Atlas Shrugged

By Boxing News - 02/15/2014 - Comments

By Justin Town: “I’ve been stopped once in my life and that was by my momma and ever since then nobody’s put me down. My momma whopped my behind since I was seven-years-old. I got hit by lefts, rights, uppercuts, sticks, board, cat, dog, strap, bat, everything you name it but I’m still here. I guess it made me the tough, strong, broad male that I am today and unless you whop me you ain’t putting me down. My momma’s a heavyweight man. My momma’s 6’1” 210 pounds. Trust me, it was a hell of a nightmare.”

-Kevin Johnson (American heavyweight boxer)

“In America it seems like we got some real good fighters. I think the difference between America and other countries is that in America, boxing for the top guys it’s not a lifestyle for them. Where you come over here [England] and that’s what they do – they box, nothing else.”

-Joey Abell (American heavyweight boxer)

We are all familiar with the Teddy Atlas quote that “The heavyweight division has lost all of its Champions to the sport called basketball.” and seeing that Atlas is not talking about basketball players per se but is actually referring to African Americans, as this is the dominate group in that sport, I feel compelled to examine this sentiment further. Let’s make clear that Atlas was not speaking of height as height is overrated in boxing when we consider the historical dominance of fighters like Mike Tyson or Marciano but then again, they could be considered exceptions to the rule. So let us ponder rather the long line of tall fighters that have come up short in the ring.

Here are just a few examples of super-size heavies from different eras that couldn’t quite reach the status or stature of the two aforementioned fighters…or even the Klitschko Brothers for that matter:

Primo Carnera (6′ 5.5″ 265 lbs), Jess Willard (6’7″ 245 lbs), Jorge Luis González (6’7″), Mariusz Wach (6’8″), Richard Towers (6′ 8″), Lou Savarese (6’5″ 242 lbs), Tony Thompson (6’5″), Jose Ribalta (6’5″), Michael Grant (6’7″), Tye Fields (6’8″), Julius Long (7’1″ 300 lbs), Alexander Ustinov (6’8″), Derrick Jefferson (6’6″), Ray Austin (6′ 6.5″), Robert Helenius (6’6″), Tyson Fury (6’9″), David Price (6’9″), Nikolai Valuev (7′), Jameel McCline (6’6″), Lance Whitaker (6’8″), David Jaco (6’6″), Kevin McBride (6’6″), Ernie Terrell (6’6″), Ernest Mazyck (6’9″), Gogea Mitu (7’4″), John Rankin (7’4″), Jim Cully (7’2″), Ewart Potgieter (7’2″), Carl Chancellor (7’1″), Tom Payne (7’1″), Marcellus Brown (7′), Gil Anderson (7′), Tye Fields (6’8″), 7-4 (224cm): John Rankin, New Orleans (1-0, 1967), 7-2 (218cm): Jim Cully, Ireland (1-2, 1942 and 1948), 7-0 (213cm): Luis Alberto Gonzalez, Colombia, 7-0 (213cm): Gil Anderson, Richmond, Calif. (2-0, 1954)…and so on and so forth. So again, we can assume that Atlas was not talking height.

So what would make Atlas think that a certain demographic that chooses to play basketball would necessarily excel in boxing?…with this reasoning could we instead speculate that boxing really lost all its champions when Europeans lost all their best men in two world wars or when Englishmen (post 18th century dominance) lost interest in participating in the sweet science and opted to go into say the academia realm or banking? Or could one assume that if all hockey players opted to be boxers that there would be a flood of American heavyweight champions? OR, one could even speculate that if Italian Americans were not so successful in organized crime, they would still be dominating the sport.

But back to basketball. What Atlas seems to overlook in his theory is that there have been plenty of basketball as well as football cross overs that didn’t fair well in the ring. Furthermore, basketball has been around for quite some time now, even during the golden era of the 70’s when America had more than it’s share of boxing champions. So at base, this is not about other sports creating a vacuum. Fighters are a different breed from any other athlete; remember the saying: “you don’t play boxing”… Atlas of all people should understand this.

A more probable theory as to why the American heavyweight division can’t seem to rise to the occasion is that our coddled culture is quite simply getting soft. Physical/domestic violence is leaned on heavily by the authorities and the courts, bullying is a no-no, machismo has been whittled away by an ongoing feminist program, “don’t spare the rod” is considered a criminal act, hard labor is virtually non-existent, tolerance and sensitivity are codes that are even worked into our military and most alarming of all, the diets of our youth still consists primarily of processed junk. Compare this to the more rigid Mexican, Russian, Eastern European, Arab or Island cultures. So again, the proposal that basketball has netted all of our potential heavyweight champions is ridiculous, it rests on unfounded conjecture…but even worse, I would argue that it is a weak race-based theory perpetuated by a nationalistic bias.

So now lets attempt to sift through some of the particulars.

It must be taken into consideration that African Americans have historically been indoctrinated, encouraged, facilitated, and nurtured for decades by the American boxing culture as well as by their own communities. We need to understand that these African American fighters were thoroughly and exclusively sought out, molded and marketed to an audience that thrived on race bouts, it was a big draw and BIG money. Couple this with the fact that African Americans had limited opportunities (even in other sports), and were easily manipulated by pugilistic power structures. Add to this the fact that as a marginalized group they had something to prove against an oppressive bully on a high horse and you get the perfect specimen for boxing. There were of course other groups of struggling (non-black) immigrants that worked their way into the fight game and made their mark but these groups eventually outgrew the blood lust and moved on, or rather, were pushed through. Also consider that “white” America as a group over the last century have been presented with endless opportunities to make their fame and fortune (or fail) in a wide array of fields and disciplines in a country that was young, thriving and evolving; so the general consensus coming from the white culture was: why box?…put all of this together and you’ll begin to really understand why African Americans (in lieu of others) had been poised to saturate the sport, that is up until the great paradigm shift that occurred in the late 80’s/ early 90’s. It was during this time in America that the onset of a well laid multicultural empowerment program began to really gain traction and open up potential for participation outside the limited roles allotted for the black male; roles that included but were not limited to boxing. Along side this phenomenon we saw the wave of sports scholarships that primarily targeted inner city youth (none for boxing that I am aware of) and the MMA culture that picked up where kick-boxing left off by drawing heavily from the suburban working classes and in turn reignited an interest in combat sports outside of the traditional confines of the sweet science …I digress.

Meanwhile back inside the ring proper the pool from which fighters are being culled is just as large and competitive today as it ever was, especially since it now occupies a global arena. Whereas prior to 1990 the Russians, Eastern Europeans and even Germans were not allowed full access to the sport; this by way of their own governments banning boxing outright or by the Americans keeping a tight grip on an exclusive club. That being said, now that the sport (particularly the heavyweight division) is no longer dominated by Americans, the excuse coming from many insecure fight fans is that it is simply a “weak division”. When in fact, in the past even the “quality” competition was in many cases the product of a shrewd and well funded American PR machine that could even make subpar challengers look superior via hype tactics. So here we are in the 21st century and we still hear “Jimmy the Greek” style rhetoric coming from influential figures like Mr. Atlas and this is disturbing because at base, this weird kind of Afro-centric rational is a throw-back to the pre-WW2 Eugenics movement; I mean really, this kind of thinking would put a smile on the face of Josef Mengele himself!

It’s disheartening that in this day and age we must reiterate the fact that boxing is not innately (i.e., genetically) a black thing people…and it’s high time we dispel the myth because losing the race in this context can only be a good thing.



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