Most boxing books are about famous boxers and the trajectories of their careers, not the boxers’ masculinity. When the topic comes up, which is not often, it’s because the author has something to say about the boxer’s sex life. The degree of candor depends on the writer’s connection to the boxer.
Sometimes the connection is natural. For example, Jay R. Tunney, son of heavyweight champion Gene Tunney, writes about his father’s friendship with the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, a boxing fan. Tunney begins the book by discussing the boxer’s wealthy wife, who was also the author’s mother. Although rich in anecdotes, the book does little to clear up the enigma that surrounds this atypical and highly successful boxer.
The writer-boxer connection can also be engineered. Jonathan Eig dedicates his biography of Muhammad Ali to Eig’s daughter, who, when she was five years old, wrote to Ali. “Jonathan really loves you,” she said, and then she asked if Ali loved her father (see Eig’s Acknowledgments). Charmed, Ali and his wife invited both father and daughter to visit them.
These two connections seem compromising. A son writing about his father can be protective, and a boxing fan writing about his hero can chose to leave some matters in the shadows. Christian Guidice offers a different model. He did not speak the native language of the Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran, and that distance no doubt made it easier for Guidice to write frankly about the boxer. Duran is remembered as the “no más” man because he walked away from a fight with Tommy Hearns in 1984. Guidice describes Duran as a boxer “who punched to kill” (p. 309).
Of these three models, which I call the familiar, the admiring, and the remote, I prefer the latter. A writer who is distant from the boxer has room to investigate, analyze, and contextualize. That author has the freedom to examine the background as well as the foreground of the boxer’s life.
When it comes to masculinity, the foreground is the boxer’s sex life. In almost all cases that involves women, who are often but unnecessarily at the center of discussions of masculinity. In the case of Emile Griffith, a rare bisexual boxer, sexual identity might be explored in more complex ways—if the writer wished to take the risk. A boxer’s sex life is not going to interest many boxing fans if it is not heterosexual, even hyperactive.
However, sexual behavior is just one aspect of masculinity. The boxer’s masculinity shows up in many other contexts. In these posts, as in Boxing and Masculinity, I follow the lead of the intrepid Jack Donovan, who focuses on the importance of the honor group in measuring masculinity. He argues that “honor has always been about the esteem of groups of men” (The Way of Men, p. 54). What do men esteem in other men? Action, animation, and energy, for starters. A masculine man is dynamic and ambitious, doing the best he can do and trying to do better than the men around him. The better he does, the better they will want to do. Members of the group know that competition strengthens their bond.
Donovan believes that what is best in men “is the product of conflict and strife” (Sky Without Eagles, p. 154). A man who understands that point is not searching for a utopia of peace and justice. Those ideals are within the grasp of boxers and their cohorts, however. “Men aren’t wired to fight or cooperate,” Donovan writes, but “to fight and cooperate” (The Way of Men, p. 21). The world of boxing and boxers requires both skills.
In assessing how a biography treats a boxer’s masculinity, then, I look for the author’s discussion of the boxer’s spirit and attitude, not just his physical prowess. I look for the fighter’s wholeness. What do his thoughts and actions reveal about his view of himself as a man? I am looking for ideas of masculinity that animate the groups of men to which the boxer belongs.
Those groups include the boxer’s coaches and trainers, his role models, and his opponents, even his fans. The biographer is also in that group. His relation to his subject will depend on how he sees himself as a man (almost all the writers are men)—if not as somebody who boxes, then as somebody who loves boxing. I will begin with two biographies about Floyd Patterson.
Hi Allen,
I saw your talk with Tom Holden and Janice. I really enjoyed it. I was curious as to why Chicago only has 4 boxing clubs (if I heard correctly). There is definitely a south American boxing culture. Is there a Latino population in the city? I come from a boxing city - Belfast. I did a search for local boxing clubs and discovered 7 of them. The inner city has an official population of 380,000 and a metropolitan population of around 700,000. So much smaller than Chicago's 2.7m. We haven't had many heavy weight champions but there have been several light weight. It is very much a working class sport and the clubs are in the poorer parts of the city. It is certainly seen as a way for young men to achieve something in areas of high unemployment.
Why there have been no successes at heavier categories, I don't know, but that's a different topic.
I look forward to reading more.
BTW: George Bernard Shaw was Irish. Tsk, tsk, to be sure!