Jake Paul won the good businessman and marketing genius award, Tyson won the respect award. When I was at Virginia, everyone in my fraternity had to box. The reasoning is a complete man must not only be a scholar and a gentleman, but he also has a duty to uphold civic order, and to protect the weak from those who do evil acts.
The boxing ring was in the basement of "Mem" gym. During fights it would be surrounded by students right on the outside of the ropes, and the noise was deafening. As there were girls in attendance, there was extra incentive to be Sir Galahad the brave knight. On more than one occasion, I remember a great punch to someone's nose splattering blood all over the crowd.
Boxing was a generational tradition. My Dad's first cousin Hiram Smith was a golden gloves boxer at Virginia. He was a dapper and distinguished looking gent. Although tall and muscular, foes mistook his appearance and good manners for an easy “knockout.” There are many stories about him boxing for money on troop ships during the War. Like a pool hustler, he raked in the bets and then pummeled his opponents. Later in life he used his skills to rescue others from being harmed.
The woke weenies who run the University have done away with this tradition and replaced it with therapy dogs and coloring books. All things good and noble must be destroyed! Toxic masculinity must end!
Nothing produces more adrenaline than being in that ring with 300 screaming, crazed spectators, half of whom want to see the other guy break your nose. There's no other sport that produces so much fatigue in such a short amount of time. One must be in excellent physical shape to succeed.
The purpose of course was not necessarily winning your fights, although that was a prime objective. The true goal was the character-building exercise of stepping into the ring in the first place. Being "in the ring" is a metaphor for all great accomplishments. That's what made this such a noble tradition. I hate wokeness. With all things in life, as eloquently expressed by Teddy Roosevelt in 1910:
“[i]t is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
