Keep the corporates out of the boxing ring
If the more extreme safety-first medical people had their way, few sports would survive and boxing wouldn’t be one of them. Bowls might get through, and racket sports, athletics and chess. Gone would be rugby and rugby league, cricket, horse racing, cycling and motorsport.
Fortunately, amateur boxing is highly regulated, especially for novices and bouts last just three rounds. The sport has merit for young people growing up, for getting rid of anger and maybe for warding off those awful cowards, school bullies.
But as for corporate boxing, eradicate it. Too often it is erroneously named Fight for Life.
Tell that to Christchurch man Kain Parsons, who lost his life after being knocked out in a charity event last month. Run raffles instead.
And yet Joe and Joanne public clamours for any sort of fight. Look at the explosion in interest in UFC, kick boxing or whatever they call the barbaric, brutal, cage fighting.
When Malcolm Nicol runs his Palmerston North Boxing Club amateur tournaments, they are always so popular there’s no room to swing a rat.
The same at corporate events, even if at ringside you’re likely to be spattered in blood. The masses want to see big hits.
They also want to see winners and losers. Sport Manawatu¯ chief Trevor Shailer had 177 fights as an amateur and fought at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. He was stopped a couple of times in international fights, but was never knocked out or concussed.
He remembers getting close one day in the Philippines when a Senor Chavez caught him with a left hook to the chin and Shailer momentarily got rubber legs. As he pointed out, the punches that hurt you are those you can’t see coming.
Boxers train for years to avoid shots that come out of the blind spots. Shailer was a scientific boxer rather than a fighter and ran a boxing academy in Wellington before the corporate scene took off.
He doesn’t subscribe to the mantra that a boxer should be able to take a punch. ‘‘Isn’t the idea not to take a punch?’’
Indeed, but that doesn’t apply to the corporate mayhem. Non-boxers believe 10 weeks of training is sufficient, but not when most have flabby, neglected carcasses.
Training can’t prepare them for what it’s like to be belted bang on the bugle, nor when the baying crowds want to see gladiators bashing the tripe out of each other. Nothing has changed since Benhur’s day.
The shots that do most damage are round-house haymakers, the stock in trade of corporate scraps. Boxers are taught to avoid them and to hit straight.
Amateur boxers once wore headgear, which had about the same effect as that worn in rugby to prevent scratches and cauliflower ears. The boxers’ helmet did have padding at the back to stop the impact on the back of the head if they hit the canvas.
Corporate boxing might be accepted if it became exhibitions, as in non-contest. But no-one would turn up because the audiences want blood – it’s human nature.
When the bell goes, the corporate jousters immediately lose perspective and feel they have to hoe into it. Shailer trained activist Ken Mair for his scrap with Michael Laws and the first time they sparred, Mair came racing out of his corner. Shailer threw the anchors out. His job as coach was to make sure nobody got hurt.
It is not what the true essence of boxing is about and it’s not for the faint-hearted to get into the ring for the first time. Hopefully, organisers will shy away because of the liability if someone else dies.
As for professional boxing, the gloves are sort of off there and the outcomes often worse than flat noses.
All Blacks’ uncertainties
It is time the All Blacks’ management stopped being hypersensitive to criticism.
Scribes are permitted to question the play of Kieran Read, even if Steve Hansen disagrees and fires back his verbal revenge. It did seem nutty that Read led the haka at Rome, unless he has a whakapapa we don’t know about.
And his bumbling against Ireland might have been caused by being dropped on his melon from a lineout.
But after a mediocre northern tour, the All Blacks have issues more pressing than Read’s.
The whole country can see Damian Mckenzie is not the man to start at fullback. Ben Smith is, with Jordie Barrett from 2020 onwards.
The midfield has become a hotch-potch, with often two centres playing in tandem or two second five-eighths. And anyone surplus gets shunted to the wing, such as Ben Smith and Barrett at Rome.
No-one owns the blindside flank where Liam Squire has inherited Nehe Milner-skudder’s injury-proneness. They also have pacy ponies in Shannon Frizell and Vaea Fifita and the grafter, Jackson Hemopo, a hero of the NZ Ma¯ ori tour.