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It should be kept in mind that boxing and fighting, though always combined in the greatest of boxers, can be entirely different and even unrelated activities. If boxing can be, in the lighter weights especially, a highly complex and refined skill belonging solely to civilization, fighting seems to belong to something predating civilization, the instinct not merely to defend oneself – for when has the masculine ego ever been assuaged by so minimal a gesture? – but to attack another and to force him into absolute submission. Hence the electrifying effect upon a typical fight crowd when fighting emerges suddenly out of boxing – the excitement when a boxer´s face begins to bleed. The flash of red is the visible sign of the fight´s authenticity in the eyes of many spectators, and boxers are right to be proud – if they are – of their facial scars.
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