest writers of the
:00:45. > :00:48.last 100 years, like earnest Hemingway and Norman Mailer pulled
:00:49. > :00:52.on the gloves. There have been more films made about boxing than any
:00:53. > :00:55.other sport. And artists of every kind from
:00:56. > :01:07.Picasso to TS Eliot boxed. Everything started to change in the
:01:08. > :01:11.'60s. Peace, love and mind-altering substances turned boxing into a
:01:12. > :01:18.cultural leper. Long hair, flower power and flaired
:01:19. > :01:20.loon pants were the rough virtues of boxing and made it deeply
:01:21. > :01:38.unfashionable. Boxing is back. Boxing is being reborn in the 21st
:01:39. > :01:42.century. The sport is right in the frontline of challenging the gender
:01:43. > :01:48.divide. Boxing is plugging into the power of
:01:49. > :01:56.the Internet, making the world's greatest boxer, Floyd Mayweather Jr.
:01:57. > :02:00., the world's highest paid athlete. And there are signs that boxing is
:02:01. > :02:08.getting off the floor to make a comeback in our culture.
:02:09. > :02:15.But for me, it's personal. I box and the main character in my
:02:16. > :02:19.new book boxes. Boxing was always something more than sport. Boxing
:02:20. > :02:24.was right at the heart of our cultural life. The square ring was
:02:25. > :02:27.where generations of writers and film makers went to find out what
:02:28. > :02:40.was inside them, and in the hearts of us all.
:02:41. > :02:50.Boxing gives you what you need. Boxing gives discipline to the wild,
:02:51. > :02:55.strength to the weak, courage to the timid, confidence to those with low
:02:56. > :03:03.self-esteem, fitness to the unhealthy.
:03:04. > :03:09.Over the last ten years, my boxing trainer, Fred Kindall, has taught me
:03:10. > :03:14.that boxing has little to do with violence and everything to do with
:03:15. > :03:18.the search for self-knowledge. That simple truth has definitely helped
:03:19. > :03:28.me as a writer and it's what's drawn generations of artists to boxing.
:03:29. > :03:33.For historian Kasia Boddy who wrote this book, it's more than that. She
:03:34. > :03:38.believes the role of boxing in 20th century culture's been
:03:39. > :03:47.underestimated. It's most obvious in writing and of course in the
:03:48. > :03:53.muscular pros of earnest Hemingway. For Hemingway's generation, boxing
:03:54. > :03:59.is about saying no to ment Alty, saying no to a certain gentle style
:04:00. > :04:06.of writing. They imagine themselves as not only writing punch punchy
:04:07. > :04:10.things, but in the process of writing, punching the keys of the
:04:11. > :04:16.typewrite typewriter so hard that the pros would em-Bewl a masculine
:04:17. > :04:21.quality within the force of a boxer -- embue.
:04:22. > :04:27.Boxing was so central to who Hemingway was that his first novel,
:04:28. > :04:30.the Sun Also Rises, published in 1926 opens with the description of
:04:31. > :04:40.the lead character who also happens to be a boxer.
:04:41. > :04:48." a certain inner comfort in knowing you could knock down anybody who was
:04:49. > :04:53.snooty". ". "Although being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never
:04:54. > :04:58.fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly's star pupil. Spider
:04:59. > :05:04.Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like feather weights, no
:05:05. > :05:18.matter whether they weighed 105 or 205 pounds. He was very fast. "
:05:19. > :05:25.I think boxing attracts writers because it has all these elements of
:05:26. > :05:32.nobility. It is a sport that takes you to the very limit of your
:05:33. > :05:37.courage in very many ways, not just the physical danger of it, but
:05:38. > :05:42.putting it on the line, being prepared to test yourself, to ask
:05:43. > :05:48.yourself questions about how far you can go.
:05:49. > :05:55.Boxing in the early 1900s was seen as a metaphor for modernity.
:05:56. > :06:02.The modernist movement arose in response to the far-reaching social
:06:03. > :06:06.and cultural changes at this time. It happened to coincide with the
:06:07. > :06:10.legalisation of boxing. Artists of all kinds embraced the sport and
:06:11. > :06:17.became obsessed with the cultural power of the knockout blow.
:06:18. > :06:21.Part of the fascination for 1920s and artists for writers of boxing
:06:22. > :06:27.was partly what they were trying to do in their art, what modernism was
:06:28. > :06:32.trying to do which was to make it new. There was a kind of sense that
:06:33. > :06:37.you had to get rid of the past quickly and decisively and the
:06:38. > :06:41.knockout blow became a kind of metaphor for modernism. They are
:06:42. > :06:46.knocking out genteel 19th century conventions, they are knocking out
:06:47. > :06:51.long-winded pros, they are knocking out an interest in character in
:06:52. > :06:57.landscape in favour of cleaning the language up. So the idea of the
:06:58. > :07:05.knockout I think is central to what people like Picasso and Hemingway
:07:06. > :07:10.all thought boxing was about. For most of the first half, the 20th
:07:11. > :07:15.century, boxing was at the heart of the cultural life of the western
:07:16. > :07:20.world. TS Eliot, for me the greatest poet
:07:21. > :07:32.of the time, took boxing lessons at Harvard. George Barnard Shaw was an
:07:33. > :07:37.avid fight fan. Jack London has a series of professional fights and
:07:38. > :07:40.boxing metaphors feature heavily in his work.
:07:41. > :07:45.There was a kind of cultural in which this was how men bonded with
:07:46. > :07:49.each other, but also how they competed and Hemingway particularly
:07:50. > :07:57.wrote about how he wanted to beat everybody in his generation. He
:07:58. > :08:02.would be the heavyweight writer. Hemingway knew who the competition
:08:03. > :08:06.was. As far as he was concerned, toll
:08:07. > :08:12.city's epic body of work, which of course includes War and Peace,
:08:13. > :08:17.marked him out as the man to beat. -- toll city's epic body of work. As
:08:18. > :08:22.he revealed in a letter to his publisher.
:08:23. > :08:31.- Tolstoy. I'm a man without any ambition...
:08:32. > :08:32.As he revealed in a letter to his publisher.
:08:33. > :08:34.- Tolstoy. I'm a man without any ambition...
:08:35. > :08:39.. I wouldn't fight Dr Tolstoy in a 20-round bout because I know he'd
:08:40. > :08:48.knock my ears off. He could go on for ever and then some. "
:08:49. > :08:54."But I would take him on for six and he would never hit me and I would
:08:55. > :09:10.knock the sheet out of him and maybe knock him out. He's easy to hit. "
:09:11. > :09:19.For me, it's personal. It's confronting the unknown.
:09:20. > :09:24.Before you start writing or sparring, you don't really know
:09:25. > :09:30.what's going to happen. The only thing that's certain is that I'll be
:09:31. > :09:45.fighting my trainer Fred Kindall. And I will get hit.
:09:46. > :09:50.No matter what your level, sparring is meant to be about polishing
:09:51. > :09:53.technique and of course it is that, you are roadtesting your boxing
:09:54. > :10:14.skills, but it's also about the management of pain and fear.
:10:15. > :10:19.Lots of writers talk about the terror of the blank page.
:10:20. > :10:33.But boxing is on another level. The tension is released when you
:10:34. > :10:35.start throwing punches and the fear quickly gives way to utter
:10:36. > :10:51.exhaustion. As soon as you're in the ring, you
:10:52. > :11:01.realise how long three minutes can be. Ready to go... I think.
:11:02. > :11:09.The more you punch, the heavier your arms feel.
:11:10. > :11:17.And no matter what you do, you just can't suck in enough oxygen.
:11:18. > :11:19.Weirdly, getting hit is a relief from the exhaustion. At least you
:11:20. > :11:42.get to recover. And then, when it's over, there's a
:11:43. > :11:47.strange sense of camaraderie. For guys like Hemingway and Jack London,
:11:48. > :11:52.boxing embodied the pride in the man's worldly virtues, courage,
:11:53. > :11:56.stoicism and true grit and it still does.
:11:57. > :12:02.It's something I've not been able to keep out of my own writing. The
:12:03. > :12:10.Murder Bag features detective Max Wolfe of the Homicide and Serious
:12:11. > :12:15.Crime Command. He's a dog owner and a coffee addicted insomniac and how
:12:16. > :12:19.does he signal that his detective is a defender of the weak, enemy of the
:12:20. > :12:27.wicked and two-fisted good guy with a big heart? Make him a boxer.
:12:28. > :12:32.With my face buried deep into my gloves, I felt his body shots rip
:12:33. > :12:45.into my side with blinding speed. "The small man was both skinny and
:12:46. > :12:51.muscle-pack and hit very hard. Left ribs, right ribs, left ribs, right
:12:52. > :12:56.ribs. Probably the first thing I ever learned in a boxing ring is
:12:57. > :13:06.that speed beats power. The bigger you are, the more there is to hit. "
:13:07. > :13:13.Writing about boxing has made me more aware of the sports' literary
:13:14. > :13:18.heritage. But what surprised me was how
:13:19. > :13:23.popular was with some of the 20th century's greatest artists. Picasso,
:13:24. > :13:31.Miro, Braque, all went to the fights.
:13:32. > :13:36.Some of them even unspired others. And boxing dominated popular culture
:13:37. > :13:42.before and after the Second World War, especially in the movies.
:13:43. > :13:47.There's more films about boxing than any other sport. Last time I had a
:13:48. > :13:50.count of it it was 500-plus and some of them were rubbish, some you never
:13:51. > :13:54.heard of. But there are a lot we have heard of and some are terrific.
:13:55. > :13:59.There's not so many made any more but they'll never go away. Fights
:14:00. > :14:06.and film are absolutely made for each other.
:14:07. > :14:13.In fact, the first ever film was a boxing movie.
:14:14. > :14:21.An hour-long cut of the 1897 heavyweight title fight between
:14:22. > :14:25.Fitzsimons and Corbett. The first film really is a boxing
:14:26. > :14:29.film. It's partly because the cameras were very heavy and the cam
:14:30. > :14:35.that men, film-makers were very keen to show movement. So how do you get
:14:36. > :14:40.a lot of movement in small space in boxing was perfect for that. Also
:14:41. > :14:45.the fact that films were shown, they weren't shown in cinemas, but little
:14:46. > :14:47.parlours where people put ten cents into a slot and would watch one
:14:48. > :14:55.round. The technical dimensions were
:14:56. > :15:06.crucial to the birth of the next big development in the visual arts -
:15:07. > :15:11.television. In fifties America, the televised
:15:12. > :15:17.fights were well suited to the popular art form. It was very
:15:18. > :15:21.difficult at that stage to film the likes of baseball and football on
:15:22. > :15:28.the tiny screens that were available. Most people were watching
:15:29. > :15:35.baseball on five-inch screens - smaller than an iPad. Black and
:15:36. > :15:40.white, grainy pictures. Boxing was easier to film, single-shots, the
:15:41. > :15:45.boxers were easier to recognise rather than the baseball players
:15:46. > :15:51.looking like little abouts. It general -- ants. It generated sales
:15:52. > :15:59.of television sets. There were not that many TV sets. You would go to
:16:00. > :16:04.bars and watch the fights there. Not many homes had it. It grew and grew.
:16:05. > :16:10.It became a tradition where people sat in on a Friday night and watched
:16:11. > :16:19.their heroes down mad son square gardens create a new sort of boxing.
:16:20. > :16:23.This is part of the golden age that spawned Nelson Mandela's passion for
:16:24. > :16:28.boxing. When boys boxed as naturally as they played football and when the
:16:29. > :16:35.ability to defend yourself was an honable skill.
:16:36. > :16:39.-- honourable skill. Boxing's cultural power, endured
:16:40. > :16:44.into the early 60s. Nowhere was that more obvious than the moment
:16:45. > :16:48.captured in a documentary by William Klein, when the young Muhammad Ali,
:16:49. > :16:59.the greatest boxer of all time met the Beatles. The biggest band ever.
:17:00. > :17:07.But the times they were achanging and boxing's reputation for bloody
:17:08. > :17:12.violence meant it was about to get a good hiding.
:17:13. > :17:17.The misunderstanding of the noble art has blighted the sport for
:17:18. > :17:22.decades. I'll fight you, he said, putting on
:17:23. > :17:28.the gloves. We call it sparring. I said, not fighting.
:17:29. > :17:34.But it's full contact, right? He said. You try and punch each other's
:17:35. > :17:41.lights out. Right? I shrugged. Of course. I saw no point in explaining
:17:42. > :17:43.there was an etiquette involved - an unwritten and unspoken code of
:17:44. > :17:59.honour and a great degree of trust. He didn't look as if he would be
:18:00. > :18:06.very interested in any of that stuff.
:18:07. > :18:14.The world turned away from boxing because the violence of the sport
:18:15. > :18:26.could not coexist in a time of peace, love and drug-ed ale -ed aled
:18:27. > :18:32.pass fism. But the - hippies missed the point - it was art. It is not
:18:33. > :18:37.about wanting to hurt the opponent. It is about the execution of a
:18:38. > :18:40.skill, an art form they have been practicing and developing for many
:18:41. > :18:43.years. That is a concept people outside of boxing cannot understand,
:18:44. > :18:48.that the boxers are not intent on hurting their opponent. Yes, they do
:18:49. > :18:55.want to land solid blows. In some cases, yes, they want to knock them
:18:56. > :18:59.out. It comes down to the intention. There's nobody in boxing, in my
:19:00. > :19:02.experience, who has gone into the ring with the express intention of
:19:03. > :19:15.wanting to hurt the opponent. Films like Raging Bull and rocky
:19:16. > :19:20.could still find a place for the bloody mellow drama of boxing T
:19:21. > :19:25.wider cultural world was no longer interested.
:19:26. > :19:29.The world became a more peaceful, saner place and the experience of
:19:30. > :19:34.global conflict more distance. Our fathers were soldiers. For
:19:35. > :19:40.baby-boomers like me there was sex and drug Sex Drugs Rock Roll.
:19:41. > :19:44.The noble art of self-defence seemed unnecessary in a time where men
:19:45. > :19:51.would not be needed for the next world war. Boxing is being reborn.
:19:52. > :19:55.With more boxers boxing than for decades.
:19:56. > :20:02.Could men be reclaiming their masculinity?
:20:03. > :20:07.Or are women muscling in on the final bastion of maleness, or both?
:20:08. > :20:13.London, 2012 was the first time in history that women were allowed to
:20:14. > :20:19.box. Inspired by women like Olympic gold
:20:20. > :20:23.medallist Nicola Adams more girls are pulling on the gloves. What is
:20:24. > :20:27.interesting about women getting involved in the London Olympics for
:20:28. > :20:32.the first time is it took some people by surprise. Some people in
:20:33. > :20:37.the bonging world were not that familiar with Nicola Adams and all
:20:38. > :20:42.the other girls. As contests between well-matched women boxers, it
:20:43. > :20:48.provides as much entertainment and high-quality sport as men's boxing.
:20:49. > :20:53.Of women at all levels of boxing are discovering how addictive it is.
:20:54. > :20:55.Most women, when they first start boxing, they start hitting you and
:20:56. > :21:00.Most women, when they first start they want to hit you gently, all
:21:01. > :21:05.lady like. By the end of the session they are whacking you as hard as
:21:06. > :21:08.they can. Women in the ring might feel like a new development, but it
:21:09. > :21:12.isn't. Women were boxing in the 19th
:21:13. > :21:17.century when boxing was more like street fighting and people would bet
:21:18. > :21:22.on women's fights. It was really in the Victorian era it became seen as
:21:23. > :21:28.a forbidden thing to happen. But women did box again in the 1920s. It
:21:29. > :21:34.was a kind of fashionable thing for keeping fit. Actresses like Joan
:21:35. > :21:39.Crawford posed in the beach, in Hollywood, in boxing gloves. What
:21:40. > :21:45.has changed is 2012 is a culmination of many years in which serious
:21:46. > :21:49.amateur women boxers as well as professional women boxers have been
:21:50. > :21:52.plugging away at their sport for various reasons, enjoying it, mainly
:21:53. > :21:54.because they enjoy the sport and finally the institutions have caught
:21:55. > :22:04.up with that interest. Women may have been marginalised in
:22:05. > :22:10.the ring for most of the 20th century, but boxing has always had a
:22:11. > :22:15.female presence, at least culturally. Nobody ever wrote better
:22:16. > :22:21.about boxing than Joyce Carol Oates. When she was growing up in the 1950s
:22:22. > :22:26.her father took her to the fights. She went on to become one of
:22:27. > :22:31.America's greatest novelists it is her book, on boxing, a mix of
:22:32. > :22:38.pugilistic and feminist criticism that is perhaps her greatest work.
:22:39. > :22:48." The boxing ring is anal tar of sorts. One of those legendry spaces,
:22:49. > :22:52.where the law laws are suspended. Inside the ropes, during an
:22:53. > :22:58.officially-regulated three-minute round, a man may be killed at his
:22:59. > :23:05.opponent's hands, but he cannot be legally murdered. Boxing inhabits a
:23:06. > :23:12.space predating civilisation. Or to use DH Lawrence's phrase - before
:23:13. > :23:17.God was love." Boxing is in many ways the most old fashioned of
:23:18. > :23:21.sports - raw, elemental. It is easy to understand as the fight or flight
:23:22. > :23:25.response. It is not just redefining what it means to be a woman or a
:23:26. > :23:32.girl in the post feminist world. It is changing the'll cultural
:23:33. > :23:37.discourse in the digital age. This new world of Twitter, Facebook
:23:38. > :23:43.and the internet is making the old world of TV, radio and print look
:23:44. > :23:47.increasingly irrelevant. One boxer in particular is exploiting this
:23:48. > :23:55.development to talk directly to his public.
:23:56. > :24:01.Social media has helped Floyd Mayweather the world's best boxer
:24:02. > :24:04.become the world's highest paid sportsman.
:24:05. > :24:11.And he has recently taken it to a new level - letting his five million
:24:12. > :24:15.Twitter followers decide who he should fight next.
:24:16. > :24:20.He's tweeting about who will be my next opponent? It is a master
:24:21. > :24:27.stroke. Who thinks of doing that. He's got such power within that one
:24:28. > :24:33.place to let people know what he's doing and to sell his wears. He has
:24:34. > :24:48.embraced it like no other fighter. He has turned that cultural capital
:24:49. > :24:53.into unprecedented economic power. He's so important to the economy of
:24:54. > :24:57.Las Vegas and Nevada, where he fights, that the normal rules of
:24:58. > :25:05.justice and the law don't appear to apply to him.
:25:06. > :25:14.At the beginning of 2012, he was sentenced to six months in jail. He
:25:15. > :25:17.was asked to serve 90 days on good behaviour and the judge, after
:25:18. > :25:24.hearing from Mayweather's lawyer, agreed to defer Mayweather's jail
:25:25. > :25:28.term for six months. The reason - if Mayweather wasn't allowed to fight
:25:29. > :25:34.in May of that year, then Nevada economy would suffer to the tune of
:25:35. > :25:38.$100 million. That's the kind of power that Floyd Mayweather has, on
:25:39. > :25:40.the sport, but also around the business and economic scene in
:25:41. > :25:54.Nevada where he fights. But no many where boxers fight, on
:25:55. > :26:06.TV or the internet, they are all required to live the life.
:26:07. > :26:12.Boxing asks so much. Even on an amateur, recreational level, boxing
:26:13. > :26:17.demands what Joyce Carol Oates called the fanatical subordination
:26:18. > :26:22.of the self. Boxing is not about being a tough guy, it is about
:26:23. > :26:28.finding out about who you really are.
:26:29. > :26:32.Boxing is a sport, but it is not a game. That is its great central
:26:33. > :26:38.truth and the reason it was beloved by artists until it was buried alive
:26:39. > :26:43.by a world grown soft and the insane impulse to remove danger from the
:26:44. > :26:47.world. That is why Norman Mailer and Nelson Mandela loved boxing. That is
:26:48. > :26:49.why it filled our dreams. You play football, cricket, you play tennis,
:26:50. > :26:58.but nobody plays boxing. It is a truth boxing's greatest
:26:59. > :27:16.writer was well aware of. "There's nobody fundamentally
:27:17. > :27:21.playful about it." "At its moments of greatest
:27:22. > :27:28.intensity it seems to contain so complete and powerful an image of
:27:29. > :27:44.life. Life's beauty, vulnerability, despair. Inial Kabul and often
:27:45. > :27:50.self-destructive courage. -- iccalculable and often
:27:51. > :27:55.self-destructive courage. It is a life and merely a game." Because
:27:56. > :28:00.boxing is more than a game, when life hits you hard, when you lose
:28:01. > :28:04.your job, your love or your health, you might find there is a thread of
:28:05. > :28:13.steel inside you and it will make the hard times more bearable.
:28:14. > :28:21.Where did that thread of steel come from? It came from the sit-ups you
:28:22. > :28:27.did when your sides were on fire. It came from pounding the heavy bag
:28:28. > :28:30.when your arms were like lead weights. It came from the hard
:28:31. > :28:36.knocks you took and the sweat that you left in the gym.
:28:37. > :28:43.And it came from the way you learnt to bite down on your gum shield and
:28:44. > :28:46.stick out your weary jab. In your darkest hour, you will
:28:47. > :28:49.discover that you are better than you ever knew and it would be
:28:50. > :28:56.because you boxed.