IN some regards 2016 has been a grim year. There have been grave injuries sustained in high-profile professional fights, a broadly visible reminder of the risks boxers sometimes run. But itโs worth highlighting the benefits the sport brings.
Dr. Mike Loosemore, the leading medical expert when it comes to boxing, points out that such accidents in this sport happen โvery, very rarelyโ.
โIt makes me confident and happy to continue to work in the sport as a doctor,โ he said. โI donโt work in pro boxing but I think boxing is a fantastic sport for people. The health benefits far outweigh any physical downside.
โIn a time when obesity is going through the roof it teaches people how to maintain weight, how to get to a certain weight, to understand how weight works. It stops young men and women drinking, it stops them smoking because if youโre going to go in the ring and youโre not fit, youโre going to get hit and when you get hit, it hurts. Youโre not going to do that.โ
He also pointed to the social benefits of the sport. โAll of society now is based on how many pieces of paper you can get and how many exams you can get,โ he reasoned. โTwo hundred years ago that wouldnโt perhaps have been so useful. If we were physically strong and we were brave and we could fight with our hands or fight in an open combat situation, we would have been extremely valuable to society and we would have been well rewarded.โ
In this day and age, he continued, โItโs very difficult to get standing within your peer group. By boxing, by showing physical courage in front of your peer group and by standing against people who are your own weight, your own age, your own experience, in a one to one situation, nobody else is there to help you, itโs not like a team game, youโre on your own and if you get hit it hurts, that shows physical courage. It gives you a lot of standing within your peer group. And if you have standing within your peer group, you donโt have to do other things to get standing. You donโt have to do criminal stuff, you donโt have to vandalise things because you have that standing.
โIt helps give people who are looking for direction something they can do and be good at. I think itโs a really important sport. I think itโs a very, very important sport in society in general. I think itโs a particularly important sport in areas that other sports donโt reach. Not everybody in Whitechapel can go rowing or do three day eventing or sail a laser or go shooting. Boxing is ideally suited to that situation. I think itโs very good for people and I think itโs very good for society and I think thatโs the area boxing should emphasise. The trouble is that people donโt understand, people in power. Because boxing has been taken out of schools and has been taken out of public schools, people in power donโt understand boxing. They understand rugby because theyโve played it and they understand horseriding because theyโve played it. But playing rugby and horseriding are both very dangerous sportsโฆ The trouble with boxing is they look at it from the outside and they see people hitting each other and they think that must be a bad thing. When in fact itโs actually a very good thing for society.โ
That outlook is starting to change in some quarters. MP Charlotte Leslie heads an All Party Parliamentary Group for Boxing. Its projects include currently campaigning for non-contact boxing to help offenders in prison. Theyโre looking for volunteers, who have had a criminal conviction in the past and are now involved in boxing, to enter a survey. That will form a sample group to demonstrate whether or not taking part in boxing does reduce the risk of re-offending. (Email charlotte.leslie.mp@parliament.uk to take part or find out more information).
โItโs just the chance of whether boxing intervenes in someoneโs life or not and they have the chance to get involved in it which decides whether theyโre an Olympic medal winner or in prison,โ Leslie said. โIf you look at how much boxing clubs cost to run, itโs minimal compared to the amount of money weโre spending on trying to rectify these issues further on down the lineโฆ You speak anecdotally to people who are helping rehabilitate naughty kids and stuff and theyโre not getting paid for it, because itโs all a bit difficult to refer people to boxing clubs because itโs a bit frowned on and if someone in the local authority doesnโt like it they tend not to commission anything to do with boxing and all this. So youโve got these clubs that are providing a service for the state in turning around kidsโ lives but arenโt getting paid for it, sometimes they have to close down because they canโt raise 25k a year to keep the lights on in the club when actually thatโs been the kind of money that the state spends in trying to rehabilitate one individual.โ
โWhat do human beings need to be happy? They need a sense of identity โ who am I? A sense of purpose โ what am I here for? And a sense of community โ who am I with? And if kids are not given that through mainstream society, through school, they feel ostracised, theyโll find that somewhere else. So if a gang says, โYou are for this and you are with usโ, they go there and I think thatโs one of the pulls of extremism,โ she continued. โBut thatโs exactly what boxing clubs provide. So for kids who havenโt got any of those things, the boxing club is there. They are themselves, they are a boxer. They are there to be part of the club, win competitions or just become a better boxer, and their community is their boxing club.
โIt gives them all those things that perhaps they havenโt had in their lives. Boxing clubs provide them with identity, community and purpose.โ
This feature was originally published in Boxing News magazine