Boxing - Why So Serious?

When Muhammad Ali arrived on the scene in the early 1960s (then Cassius Clay), it was pretty clear that he was a different cat. Not just in terms of his boxing skills, but also his personality. He was a character. There was a lot of boxing bravado, but there was also an element of silliness to him that I don't think we had seen from a fighter before. Boxers were (and are still) pretty serious dudes. There are many possible, logical reasons for this. Maybe because it is such a dangerous sport, a tough way to make a living, generally participated in by people from tough backgrounds, has such an air of toughness to it and is also quite lonely- without the same camaraderie you might get in team sports. This has been the case for over a hundred years without too many exceptions. Ali was certainly an outlier. And even he was still serious at times.

Another outlier, some 20 years later, was Hector 'Macho' Camacho. He definitely brought a fun, infectious and flamboyant spirit into boxing. Of course he was on a lot of drugs at the time, too, but his joyous attitude felt totally honest and authentic. Some guys had done elaborate ring walks before, trying to look cool and show off. In Hector's case, I don't think it was either of those things. I think he just found it fun. He would often enter the ring wearing a costume - bullfighter, Roman Centurion, Native American, Fireman, Puerto Rican Superhero - to name a few, and it never felt like anything that was meant to inspire fear in his opponents or make him look like a badass at all. He usually did silly dances along with the music too. As a kid/young adult watching him, I thought that was so cool. He wasn't trying to be a clown or a joke either. He backed it all up in the ring. It was just an element of fun that no one else seems to be having.

Plenty of other boxers have been nice, friendly, and charming and even flamboyant but the fun and silliness we got from Macho Camacho never really caught on with anybody at the top. Someone like Prince Naseem Hamad definitely had the flair, being taken into the ring on a magic carpet and doing a backflip over the ropes, then fighting in an equally flamboyant style. Emanuel Augustus would dance in the middle of the fight, early and often, even using it strategically to land and avoid punches. I still wouldn't consider anything they did particularly silly or fun. Their demeanor always appeared serious with this just being an act to appear cocky and interesting.

The stereotype of an old school boxing gym certainly isn't fun or silly. It's quite the opposite. Some of them want very much to appear this way so that only people who are really serious would want to train there. Some are in inner city areas where silly and funny aren't exactly the vibe of the streets.

And that's all fine and good, I suppose. But I think the mistake people make is that they equate a certain type of attitude and vibe with boxing gyms, boxers and boxing as a sport and then assume that anything that doesn't fit that mold is considered somewhat less legitimate. Like it's not "real" boxing if you are having fun, being silly or better yet, have a bunch of crazy Halloween decorations in your boxing gym. 

The two things aren't mutually exclusive though. Someone can be a great boxer and/or boxing coach and be a total goofball. Just because we haven't seen much of that before does not mean it isn't possible. I've mentioned before that I started at a very stereotypical kickboxing gym where a lot of fighters trained at a dingy warehouse in a bad neighborhood of San Jose, CA. In the 9 months I trained there, no one really taught me anything much about how to throw strikes, how to defend strikes, why we throw certain strikes, etc., etc. If someone were to come to my kickboxing class, I would teach them far more in the first 5 minutes than everything I learned at the other place. And if it were in the month of October, I would do this while standing next to a skeleton DJ, underneath an archway of pumpkins, surrounded by Halloween lights, various decorations and Michael Myers. This does not make the information I am providing any less legit or useful or insightful. It also doesn't mean that I take the sport, learning about the sport, and teaching the sport any less seriously than anything else. Or just kind of have a flippant attitude about it. Quite the contrary.

So does everybody just need to loosen up and be like me, The Boogeyman? No, not at all. The problem, as it is for so many things in life, is thinking that boxing (or anything) has to be a certain way. That by not conforming to the prevailing style means that it is somehow less than or less legitimate. I will say this though, and I have certainly said it before, boxing is a sport mired in the past and seems somewhat stuck on several levels. A lot of the coaching and even training hasn't evolved like the other sports.

Breaking out of these molds has several advantages. For one, certain people may perform better when they are having more fun, but it also will lead to more advancement in training, strategy, etc., as I have talked about before. As soon as people start to approach boxing from a new angle and not just blindly accept something because it has been the way boxing has always been, they will be able to take the sport to new levels. 

We have seen this happen with other sports for sure, with very positive results. For instance, modern technology has been used in baseball and football to analyze a swing or a throw in a way to better maximize our biomechanical capabilities. Boxing has pretty much nothing like this to develop punch mechanics. It might seem like I am veering off topic here (and maybe I am) but the overarching point is that whether you are trying to bring fun, silliness, a skeleton DJ and modern technology into your boxing training, this does not mean you are not taking said boxing training seriously or is it any less legit.