Pugilism In The Early 1900

The Revolution of Pugilism in the early 1900
It’s a warm night in Sydney Australia; the date is December 26, 1908. 20,000 fans, mostly all males, gather around to watch the best two heavy weight fighters in the world fight for the most prestigious tittle in the world, the world heavy weight champion. John Johnson was fighting the champion, Tommy Burns, who was the first champion to agree to fight an African American Boxer. The bout went 14 rounds with Johnson beating Burns easily. With this fight not only did it set a precedent of letting African American boxers into fighting for the championship it also had an African American boxer handily beat a white boxer and win the title. This would lead to many problems for Johnson down the road
If someone was offended or saw pugilism as demoralizing then said person could chose to not watch the fight. There is no way to argue that one finds it demoralizing to those who watch since if you feel that way you could just leave. Cruel is defined as “used to describe people who hurt others and do not feel sorry about it”, this is not true in boxing. The two fighters after the fight will check on each other as a sign of respect. This is something that is not seen in other sports, in other sports competitors will go in opposite directions and sometimes even resent each other after the fight. Not saying some fighters all like each other but for the most part they do respect the other boxer. Both sides go in knowing this is just a competition in which the winner receives a prize which they are willing to sacrifice their body to gain. After the fight the two competitors will usually shake hands and in some cases become friends. This cannot be called cruel yet something like fox hunting be socially acceptable since the fox has no way to defend itself and did not chose to be hunted Duffield argues. Also how could one look with excitement at the gladiatorial exhibitions during the Roman era in which slaves were forced to fight to the death for the pleasure of the crowd and the ruler. This is something one could consider cruel, not something
Boys growing up in a time where it is frowned upon to fight back will grow up to become weak which one day will make weak men who will not be able to defend this country and take care of their women who are on a path to be more masculine than their husbands. The call for legalized pugilism is needed for all of society, with regulations it will remove the people who are there for the wrong reasons and not impose upon people who do not wish to follow the “manly art”. This statement here is an example of how society views pugilism as an identifier for masculinity. With the controlling of pugilism you can drive out a class of fighters that are below that of respected fighters. This will not only improve the sport but also keep the streets safer so people can go back to fighting instead of shooting or stabbing each other. As people push more of the unwanted class out of the sport it will make it seen to law makers that what they were saying as bad points of boxing will disappear since it will be filled with respectable white males. This is showing another struggle within the white male’s issues of masculinity. As they hunt for this they have had a sport they saw as a main way to prove their masculinity taken away and only represented by the African