- Photo by jglsongs on Flickr
I recently read a powerfully honest, wry, and accurate description of the undercurrent of boxing gym snobbery at the blog A Girl’s Guide to Violence. “This is an annoying part of boxing, and fighting in general,” the author writes. “The all important question of ‘wheres your gym’ says as much about what kind of fighter you are, as it does where you live.”
This blogger lives deep in the middle of a city of sharp racial divisions and constant jockeying for political and economic rank and power. Boxers both reflect and contest those divisions. The stereotypes may be hated or adhered to but they are certainly ingrained.
I’m a suburban mother of three, working in an upscale city and boxing in a 90% white LA Boxing gym and I’m powerfully aware of my particular brand of freaky in the boxing world. I’m frequently the only woman at team training. I’m always the oldest. LA Boxing is a trendy “Fat-blasting, quick weight-loss!” gym. There aren’t any other boxing teams at these franchises; this one only has one because the GM is a world-titled boxer who would die if she didn’t have a team to pound. I’m at the top of the access food-chain, but emotionally I sometimes feel like I’m at the bottom. Our team knows how strange we are when we leave our clean, bright little gym and head down to see fights in some dingy, beat-up town. As the only over-40 amateur white female boxing newcomer in a five-state radius, I feel about as out of place as a pork chop at a Jewish potluck. I know there are some tough men and women out there who came up hard and are training sometimes in abysmal conditions. But that’s not how I have it.
I think it would be worse if we really thought we had it rough because we middle-class LA Boxing types ran out of cream for our coffee or didn’t have time for a pedicure this month. I’m deeply aware of how comparatively easy I have it in the world of boxing. But eventually every boxer has to get in the ring and show their stuff, regardless of skin color, gym, trainer, city, or other circumstances.
And that’s where the real beauty, respect, and connection originate.
Hm. Maybe that’s why I do it.