With the Palestinians being dragged into the abyss by an Israel bent on winning the spiral of violence it has so successfully provoked, and India and Pakistan still squaring up over Kashmir and the world not yet fully recovered from the horrors of Sept. 11, two prizefighters brawling before they even clamber into the ring does not seem very important.
Nevertheless, maybe the unedifying pre-fight maul that broke out at the Tuesday press conference for US and British heavyweights Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis says something about the more serious problems that the world is facing. Boxing is not everyone’s favorite sport. Even its admirers will admit that beyond the excitement of watching their bravery, skill and strength, it is perverse to watch two fighters try to knock beating up each other, sometimes to death. But even such savage confrontations once had clearly defined limits about where and when blows could be struck. When Muhammad Ali first burst onto the boxing scene as Cassius Clay, he combined wit and intelligence with his skill and courage. He predicted when he would knock out his opponents and recited silly little poems about how feeble they were and how great he was. It was harmless fun which, thanks to Ali, turned boxing into an internationally popular sport.
However, the nasty little scrap between Tyson and Lewis and each fighter’s aides was absolutely nothing to do with hype. It was everything to do with a world that has lost its values, in which anything, however stupid or pointless, is permissible. Punches were traded and World Boxing Council officials were floored in the melee. This is not the first time that such pre-fight behavior has sullied this sport. Tyson himself once lost his license to box, after he bit off an opponent’s ear in the middle of a fight. When the rulebook is torn up and the pieces thrown away like this, all that is left is a deadly vacuum in which reason and decency will quickly asphyxiate. There is, thereafter, no telling where or how acceptable behavior will ever return.
The Sharon government has done just this. It has ripped the Oslo Accord apart, used gratuitous violence to provoke its opponents into retaliating and is now embarked upon an incoherent, bull-like campaign of savagery, which in the end is guaranteed to produce absolutely nothing, except yet more shattered lives and yet more spilt blood. There is, however, one important difference between Tyson and Sharon, and that difference lies in the nature of their opponents. Lennox Lewis is also fit and strong and like Tyson has fists like hams. He has the skills and strengths to overcome him.
Sharon also is strong. He has tanks, American fighters and helicopters, US signals and satellite intelligence and body-armored troops with sophisticated weapons. By contrast, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinians have just pistols and light machine guns, explosives which they attach to their bodies to make themselves into human bombs and stones, which they take from their bulldozed houses and fire with slings against their oppressors. This is an unfair contest in a stolen arena where the US referee is clearly biased. So who among the watching world is prepared to step in and stop this rigged fight, before even more injury is inflicted?
