A boxer called Gervonta Davis stopped a rival last night
Here he is in 2020 choking his woman at a charity basketball match
Here is the Guardian complaint and rationalization that perfectly encapsulated their mindset. It’s not that black men are more violent. All men are more violent.
But the story here is not Gervonta Davis. That’s a copout that allows us to otherize a single young black man who participates in a sport broadly associated with violence, as if gender-based abuse isn’t happening all around us, in every culture and in every segment of society, with countless survivors either afraid to report it or without the benefit of video footage to back up their claims. This is not about boxers being violent. Or athletes who participate in violent sports being violent. Or even that sportspeople from distressed backgrounds are violent.
Men are violent. White and black, rich and poor. Impunity for violence against women is as universal an issue as issues get. And everyone must call it out when they see it because the longer we keep looking the other way, the more it’s bound to keep happening. And this is where boxing as an industry, specifically, is failing. The sport has demonstrated one time after another that it is structurally ill-equipped to hold transgressors like Davis responsible and deliver legitimate repercussions for their actions.
It drives the Guardian nuts btw that Tennis and Boxing don’t have a single regulator than can ban Novak Djokovic etc for unapproved conduct