WHY PRIZE FIGHTS.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1920, Page 4

WHY PRIZE FIGHTS .

(By “Berkeley,” in Daily Mail.) Why do people go to boxing matches ? What is the strange, magnetic attraction that lies in the spectacle of two men pummelling one another with padded lists ?

These questions are always being asked of the experts in pugilism, but I have yet to hear of a satisfactory answer being given. The reply is usually to the effect that the human race loves fighting, and that boxing satisfies the instinctive craving for fighting in a comfortable legal way.

To such a student of human nature as I believe I am, that theory is simply “tosh.” There are fighting humans and there are bloodthirsty humans, but these compose but small parts, of the big crowds that attend the modern boxing match. One of my best friends is a man who spends at least two evenings in the week by the ringside, and yet if you were to ask him to put on the gloves “just for a little spar,” he would collapse in fear and trembling. Another is a man who would not, with his own hands, kill an animal for food if his life were in the balance, and yet I have seen him gloat over the incidents! of a “gory” scrap with as much zest as would a diamond dealer over a really precious stone.

The fundamental truth about boxing is that it appeals to human nature’s most insatiable appetite—the appetite for emotional excitement.

The modern boxing crowd knows little, or nothing, about the skill and science of the game and cares a great deal less. The craving of the majority of the people who make up these congregations is for excitement—-the excitement that arises from the spectacle of a fellow-being being brought low and rendered helpless by the superior-auda-city and strength of an opponent. Such people are not looking for the points and the skill but for the smash and the bang that will tauten their loosened nerves, and set them thrumming again. There is nothing in modern boxing that can posibly interest any properly constituted female of the human species. She can learn absolutely nothing from it; it jars, or ought to jar, all the finest and tenderest chords of her nature. I have met but one woman whom 1 could describe as a genuine boxing enthusiast, and she was the descendant of a long line of prizefighters. In spite of its parasitical adherents, a knowledge of boxing is a most valuale accomplishment. lam afraid, however, that the average of expertness is very low. If all the spectators had, first of all, to prove themselves the possessors of a certain standard of ability to use their fists, I wonder how many of them would show a real capacity for understanding what takes place in the ring. Many of them are out for shocks and thrills, crises and disasters—not boxing—and regard a match as a tame fight if either man merely wins on points by superior skill, judgment, and staying power.