Tony Parsons - The Art of Boxing The Culture Show

They've been trying to bury boxing for 50 years, but boxing is the

sport they just can't kill. In the middle years of the 20th

century, the cultural potency of boxing reached every corner of the

arts. Some of the greatest writers of the

last 100 years, like earnest Hemingway and Norman Mailer pulled

on the gloves. There have been more films made about boxing than any

other sport. And artists of every kind from

Picasso to TS Eliot boxed. Everything started to change in the

'60s. Peace, love and mind-altering substances turned boxing into a

cultural leper. Long hair, flower power and flaired

loon pants were the rough virtues of boxing and made it deeply

unfashionable. Boxing is back. Boxing is being reborn in the 21st

century. The sport is right in the frontline of challenging the gender

divide. Boxing is plugging into the power of

the Internet, making the world's greatest boxer, Floyd Mayweather Jr.

, the world's highest paid athlete. And there are signs that boxing is

getting off the floor to make a comeback in our culture.

But for me, it's personal. I box and the main character in my

new book boxes. Boxing was always something more than sport. Boxing

was right at the heart of our cultural life. The square ring was

where generations of writers and film makers went to find out what

was inside them, and in the hearts of us all.

Boxing gives you what you need. Boxing gives discipline to the wild,

strength to the weak, courage to the timid, confidence to those with low

self-esteem, fitness to the unhealthy.

Over the last ten years, my boxing trainer, Fred Kindall, has taught me

that boxing has little to do with violence and everything to do with

the search for self-knowledge. That simple truth has definitely helped

me as a writer and it's what's drawn generations of artists to boxing.

For historian Kasia Boddy who wrote this book, it's more than that. She

believes the role of boxing in 20th century culture's been

underestimated. It's most obvious in writing and of course in the

muscular pros of earnest Hemingway. For Hemingway's generation, boxing

is about saying no to ment Alty, saying no to a certain gentle style

of writing. They imagine themselves as not only writing punch punchy

things, but in the process of writing, punching the keys of the

typewrite typewriter so hard that the pros would em-Bewl a masculine

quality within the force of a boxer -- embue.

Boxing was so central to who Hemingway was that his first novel,

the Sun Also Rises, published in 1926 opens with the description of

the lead character who also happens to be a boxer.

" a certain inner comfort in knowing you could knock down anybody who was

snooty". ". "Although being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never

fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly's star pupil. Spider

Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like feather weights, no

matter whether they weighed 105 or 205 pounds. He was very fast. "

I think boxing attracts writers because it has all these elements of

nobility. It is a sport that takes you to the very limit of your

courage in very many ways, not just the physical danger of it, but

putting it on the line, being prepared to test yourself, to ask

yourself questions about how far you can go.

Boxing in the early 1900s was seen as a metaphor for modernity.

The modernist movement arose in response to the far-reaching social

and cultural changes at this time. It happened to coincide with the

legalisation of boxing. Artists of all kinds embraced the sport and

became obsessed with the cultural power of the knockout blow.

Part of the fascination for 1920s and artists for writers of boxing

was partly what they were trying to do in their art, what modernism was

trying to do which was to make it new. There was a kind of sense that

you had to get rid of the past quickly and decisively and the

knockout blow became a kind of metaphor for modernism. They are

knocking out genteel 19th century conventions, they are knocking out

long-winded pros, they are knocking out an interest in character in

landscape in favour of cleaning the language up. So the idea of the

knockout I think is central to what people like Picasso and Hemingway

all thought boxing was about. For most of the first half, the 20th

century, boxing was at the heart of the cultural life of the western

world. TS Eliot, for me the greatest poet

of the time, took boxing lessons at Harvard. George Barnard Shaw was an

avid fight fan. Jack London has a series of professional fights and

boxing metaphors feature heavily in his work.

There was a kind of cultural in which this was how men bonded with

each other, but also how they competed and Hemingway particularly

wrote about how he wanted to beat everybody in his generation. He

would be the heavyweight writer. Hemingway knew who the competition

was. As far as he was concerned, toll

city's epic body of work, which of course includes War and Peace,

marked him out as the man to beat. -- toll city's epic body of work. As

he revealed in a letter to his publisher.

- Tolstoy. I'm a man without any ambition...

As he revealed in a letter to his publisher.

- Tolstoy. I'm a man without any ambition...

. I wouldn't fight Dr Tolstoy in a 20-round bout because I know he'd

knock my ears off. He could go on for ever and then some. "

"But I would take him on for six and he would never hit me and I would

knock the sheet out of him and maybe knock him out. He's easy to hit. "

For me, it's personal. It's confronting the unknown.

Before you start writing or sparring, you don't really know

what's going to happen. The only thing that's certain is that I'll be

fighting my trainer Fred Kindall. And I will get hit.

No matter what your level, sparring is meant to be about polishing

technique and of course it is that, you are roadtesting your boxing

skills, but it's also about the management of pain and fear.

Lots of writers talk about the terror of the blank page.

But boxing is on another level. The tension is released when you

start throwing punches and the fear quickly gives way to utter

exhaustion. As soon as you're in the ring, you

realise how long three minutes can be. Ready to go... I think.

The more you punch, the heavier your arms feel.

And no matter what you do, you just can't suck in enough oxygen.

Weirdly, getting hit is a relief from the exhaustion. At least you

get to recover. And then, when it's over, there's a

strange sense of camaraderie. For guys like Hemingway and Jack London,

boxing embodied the pride in the man's worldly virtues, courage,

stoicism and true grit and it still does.

It's something I've not been able to keep out of my own writing. The

Murder Bag features detective Max Wolfe of the Homicide and Serious

Crime Command. He's a dog owner and a coffee addicted insomniac and how

does he signal that his detective is a defender of the weak, enemy of the

wicked and two-fisted good guy with a big heart? Make him a boxer.

With my face buried deep into my gloves, I felt his body shots rip

into my side with blinding speed. "The small man was both skinny and

muscle-pack and hit very hard. Left ribs, right ribs, left ribs, right

ribs. Probably the first thing I ever learned in a boxing ring is

that speed beats power. The bigger you are, the more there is to hit. "

Writing about boxing has made me more aware of the sports' literary

heritage. But what surprised me was how

popular was with some of the 20th century's greatest artists. Picasso,

Miro, Braque, all went to the fights.

Some of them even unspired others. And boxing dominated popular culture

before and after the Second World War, especially in the movies.

There's more films about boxing than any other sport. Last time I had a

count of it it was 500-plus and some of them were rubbish, some you never

heard of. But there are a lot we have heard of and some are terrific.

There's not so many made any more but they'll never go away. Fights

and film are absolutely made for each other.

In fact, the first ever film was a boxing movie.

An hour-long cut of the 1897 heavyweight title fight between

Fitzsimons and Corbett. The first film really is a boxing

film. It's partly because the cameras were very heavy and the cam

that men, film-makers were very keen to show movement. So how do you get

a lot of movement in small space in boxing was perfect for that. Also

the fact that films were shown, they weren't shown in cinemas, but little

parlours where people put ten cents into a slot and would watch one

round. The technical dimensions were

crucial to the birth of the next big development in the visual arts -

television. In fifties America, the televised

fights were well suited to the popular art form. It was very

difficult at that stage to film the likes of baseball and football on

the tiny screens that were available. Most people were watching

baseball on five-inch screens - smaller than an iPad. Black and

white, grainy pictures. Boxing was easier to film, single-shots, the

boxers were easier to recognise rather than the baseball players

looking like little abouts. It general -- ants. It generated sales

of television sets. There were not that many TV sets. You would go to

bars and watch the fights there. Not many homes had it. It grew and grew.

It became a tradition where people sat in on a Friday night and watched

their heroes down mad son square gardens create a new sort of boxing.

This is part of the golden age that spawned Nelson Mandela's passion for

boxing. When boys boxed as naturally as they played football and when the

ability to defend yourself was an honable skill.

-- honourable skill. Boxing's cultural power, endured

into the early 60s. Nowhere was that more obvious than the moment

captured in a documentary by William Klein, when the young Muhammad Ali,

the greatest boxer of all time met the Beatles. The biggest band ever.

But the times they were achanging and boxing's reputation for bloody

violence meant it was about to get a good hiding.

The misunderstanding of the noble art has blighted the sport for

decades. I'll fight you, he said, putting on

the gloves. We call it sparring. I said, not fighting.

But it's full contact, right? He said. You try and punch each other's

lights out. Right? I shrugged. Of course. I saw no point in explaining

there was an etiquette involved - an unwritten and unspoken code of

honour and a great degree of trust. He didn't look as if he would be

very interested in any of that stuff.

The world turned away from boxing because the violence of the sport

could not coexist in a time of peace, love and drug-ed ale -ed aled

pass fism. But the - hippies missed the point - it was art. It is not

about wanting to hurt the opponent. It is about the execution of a

skill, an art form they have been practicing and developing for many

years. That is a concept people outside of boxing cannot understand,

that the boxers are not intent on hurting their opponent. Yes, they do

want to land solid blows. In some cases, yes, they want to knock them

out. It comes down to the intention. There's nobody in boxing, in my

experience, who has gone into the ring with the express intention of

wanting to hurt the opponent. Films like Raging Bull and rocky

could still find a place for the bloody mellow drama of boxing T

wider cultural world was no longer interested.

The world became a more peaceful, saner place and the experience of

global conflict more distance. Our fathers were soldiers. For

baby-boomers like me there was sex and drug Sex Drugs Rock Roll.

The noble art of self-defence seemed unnecessary in a time where men

would not be needed for the next world war. Boxing is being reborn.

With more boxers boxing than for decades.

Could men be reclaiming their masculinity?

Or are women muscling in on the final bastion of maleness, or both?

London, 2012 was the first time in history that women were allowed to

box. Inspired by women like Olympic gold

medallist Nicola Adams more girls are pulling on the gloves. What is

interesting about women getting involved in the London Olympics for

the first time is it took some people by surprise. Some people in

the bonging world were not that familiar with Nicola Adams and all

the other girls. As contests between well-matched women boxers, it

provides as much entertainment and high-quality sport as men's boxing.

Of women at all levels of boxing are discovering how addictive it is.

Most women, when they first start boxing, they start hitting you and

Most women, when they first start they want to hit you gently, all

lady like. By the end of the session they are whacking you as hard as

they can. Women in the ring might feel like a new development, but it

isn't. Women were boxing in the 19th

century when boxing was more like street fighting and people would bet

on women's fights. It was really in the Victorian era it became seen as

a forbidden thing to happen. But women did box again in the 1920s. It

was a kind of fashionable thing for keeping fit. Actresses like Joan

Crawford posed in the beach, in Hollywood, in boxing gloves. What

has changed is 2012 is a culmination of many years in which serious

amateur women boxers as well as professional women boxers have been

plugging away at their sport for various reasons, enjoying it, mainly

because they enjoy the sport and finally the institutions have caught

up with that interest. Women may have been marginalised in

the ring for most of the 20th century, but boxing has always had a

female presence, at least culturally. Nobody ever wrote better

about boxing than Joyce Carol Oates. When she was growing up in the 1950s

her father took her to the fights. She went on to become one of

America's greatest novelists it is her book, on boxing, a mix of

pugilistic and feminist criticism that is perhaps her greatest work.

" The boxing ring is anal tar of sorts. One of those legendry spaces,

where the law laws are suspended. Inside the ropes, during an

officially-regulated three-minute round, a man may be killed at his

opponent's hands, but he cannot be legally murdered. Boxing inhabits a

space predating civilisation. Or to use DH Lawrence's phrase - before

God was love." Boxing is in many ways the most old fashioned of

sports - raw, elemental. It is easy to understand as the fight or flight

response. It is not just redefining what it means to be a woman or a

girl in the post feminist world. It is changing the'll cultural

discourse in the digital age. This new world of Twitter, Facebook

and the internet is making the old world of TV, radio and print look

increasingly irrelevant. One boxer in particular is exploiting this

development to talk directly to his public.

Social media has helped Floyd Mayweather the world's best boxer

become the world's highest paid sportsman.

And he has recently taken it to a new level - letting his five million

Twitter followers decide who he should fight next.

He's tweeting about who will be my next opponent? It is a master

stroke. Who thinks of doing that. He's got such power within that one

place to let people know what he's doing and to sell his wears. He has

embraced it like no other fighter. He has turned that cultural capital

into unprecedented economic power. He's so important to the economy of

Las Vegas and Nevada, where he fights, that the normal rules of

justice and the law don't appear to apply to him.

At the beginning of 2012, he was sentenced to six months in jail. He

was asked to serve 90 days on good behaviour and the judge, after

hearing from Mayweather's lawyer, agreed to defer Mayweather's jail

term for six months. The reason - if Mayweather wasn't allowed to fight

in May of that year, then Nevada economy would suffer to the tune of

$100 million. That's the kind of power that Floyd Mayweather has, on

the sport, but also around the business and economic scene in

Nevada where he fights. But no many where boxers fight, on

TV or the internet, they are all required to live the life.

Boxing asks so much. Even on an amateur, recreational level, boxing

demands what Joyce Carol Oates called the fanatical subordination

of the self. Boxing is not about being a tough guy, it is about

finding out about who you really are.

Boxing is a sport, but it is not a game. That is its great central

truth and the reason it was beloved by artists until it was buried alive

by a world grown soft and the insane impulse to remove danger from the

world. That is why Norman Mailer and Nelson Mandela loved boxing. That is

why it filled our dreams. You play football, cricket, you play tennis,

but nobody plays boxing. It is a truth boxing's greatest

writer was well aware of. "There's nobody fundamentally

playful about it." "At its moments of greatest

intensity it seems to contain so complete and powerful an image of

life. Life's beauty, vulnerability, despair. Inial Kabul and often

self-destructive courage. -- iccalculable and often

self-destructive courage. It is a life and merely a game." Because

boxing is more than a game, when life hits you hard, when you lose

your job, your love or your health, you might find there is a thread of

steel inside you and it will make the hard times more bearable.

Where did that thread of steel come from? It came from the sit-ups you

did when your sides were on fire. It came from pounding the heavy bag

when your arms were like lead weights. It came from the hard

knocks you took and the sweat that you left in the gym.

And it came from the way you learnt to bite down on your gum shield and

stick out your weary jab. In your darkest hour, you will

discover that you are better than you ever knew and it would be

because you boxed.