5/17/2023 0 Comments Alternate art master of crueltiesTwenty years on and the commonly referred to condition of being punch drunk are all too easy to recognize, even to a lay person: slurred speech, unsteady legs, lapses of memory, violent tendencies, and the general appearance of having had a few too many. Moreover, we know-it is a medical fact-that blows to the head have a cumulative and devastating effect. His analogy underscores how fragile an organ it is despite our perceptions to the contrary.Įvery year we read of some poor boxer who collapses and dies after a boxing bout as a result of repeated blows to the head. A neurologist once made me feel queasy by saying the brain is the texture of lightly cooked scrambled eggs suspended in a bony thing called the skull. The medical profession has thrown its weight many times in calls for the sport’s modifications and abolition. And to knock somebody out is to injure his or her brain. In boxing the ultimate achievement is to knock somebody out. But the aim of these sports is not to cause injury. People point out that football, hockey, and rugby are all dangerous. The aim of boxing is to cause brain damage. Just as cockfighting does not demean the cocks but the audience and the bird’s connections, so boxing does not demean the boxers, but the boxer’s supporters and manipulators. And yet boxing, which has its essentials in cockfighting, with behemoths instead of birds, gloves instead of razors, with wealthy businessmen behind the contestants instead of working class trainers, and the human brain the target rather than avian viscera, still continues. The idea of training animals to injure and kill each other in order to provide a few brief moments of entertainment and elation along with winnings from betting is abhorrent to most of us. The sport of cockfighting is banned in Canada and outlawed in most other countries throughout the world. The noble art of boxing-or, the ignoble art of scrambling the human brain
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