Boxing sells cultures, not fighters

Boxing not only sells battles. It sells identities.

It is not only market skills. Typical photos.

The fighters are packages as symbols of the entire countries, the entire races, and the entire cultures. The fans do not buy the man – buy cartoon. “Mexican style.” “American black spot.” Eastern Europe machine. “Irish warrior.” “Asian discipline.”

It is lazy, it is a therapist, and it constitutes how the fighters are perceived, their conformity, their wise and even remember them. Boxing business model works on cultural shortcuts – the cost is the real fighters who are reduced to cartoons.

Blood and badge

There is no more weapons stereotype than the “Mexican style”.

Gennadi Golovkin – Kazakhi – built his brand around her. Talk about the “Mexican style” as pressure murder, novice aggression, and take two punches to land. I love her fans. The promoters are spent in.

But the real Mexican myths have never fought in one direction. Julio Cesar Chavez was an uncompromising fighter. Juan Manuel Marquis was a foundation. Salvador Sanchez was a soft boxer. Eric Morales and Marco Antonio Parrera gave wars, but they also adapted.

There is no one “Mexican style”. It is a marketing invention. However, the fighters are trapped in it. If a smart Mexican fighter boxes are called a runner. If he is not ready to bleed for the crowd, it is described as less Mexican and less authentic.

It is not courtesy. It is a cage.

The art that will not applaud

For decades, the defense of black American fighters was mastered in another stereotype: “Slick”.

Floyd Mayweather, Bernil Whitaker, James Tony – distance professors, reflected, and defense – had mocked “boring”, “Jabbour” or “not entertaining enough”. The stereotype of the “black black black fighter” was reduced to negativity.

However, when Vasiliy Lomachenko used work and angles, the media praised the “matrix”, which is something unprecedented before. When he did it years ago, he was called a runner. When Mayweather mastered it, he was coming out of the squares.

The art was the same. The reception was not.

The legend of the cold machine

Golovkin, Usyk, Lomachenko. Their rise was mobilized as the rise of “Eastern European machines”. Difficult, cool, disciplined. Always in form, never emotional, built like tanks.

But the machines do not bleed. The machines are not broken. When these fighters lose, excuses are distributed before they throw their next punch. “Just a bad night.” “Theft.” “It will adapt.”

The individual is erased. It is reduced to the original models. Fans forgive the faults not because they understand the fighter, but because they bought the legend of the machine.

Warrior

Every Irish fighter is sold as a “Celtic warrior”. Every British fighter is “a brave boy who will go out on his shield.” Connor McGregor carried it to MMA, Michael Kunlan to boxing. Ricky Hatton played stadiums by being a “boys”.

He sells tickets, but it scores fighters in the mechanisms of the quarrel. If they try a smart box, they are called Soft. If they protect themselves, they were told that they betray the image of the warrior.

It is marketing that punishes the skill.

Discipline mask

Asian fighters are rarely marketed as individuals. It is sold as “disciplined”, “polite”, “modest”, “accurate in terms of mechanical”.

Naoya inoue was praised as a “disciplined monster”, however its brilliance is often framing as mechanical inevitability instead of creative genius. Mane Bacoyao was marketed, before becoming a global symbol, as a “reckless speed” – a raw quarrel without a slight difference – until Freddy Roche reshaped the narration. Fighters from Japan, the Philippines and Thailand are often photographed as respectable machines, not artists.

The stereotype cut them from taste, humor or individual. For this reason, INOUE, despite the same aura, or the inability to predict the least accomplished Western fighters.

It is not a recognition. It is a reduction.

How to distort sports

These stereotypes only sell battles – they form them.

• Mexican who suffers from boxes on the back foot.
• A black American defensive fighter mocks a mortar unless the knockout is recorded.
• The European fighter who loses as “a human being after all.”
• A Asian fighter was praised to dominate discipline, not brilliance.

Judges are affected. Conditional fans. The fighters are forced to fight for the stereotype instead of fighting for themselves.

Fans are complicit

The promoters sell stereotypes because the fans buy them.

It is easier to repeat the “Mexican style” instead of estimating technical differences. The easiest to reject Whitker than his studies. The easiest in the noise of the “eastern machine” is to understand the man behind the gloves. Easier in flattening pacquiao or inoue in the original “disciplined Asian” models rather than seeing them as unpredictable creative masters.

Boxing lovers love to blame promoters and bodies. But it enables this circus through the caricature bonus instead of the craft.

Fighters, not cartoons

Boxing is richer when fighters are complete, human, unconfirmed. When Salvador Sanchez can be remembered not only as a Mexican, but as a genius. When Whitaker can be honored not only a spot, but as one of the greatest defensive minds ever. When USyk cannot be considered as a machine, but as a man breaks the rhythm and breaks opponents with art. When INOUE cannot be recognized, not disciplined, but it is destroyed in ways it cannot be interpreted.

Until then, sport will continue to sell cultures instead of fighters. Fans will continue to purchase cartoons instead of heroes.

Boxing does not need the Mexican style, black Americans, oriental machines, or Asian discipline. He needs fighters – all, human, and not made.