As the boxing and entertainment worlds start to focus on the upcoming McGregor/Mayweather fight, it is a good time to remind the nation of the virtues of boxing. Let us rejoice for a minute in the spirit of manly virtue. Millions will enjoy the spectacle of two strong men wanting to hurt the other very badly. Away with political correctness. Away with critics of boxing and violence. Hard to promote concussion awareness when the whole purpose of boxing is to literally hit your opponent so hard you knock some of his brain functions “out.” Let us also not play the politically correct race card. Let’s speak honestly about race and boxing. When it comes to boxing, not all ethnic groups are equal.
There is a toughness to the African-American and the Irish experience that produces good warriors. The Irish have been called “the Blacks of Europe.” There is a reason for this. The underdogs, the Irish were long bullied by bigger, stronger and wealthier England. American Blacks, the underdogs since before the American Revolution, have also fought against a larger and entrenched power, the white majority in America. Centuries of English oppression and centuries of racial oppression create a fighting spirit. Boxing, whether in the down-and-out pubs of Dublin or the segregated ghettos of Detroit, was one way to express anger, one form of directed aggression. The Irish and African-Americans both embody the spirit of the hungry warrior fighting to uplift himself and his people.
The great waves of Irish immigration in the 1920s came through America’s urban centers — Boston, Philadelphia, the great Irish neighborhoods of New York City. From the Eastern Seaboard, the Irish also moved westward to the booming industrial cities of Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and St. Paul. The fighting spirit of poor Irish led them to take any jobs and learn to hustle. Paddy wagons were thus named since they were full of Irishmen, both in the backs and the fronts. Prohibition laws were not always followed with the same vigilance as weekly Mass attendance. Notre Dame’s mascot is The Fighting Irish, not The Fighting French.
As Irish poured into America’s cities, they met another wave of immigration: American Blacks from the rural South. African-Americans, many of whom were descended from slaves, came north to America’s great industrial cities from the cotton belt. Blacks from Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas and other states of the old Confederacy headed north for better jobs and new freedoms. The journey from Ireland to America and the journey from the rural South to the industrial cities of America’s rust belt were not easy. Blacks, a racial minority, often competed with Irish Catholics, a religious minority. They shared sense of struggle, created a toughness and a fighting spirit that I believe embodies what is best of America.
Let’s be honest: the shared sense of struggle and the struggle for a share of the same pie also created many conflicts. Go and tour America’s big northern cities. Spend some time with the locals. Go to some pubs in South Boston and North Philadelphia. Spend time at a soul food restaurant in Harlem and an Irish bar on Long Island. Talk to the old timers in Detroit, Chicago and St. Paul. Ask them if the Irish and the Blacks always got along. Hell no, they didn’t. That is also part of the American drama. The melting pot sometimes boils over. The pot gets sticky and hot and ugly. The fighting spirit of the Irish and the fighting spirit of African-Americans has played out on many an urban playground and street corner long before HBO and Pay Per View existed.
The history of boxing in America has always had the subtext of race. Unlike organized team sports, which were long segregated (especially baseball, but also football and basketball), boxing was different. Man versus man. Two warriors, modern gladiators, stripped down to their drawers, race and body muscles obvious to all. A Black man might not be able to get a good paying job, but he could show the world who was tops in the ring. Of course there was racism. Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, infuriated white America with his unapologetic masculinity and his white wives, and his boxing victories often led to race riots. Yet, talent in boxing could not be suppressed like in other sports.
Boxing was long a source of pride for African-Americans before Willie Mays, Jim Brown or Michael Jordan. Joe Louis rose to the top in boxing when Blacks couldn’t even enter other professional sports. Muhammad Ali combined unrivaled boxing skills with unmatched oratorical gifts, mastering the art of the boxer as political figure. Ethnic pride in boxing figures is not exclusive to African-Americans. Italians loved Rocky Marciano, Mexican-Americans cheered Oscar De La Hoya, and Filipinos adore Manny Pacquiao. Ukrainian and Russian nationalists have their boxing heroes as well. Ethnic pride comes to the forefront in a far greater manner in boxing than in many other sports. The rawness, the physicality, the violence of two men fighting half naked for their clan brings out a tribalism not found in golf, tennis, basketball or baseball. The atmosphere at the McGregor/Mayweather fight will be different than that at the Ryder Cup.
Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor both live in multi-million dollar homes.
They drive Lamborghinis, not beat-up Fords. They and their children will never be in a welfare line or work a night shift in a Detroit factory. Yet, they do embody a toughness, a cockiness, a brashness that millions of African-Americans and millions of those in the Irish diaspora can relate to and admire. The wildly entertaining press conferences of these two made for television characters rivaling any late night braggadocio at a bar in Chicago or in a scene from Gangs of New York. These guys “represent” their respective groups well.
Indian Americans come from a country where memorization and analytical thinking are prized in their education system. These values are greatly praised and encouraged in Indian-American families. The finalists in almost every national juvenile spelling bee are almost always Indian-Americans. Jewish Americans come from a tradition where study of the Talmud encourages serious scholarship. Jewish Americans have excelled in the fields of law, medicine and science partly due to the centuries-old tradition of Talmudic study. I believe it is fair to state that the African-American tradition and the Irish experience value the virtues of boxing and fighting more than other groups do. This doesn’t mean every Indian kid is spending each night memorizing how to spell onomatopoeia and every Jewish boy is rehashing Maimonides while the Irish and Black kids are out beating each other up on the New York playgrounds. But, cultural and ethnic values do matter in the real world.
The politically correct world of modern academia and the mainstream press abhors talk of racial or ethnic differences. We are left paralyzed as writers of reality. In the real world, different ethnic groups emphasize different virtues, and this is what creates the mosaic of America. African-Americans and the Irish have a toughness and fighting spirit that helps America, that built America and that, yes, has sometimes conflicted in America, especially in our great urban centers. This conflict has not made us weaker as a nation; it has made us stronger.
World War II led young men from diverse backgrounds to fight together for a common cause. The grandsons of Black sharecroppers from Alabama and Irish factory workers in Ohio joined together to defeat the Nazis and Japanese. The fighting spirit of South Boston and the toughness of South Chicago led America to victory then and makes us strong today. McGregor vs. Mayweather will be a bout of two brash, very rich men who will never know the economic hardships of their ancestors. Yet, it will also be a bout in which the toughness of the African-American experience and the warrior spirit of the Irish meet face to face. In America, these two great groups came together. Their shared experience, their shared struggle, their similar fighting spirit, their shared strength helped make America great.
Cain Pence is a Minneapolis-based writer. Pence is a graduate of Georgetown University and has traveled extensively throughout all 50 states. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including The Washington Times, The Hill, The Washington Examiner, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Santa Fe New Mexican, The American Thinker, The MinnPost and others. He can be reached at caino@cainpence.com.
