BOXING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 21, 22 May 1912, Page 10

BOXING.

Pleasures of Pugilism. DELUSIONS ABOUT PRIZE-FIGHTS. The notion that boxing is an agonizing business originated, according to a competent authority vouched for by the London “Times,” in the highly-coloured accounts of prize-fights with the naked fists. These accounts first imparted to cultivated people, their notion that the experiences of a pugilist in the ring, dealing and giving blows, must be physically painful. Endurance and the capacity to endure pain were unquestionably the old-fashioned prize-fighter’s chief assets The bare knuckles cut and bruised in a way quite impossible .when the gloves are on. But it is by entering the mind of the prize-fighter in action, by considering the psychology of pugilism, that the common impression of pugilism as a prolonged ordeal of nerve-shattering pain—giving rise to a kind of homicidal mania in the breast of either combatant—is most effectively confuted. To quote from the article in the London “Times’*: “The writer, who lias enjoyed many a strenuous bout with the gloves, and, in a remote and adventurous youth, even took part in two glove fights in Wester? America (bring knocked out in the first, and winning the second on points), speaks from much-cherished personal experience when he says there is absolutely no truth in the impression. In the first place, oven the p.iiu of a very severe blow (provided it does not disturb tire solar plexus—in which case the shock, though it soon passes off, may mean taking the count) passes unnoticed in the exhilaration of the game. It is not the other fellow’s hitting, but one's own. and the perpetual motion which is the exhausting factor in the sport; there are times at the end of a particularly strenuous round when one has the feeling that the sprinter has in the last few yards of a sternly-contested quartermile. “The writer will never forget the penultimate round in a ten-round affair which he lost on the other side of the Atlantic through ducking carelessly into an upper-cut. It was a species of dream; everything in and about the ring seemed phantasmal and shadowy; the cries of the spectators, rejoicing in a sequence of swift exchanges, seemed to come from very far away—a weird, other-world ululation that really did not matter at all. The call of time was a joy in itself; to sit on a chair and be sponged and fanned was the sum of all possible and impossible luxuries. An I the luxury of a minute's rest was emphasized by the remark of one of the seconds, a grim old fighter who gave one good advice in the intervals—‘Say. you kept that English left going in good shape; you nearly had him twice, but lie’s surely t ough I ’ ” The way out. proceeds this competent authority, was opened “silently, invisibly in the next bout.” After the knock-out it was an awakening in a land of peace and pleasant fatigue. The winner came over, and shook hands affectionately. The loser felt that lip had never known a man so well in his life, and never likel a man so much. As for two or three bruises and a cut lip—what did they matter? “But they mattered a good deal; they were honourable marks, mementoes of an occasion when one had proved that a good physique is worth working for. that there is a moral factor in physical courage, that there is no .such thing as a ‘miserable body’ unless one-misuses it. “Personal animosity simply does not exist in a contest between two boxers who have acquired the ba ; s of their art —the ability to keep their temper uniiifiled in adversity. Their feelings are impersonal, as those of two chess players; it is the situation, not the adversary, which is the real objective of attack. Indeed, boxing is the chess of athletius; like that ‘gymnasium of the mind’ which is the finest of sedentary games, it matches what a -man is against what ho is not. as well as providing a drastic comparison of the physical, mental, and moral qualities of two individuals. To got in a good hit is, of course, a joyous Lit of good fortune; not because it shakes tin' other man so much as because it is an artistic achievement. A good late cut or off-drive or a fine approach to a w<*!l-guarded hole gives one pre-<-isrlv D o same thrill of pleasure. Really 1o hurt his antagonist is never the intention of a hoxe< in the English style. “In a word, there is no more agony in

a boxing bout than in a well-contested sprint or a wing three-quarter's run down the touch-line—not a particle more. Many famous boxers of whom the writer has inquired have ratified his impressions of the boxer in action. ‘ The difficulty in persuading the non-experienced of the truth thereof consists in the fact that they have not been through the mill. If they see a bout, they measure the effects of blows exchanged by thinking how they would feel if compelled to receive them. But. untrained as they so often are, and without a suitable physique for the game, they necessarily exaggerate the painfulness of it all. The physical pains of boxing—let an eleventh-hour convert to another personal pastime confess—are as nothing in comparison with the mental anguish and reiterated irritations of a beginner at golf. Yet who calls golf brutal and demoralizing?” In these considerations, finally, lie the failure of all homilies against pugilism. The makers of such homilies reveal in every word that they know nothing about the thing they criticise by actual experience. The physical effects of the blows which one pugilist can legitimately deal another would never be permanently disabling. In any event, concludes the pugilist who writes thus in the British organ, recent outcries against the cruelty of the sport are “ highly unscientific.” The masse of the people are better informed upon this point than are the cultivated and refined.