Boxing – regulation or prohibition?

There was an interesting item on the Today programme this morning, which was guest edited by Sir Clive Woodward, about boxing and the Olympics (scroll down for the listen again feature to 8.50 am). It has been suggested that investing in boxing, including encouraging boxing in schools, would be a good way to increase possible medal successes at the 2012 Olympics. The obvious role models are Audley Harrison and, in particular, Amir Khan, after his startling success at the age of 17 in Athens, and whose charismatic and complex personality has an obvious appeal, particularly in multi-cultural UK.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about boxing. When my son was about 12, he asked for boxing gloves and a punch bag. Being a lawyer by training and cautious by instinct, I said that was OK by me, but he had to do it in a regulated environment (i.e. a club). Thereafter followed an interesting set of conversations with some elderly men from who held various honorary positions in the Amateur Boxing Association in Leeds, where we then lived. Obviously I asked about insurance, and was assured that there had never been a claim on the youth insurance policy of the ABA. That may well still be true.

Of course, as well all know, the risks of boxing – unlike rugby – are not generally the short term ones, especially for amateur boxing which is done in headguards, but rather the long term brain damage. This was pointed out in today’s debate by a spokeswoman speaking on behalf of the BMA, which campaigns for the banning of boxing. I have never felt particularly good about either the risks faced by my own son, or the harm that he may be inflicting on our people’s children, especially since he has turned out to be quite good at the sport. I do know that personally I find it hard to disagree with the assessment made by those promoting a recent partnership agreed between the Royal Marines and the ABA, that “Boxing needs self discipline, hard work, outstanding fitness, courage and team work”, having seen at first hand the effect it had on my son.
 

Furthermore, setting aside personal experience, it would strike me that any assessment of the case for banning boxing (as opposed to regulating it very tightly, which is the case at the present time) has to do a balance sheet of the pros and cons. So, in favour of banning boxing we have the following arguments:

• avoidable harm inflicted by one human on another should not be permitted, even if consent is given; and
• boxing can brutalize and has no more place in a civilized society than blood sports.

These are powerful arguments, which are directly associated with the very nature of boxing as a contact sport.
 In favour of regulating boxing we have other, perhaps more diffuse, arguments including:

• the general point of winning at boxing is not about beating the living daylights out of someone, but rather about ‘out-boxing’ them, which requires skill, physical fitness (especially stamina as well as strength), fast reactions, and not a little capacity to think, and to react to other person’s tactics;
  
• the UK would be stupid to ban any sport at which it might excel on an international scale, given its general feebleness and like embarrassment in 2012;
  
• the physical benefits for those who train to box, which include also more diffuse benefits for those young people who are inspired by the success of someone like Amir Khan to become more physically active, even if they only take up the training aspects of boxing;
  
• the reduction in aggression and increase in confidence which are the benefits that flow for young people who participate even just in boxing training, without actually fighting;
  
• amateur boxing clubs have an enviable reputation for offering disciplined environments, where bullying, harassment and other unacceptable behaviour is outlawed;
  
• other sports are in fact just as, and indeed possibly more risky (e.g. rugby);
  
• banning boxing is futile – it won’t go away, but will exist in an unregulated environment where more damage will be done than at present.

Of course, one could also do a cost benefit analysis, setting the costs incurred by the health service and other public services as a result of boxing against some putative sum calculated to reflect the number of young people who do not become in anti-social behaviour, or who do not suffer health problems associated with being inactive, as a result of involvement in boxing. That would be very hard to calculate, I suppose.

I have to admit that I have rather changed my mind about boxing as a result of personal involvement, having started from a position that “boxing = quintessentially uncivilized behaviour” but I still have that niggling feeling that it’s a dodgy thing for me to be in favour of. This being The Sharpener, I expect to have my arguments either dismissed or honed (especially with regards to the politics of banning boxing) in the comments which follow.