By Coach Tim Walker – I finished this article one day before the Margarito hand wrap fiasco and was only seconds from sending it to my beloved boxing247.com but had an email error which caused me not to send it. In the subsequent glow of public opinion I opted to wait and allow the onslaught of articles time to pour in. The number of articles has slowed a bit therefore enjoy.
Be first! Be the best! Be number one! If you’ve ever mounted a line of scrimmage, walked onto a clay diamond, ran stairs to the point of exhaustion or laced up a pair of gloves then chances are you have been told something similar to this.. It is engrafted in our minds early that second place in only the first to lose. It is of course a success thing and a sports thing but first and foremost it is a societal thing. Do more for your family. Go the extra mile for your employer. Be willing to put everything ahead of yourself in pursuit of the greater good. Isn’t that what we teach adolescent athletes on fields and in gymnasiums where success is rewarded with showers of Gatorade and failure leads to replacement? As a society we are driven towards perfection and as a result seldom afford ourselves the luxury of dwelling on our physical limitations as a reason for not succeeding.
Newborn babies are given baseballs and footballs before they leave maternity wards and in our minds we see them playing in the big leagues. We tell ourselves that the direction of our children’s lives is their decision but in reality society has a major impact on the direction children take. For the athlete their paths are sealed with the sweat of each loss and the pain of every triumph. Playgrounds exist solely as proving grounds. It is in this testimony of sweat and pain where many try, some succeed and most fail. Those who fail hopefully take the lessons they learn into some other facet of society and apply them.
But for the fortunate few who succeed comes the bliss of an even greater subscription to an even tougher regimen. Routines where success is measured not only in attempts and effort, rather in wins and losses then ultimately in dollars and cents. This pressure can be overpowering and the lure of achievement amazingly irresistible. If athletes are not careful the line between what athletes can do and what they will do blurs.
Once blurred by the aspiration of perfection the line is very difficult to re-sharpen. Excellence becomes the lone measuring stick and athletes hampered by their individual physical limitations are enticed to cross that line. If I can be a half second faster, jump two inches higher, turn five degrees sharper, hit 20 feet farther, punch a split second quicker or last a little longer then my means justifies my end in my mind. Should athletes be allowed to do with their bodies anything they want if they choose? If they choose to enhance their body by any means available should they possess that right? They put in the work, the late nights and the repetitions that are the mother of all skill. Is it fare that an athlete be excluded simply because of a natural physical limitation when he has worked all his life to achieve his goal?
We live in a society governed by laws yet there are times when the rules seem arbitrary. What is the athlete to do once he has reached his individual highest performance peek and still sees himself lower in his abilities than his competition? Does he abandon everything that he has been told all his life and become the regular Joe? Should he simply forget about the hard work? The self sacrifice? The late nights? The heart aches and the overwhelming joys? Or should he look for help in a syringe, a tube, a pill or a drink? Should he remove padding from his glove so that he hits harder? Should he chop block a defender because he is faster? Is it okay to take a drug simply because it can’t be detected? Glaring questions apparently but
pertinent nonetheless.
This article will not attempt to tell you how to think but I will also not simply take the side of law. Instead I will give you a more important viewpoint, the moral viewpoint. with every sport. I am alluding to an athlete’s clear and unambiguous decision to circumvent the sport itself. In relation to boxing it is using undetectable substances, it is removing padding from gloves, it is adding foreign objects to hand wraps, it is intentionally hitting below the belt, it is biting, and head butting and more. It is doing anything that violates the purity of the sport for self gain. Boxing is the purist man against man sport. My best against your best. My work against your work. My desire against your desire. Any violation of this sets a premise that some young fighter will follow and thus defaces the sport. Surely as boxing has had a golden-age it had a cheating-age as well. I hope for the sport’s sake that the cheating age is well behind us. Let’s keep the sport of boxing pure. Let’s not follow the trends of recent days which lead to public apologies and tarnished legacies.
Let’s elevate boxing to the pedestal that it once enjoyed. If not in attendance and dollars at least in respect and regard. Let’s keep boxing pure.