Masters Thesis

A History of Violence, Masculinity, and Nationalism: Pugilistic Death and the Intricacies of Fighting Identity

Boxing is a fascinating subject inspiring scholarship on the meaning of the sport’s violence. Few, however, have examined the fatal results of this violence and its contributions to the development of manhood. This thesis focuses on fights that resulted in the death of boxers and examines pugilistic death to understand its contributions to gendered identities. The fight between Davey Moore and Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos in 1963 and the bout between Johnny Owen and Lupe Pintor in 1980 reveal how, among other factors, death helped shape fighters’ identities. The press coverage of these fights contextualizes death to be an essential part of the sport alongside other issues. Themes such as nationalism, the media interpretation of sporting bodies, ethnic fighting, and working-class origins are also important factors to a boxer’s character. The death of Owen illustrates how the press functioned to disseminate ideas about his imagined fragility due to the perception of his sporting body. The story of his fight with Pintor also reveals the relevance of ethnic nationalism within the context of Mexican boxing and how emotional relationships developed when Owen’s death occurred. The death of Moore in 1963 contributed to the shaping of Ramos’s fighting identity. Despite multiple deaths on his conscience, Ramos established himself as a world boxing champion in Mexico. The importance of fatherhood, aspects of masculine vulnerability, and Ramos’s ascension into Mexican boxing culture with his championship victory over Moore are overlooked in the historical record. This thesis also covers the importance of Southern California, where Mexican boxers dominated the lower weight divisions in the years between the 1960s and 1980s, and where these fights took place. Most research on boxing death and injury focus on regulation and questions of morality. These two case studies reveal that to fully understand the relationship between boxing, violence, and death, one must examine cultural and gendered contexts in which the violence took place because pugilistic death reveals the complexities of manhood and its effect on the formation of fighting identity.

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