Boxing’s other faces

PINOY KASI


Boxing’s other faces
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:05am (Mla time) 04/18/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Manny Pacquiao’s victory last Sunday came only two weeks after another Filipino boxer, Angelito Sisnorio, was killed by a brain hemorrhage sustained during a boxing match in Thailand, where he was pitted against flyweight champion Chatchai Sasakul.

Pacquiao’s victory might make us forget, too quickly, Sisnorio’s death. Yes, the Games and Amusements Board has since banned Filipino boxers from going to Thailand and there was some outrage expressed, with Inquirer sports columnist Recah Trinidad writing an article with the title, “Did they have to deal with savage Thailand?” Trinidad exposed a racket in Thailand: “Saturday night fights featuring hapless Filipino pugs against rising or established Thai boxers have been regular dinner fare in Bangkok.” Not only that, Trinidad said, some fights are rigged, with Filipino boxers “advised” to intentionally lose a match.

I can believe Trinidad’s claims, and will give my reasons shortly. But I did want to write, too, about the need to ask ourselves some tough questions about the many faces of boxing, other than that of the victorious Pacquiao.

Paid gore

Last year, during a visit to Thailand, I picked up a magazine in a rural market newsstand. The magazine happened to be displayed with its back cover facing me, and it caught my eye because it showed a Thai boxer with a bloodied face, his eyes wide open with pain and with fear. There were blood stains as well in different parts of his body and the Thai captions were printed in a way that made it look like it was dripping blood, much like you see in the titles of horror movies. Inside the magazine, there were more photographs of this type, including the boxer on the back page shown during the match taking blows from his opponent.

I bought the magazine and showed it later to O’ong Maryono, an Indonesian martial arts expert who currently lives in Thailand. O’ong shook his head sadly and explained that this happens very often in Thai boxing, with people paid to both inflict and receive such injuries.

I was shocked, having thought of muay Thai or Thai boxing as a sport that had become refined through the years. Two years ago, Discovery Channel featured a documentary on muay Thai showing how it had become almost an art. I had also read books with detailed descriptions of the rituals and rules that accompany muay Thai, with boxers actually praying before each match.

The magazine I got showed another side to Thai boxing, one of bloodthirsty spectacle with ties to syndicates and paid gore.

I was disturbed mainly because all that lust for blood seemed to go against the perception of Thailand as a gentle Buddhist country that eschews violence of any kind. But then as a social scientist, I should know better. In many parts of Asia, you will find the gentlest people, overly concerned about maintaining smooth interpersonal relations. Yet, beneath the surface, there may be simmering tensions and conflicts in values.

Many Thais themselves object to the transformation of Thai boxing into a gladiator sport, but acknowledge that it reflects a disturbing side of the Thai psyche, one that occasionally erupts in the political arena. Thai history has its share of extreme violence even up to fairly recent history. There was for example the “Thammasat Massacre” of 1976, when Right-wing paramilitary forces fired at a pro-democracy rally near Thammasat University. Officially, 46 people were killed, but the death toll may have been higher. The brutality went beyond the killings, with bodies mutilated.

And us?

I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the way we lash out at other cultures and fail to see how we, too, may have a similar “underside” to our culture. If Thai brutality seems to contradict Buddhism, we shouldn’t forget that we, too, have cultural behaviors that run against Christian compassion.

I’d start with our brutality to animals, from dog-eating to cockfighting to the “killing me softly” way of slaughtering chickens and ducks in parts of the Cordillera region, the hapless birds slowly beaten to death.

I was once traveling with a foreigner out of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and she had to be the one to point out to me, in disgust, a poster showing horsefights in Bukidnon province. The posters were from the Department of Tourism, and apparently we don’t think twice about how such photographs drive away, rather than attract, tourists and project us as a sadistic people.

And you know what? It seems the Thais are kindred spirits for some of this sadism with animals. When police raided a dogfight recently in Antipolo City, they found Thai visitors who had flown in just for those fights.

All that I’ve just described gives the context to our love of boxing. We forget that this sport leaves many casualties. We forget that Sisnorio had once been a youth boxing champion, and world-class, too. When he died in Thailand, he was only 24. Boxing careers are short, moments of glory too brief. Last year, the University of the Philippines anthropology department hosted a Japanese sociology student who had first acquired an interest in Filipino boxers because there were a few older ones who were in Japan. He followed their trail back here, to find more of these older boxers, some living in past glory, but none in wealth.

We forget, too, the power relations behind international boxing. It’s not a coincidence that the bouts involve Third World boxers, fighting in a ring in the United States. Soon, we hear, they will bring these fights to China, with their new rich eager to pay to watch. We forget that Filipino boxers end up in Thailand, paid to lose, because Thailand is richer than we are.

Call me a wimp, but I’m unable to feel jubilation watching two people pummel each other. I cringe when thinking of a Filipino being battered, and I grieved after seeing the photograph of Sisnorio’s home in Koronadal. The caption described it accurately as a “shack,” reminding us that so many boxers come from impoverished backgrounds, with few options in life for upward social mobility.

I’d ask, too, if I’m being unpatriotic in being unable to feel national pride watching a Filipino emerge victorious from having beaten up a Mexican. Sure, the bouts are monitored carefully, boxers matched kilo for kilo, given regulation gloves and play by all kinds of rules -- a far cry from the debacles in Thailand’s rigged fights. But just how civilized can boxing ever become?

All said, I worry about how the glorification of boxing seeps into our national psyche, to the point where urban poor communities have street boxing matches involving children, with crowds cheering them on and placing bets. How honest are we in explaining to children what a boxer’s road to success and glory might entail, and the chances they’ll ever make it?