THE RING [GET IN THE]

Boxing is Raw. As the sport evolves, so does the audience’s thirst for hardcore action and a finality to each bout. We look into the sport in 2017, even as trash talk means more than talent, and money hits harder than an upper cut.

by VAIBHAV RAGHUNANDAN Illustrations by GITUMONI TALUKDAR

“One plays football. One does not play boxing.” -JOYCE CAROL OATES, ON BOXING Professional boxing is one of very few popular world sports whose primary and murderous energies are not deflected by objects such as balls, racquets, bats or motor vehicles. Though highly ritualised, and as rigidly bound by rules, traditions and taboos as a wedding, it still survives as the most primitive and terrifying of contests. In essence, boxing is this: two persons, near-naked, fight each other in a brightly-lit, elevated space roped in like a pen (though the ropes were originally intended to keep rowdy spectators out); two men climb into the ring from which only one, symbolically, will climb out. (Yes, draws do occur in boxing, but are rare, and unpopular.) Boxing is a stylised staging of a “fight…

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Maxim India (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2017

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