Theodore Roosevelt gets boxing instruction at a gym for
young ones like himself. (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty
Images)
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Evolve Media.
* * *
Once upon a time, somewhere in South Florida, I went to a middle
school that had both a wrestling program and a small boxing
program. There was plenty of youthful aggression going on, and
being that it was the 1980s, there was much less adult concern over
it than there would be now. If you walked or biked to school,
defending yourself was your responsibility. If you were a loner or
a “weird” kid, getting picked on and winding up in physical
altercations became inevitabilities. This is why the wrestling and
boxing programs became important.
Recently, former
Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor
Mark Munoz,
who was employed by Fairmont Private Schools in California, was
effectively terminated for allowing two students to box each other
in what he thought was a fun exercise in sport. The original story
was that he allowed the students to settle a dispute, but in a
later statement, he indicated he was not aware that they had issues
prior to asking to box each other. A parent of one of the students
became outraged upon learning what had transpired and reported the
incident to school administrators.
I’m just going to wager a cynical guess and say the enraged party
was the parent of the kid who was unsatisfied with the outcome of
the boxing match. That’s just the experienced coach in me talking.
Munoz—a two-time NCAA All-American wrestler at Oklahoma State
University, where he won a national championship in 2001—had
described the impromptu match as more jovial than violent and noted
that no one was injured. If he did allow them to settle dispute and
there was little consequence outside of something like a bloody
nose, this was not an incident worthy of firing a coach of his
caliber. I’ll explain why.
Expecting kids of certain ages to resolve all grievances
pacifistically is fairly unrealistic. Human beings are still
animals with instincts. As an experienced boxing coach who has also
taught other martial arts, I can tell you that honing those
instincts in a controlled environment is not nearly as destructive
as suppressing them. It has long been felt that not giving kids an
outlet for their aggression is one of the factors that leads them
to turn to something like guns, which has become an all-too-common
discussion these days. The opposition to something like letting two
students use their fists in a more civil setting often points to
the dangers associated with fighting, which often involve tropes
that gloss over the inherent dangers of other sports we allow
children to play all the time. Think football and wrestling and the
joint, back and neck injuries, many of them severe, that can
result. Boxing has always had a stigma associated with it, despite
the fact that football has many more occurrences of CTE. Kids take
harsher impacts on the gridiron than they do in boxing, as a
running collision between two athletes generates more force than a
punch.
The fact that Munoz, 44, was a duly qualified coach and there’s
always assumed risk when kids play sports should have safeguarded
him from such a harsh reaction. He’s more than qualified to
supervise a short skirmish, especially if he managed to keep it
civil. More often than not, when the reality of a fight sets in for
kids, the aggression that led to their desire to throw hands
dissipates, especially if there is an attentive coach there to
intervene and set rules.
The actions Munoz took weren’t morally bankrupt and surely didn’t
warrant termination. I understand the situation from the school’s
perspective in that parents do not expressly give their children
permission to box, which means administrators are likely
considering liability issues. However, there’s always an assumed
risk when it comes to sports, and the situation should be weighed
against the attentiveness and experience of the coach involved.
Even in a worst-case scenario where Munoz allowed them to fight
knowing they wanted to settle a beef with one another, I struggle
to see how that’s more destructive than a climate where kids who
develop aggression are secluded, ignored and begin to consider much
more drastic measures in order to be seen or heard.
In closing, consider this quote from former President Theodore
Roosevelt, who once held sparring matches inside the White House
and also got in hot water for giving a dollar to a kid who fought a
bully to defend his little sister: “When I was police commissioner,
I found that the establishment of a boxing club in a tough
neighborhood always tended to do away with knifing and gun-fighting
among the young fellows who would otherwise have been in murderous
gangs. Many of these young fellows were not naturally criminals at
all, but they had to have some outlet for their activities.”