Is Boxing Conservative?

Is boxing conservative? Well, do all mailmen drink bourbon? Are butchers known for their stamp collections? Are ducks susceptible to the Pelagian heresy? "Is boxing conservative"—what question could be more idle?

But there may be some interesting overlap between conservatism and pugilism, and not just in the mind of Dr. Joyce Brothers (who, if you didn't know, got her start as a boxing expert). Kasia Boddy explains:

The very ubiquity of fights throughout [Fielding's] novels is comically conservative, as if Fielding is asking, "What else can you expect from human nature?" There may be lots of bleeding, and preferably some female nudity, but the conclusion of a boxing match, for Fielding, is also comic, and conservative in its effect (a jovial handshake with the balance of power unchanged), rather than tragic and radical (epitomized by the deadly Jacobite duel).

The first kind of conservatism Boddy attributes to boxing isn't very meaty; the perfectibility of man has lost all credibility, even among liberals. The second kind, though, sounds like a cross between Victor Turner and Joseph de Maistre, a hybridization worth unpacking.

Conservatism prefers stability to meritocracy, which is to say that it embraces hierarchy even when that hierarchy is unjust. If we allow ourselves to be bothered by this injustice—which we should if we want to keep conscience alive—then we need some way to compensate for it while still keeping the hierarchy in place. Boxing, according to Boddy, permits a dock worker to pummel an aristocrat in an environment where violence is robbed of any revolutionary potential. After the fight, things return to normal; everyone's class status is conserved.

In a rare stroke of good luck, my speculations are confirmed (rather than demolished, as usually happens) by history—generally speaking, boxing has been loved by the lowest and highest classes, but held in contempt by everyone in the middle. From The Manly Art by Elliott Gorn:

. . . where the gentry and aristocracy had seen manly fortitude, healthy paternalism, and a chance for some innocent slumming, the middle class found only depravity and the debasement of the poor.

Boxing, at least in Britain, was always underwritten by aristocrats and dominated by (mostly urban) working men. There were few middle-class merchants in the Fancy, and no wonder! There is no utilitarian justification to be made for boxing; it does not square with bourgeois Protestant values.* Therefore, any conservatism that starts either with aristocratic virtue or with working-class social conservatism—in other words, the big tent of "Blame the Enlightenment First"—will find its values ritualized in the ring.

*Boddy again, speaking of Roman boxing (in contrast to Ancient Greek): "A different notion of honor emerges, one less directly attached to the virtues necessary for combat and having more to do with those essential to art. According to Richard Lattimore, it was the 'very uselessness of . . . [the athletic] triumphs which attracted Pindar'; 'A victory meant that time, expense, and hard work had been lavished on an achievement that brought no calculable advantage, only honor and beauty.'"