Spousal Abuse And Boxers...

Almost every single boxer ??
Are you serious ?

I remember him, he beat the much hyped American Kelcie Banks in the 1988 Olympics.

I never said that was normal, or considered normal. I certainly never implied that beating a pregnant woman was EVER considered "the most normal thing in the world".
I said slapping a female was "more normal" than now, not as ABSOLUTELY unacceptable as is now, and I daresay violent wife beating was more common.
Men used to get away with beating their wives in those days. Women effectively had less rights in those days. The police didn't interfere in those days, and society was a bit less caring about such abuse within the family.

I dont know that anyone really did mention Sugar Ray's wife beatings at the time, and what he did was NEVER considered even remotely "normal".
Obviously another reason that Robinson's biographers have mentioned it a bit, and that we find it even more shocking, is because Sugar Ray was a man with lethal fists.

 

This is what I think, personally. Boxers are a lot less desensitized to hitting people than other sportsmen or women. It's almost like a programmed reaction when someone is giving you grief. They also seem to get into a lot of fights with other men too.

PS-That's in no way a defence for hitting women, just an explanation for how I see things.

 

I think it's bull****.

The average non-boxing man is just as likely to hit a woman or get into fights with other men.

Boxers are trained to fight in the ring, a boxer's training isn't going to make him more likely to lash out outside the ring. That's the kind of BULL**** that damages the sport.

Striking a person out of anger or malice is a completely different thing to punching in the ring for 99.9% of boxers.

Some men beat their wives, some people are just lowlife, they are mentally weak, they have anti-social tendencies. It's nothing peculiar to boxers.

I still cant believe the claim that wife-beating allegations surround "almost every single boxer" !

 

Also, remember that we are all BOXING FANS, with a deep knowledge of historical boxers and their life stories.
If you all dedicated just as much time to reading about as many movie stars or popular musicians you might be scratching your heads wondering why THEY are "all wife beaters" too !

And like Dempsey1238 said, the guy next door might hit his wife and it wont make news.

 

Also, remember it is easy to make "allegations" about a boxer being violent, and THAT WILL MAKE HEADLINES.

Cases like Sugar Ray and LaMotta are firmly established as bad cases of very violent abuse. Riddick Bowe too. Mike Dokes almost killed a woman, the sick ****.

But in other cases, a retired boxer for example, going through a break up with his wife, lots of shouting and smashing things, the woman might get scared, understandably. If the press get hold of that - an ordinary unfortunate human situation - it becomes "allegations of abuse".

 

Alright, that was exaggarated, but you have to admit that there's a hell of a lot of wife abusers among top boxers: Robinson, Louis, Ali, Tyson, Monzon, Hagler, Ibeaubuchi, Bowe, etc.

If they hadn't gotten famous, maybe they would've still done the same and no one would know about it, but fact remains many of the top boxers did it.

Do you think Tuur was any good? I've actually never seen any of his fights.

 

He wasn't half bad. Pleasing style. :good

 

It hasn't been mentioned yet but Sugar Ray Leonard beat the living **** out of his first wife.

 

a little while after the leonard fight, he got into an argument with his wife and she filed a restraining order when he threw something at her car.

there were no reports of hagler hitting her.

leonard, on the other hand, abused alcohol, cocaine, and his wife, and talked about in a press conference in 1991

 

I read about that in class. I guess he had some drug problems too.

 

I used to think that there was a huge percentage of fighters who were
A. More prone to domestic violence towards woman
B. Seemed to be more prone to depression and thoughts of suicide.
C. Had substance abuse problems after they had peaked career wise and were trying to deal with having a "normal" life or being out of the lime light.

The older I get, the more it seems like this is true for all walks of life, however.

Still, I don't think as a rule boxing attracts people who are not prone to violence.

I have met some very nice people who were boxers.

 

I do not have statistics in front of me but I assume the % of boxers contributing to domestic violence is considerably higher than the % of the general population. An occupation where a man is legally entitled to inflict the amount of pain a boxer does, is often the channeled extreme agression of his personality. Look at the lives of Tyson, Liston, and many others. Before boxing, they were breaking the law and hurting people. Boxing allowed them a legal route to channel their actions and gain fame and fortune. Many other boxers, who have not strayed from the law, still have that agressive trait, and sometimes it gets the best of them and unfortunately their loved ones. I think it's true to a degree in most agressive sports, that the % of abuse is higher than that of say the % of accountants who abuse.

Does anyone have stats showing a correlation of abuse and the occupation: Drs., Lawyers, Boxers, Policemen, etc....

 

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that top level boxers - champions - have this sense of being bigger and badder than any law or constraint. When you are a champion, you are THE MAN! You are the Big Guy so to speak. A guy like that who has a wife or a girlfriend, it's almost like they have a trophy, a prize, and they own that trophy or prize......