We Should
Bring Back Combat Sports to School.
My Dad who
devoted his life to making sure that Max and I would never have to experience
life on the streets is probably going to shoot me for this post but in the last
two decades of my life, the people who I have come to respect have inevitably
come from the streets. If I look at the people who have come up with the
streaks of genius that have made a difference to my life – it’s always been the
people from the streets.
The reason is
simple. People like me – namely anyone with a qualification and working in a
profession. Say what you like but as long as you’re relatively educated and are
reasonably committed to something, you should be able to build a career and
earn enough to feed the family without having to leave an airconditioned environment.
Even a PMET like myself, who has somehow fallen through the cracks and never
really got started on a career, has options. When I part-time in a restaurant,
I do it from a position of earning a bit of pocket money and getting to know
people. I can interact with customers in a different way from the rest of my
colleagues because I’m not dependent on the job. I can afford to write this
blog and write off what I don’t earn to brand building.
If you have a
degree in Singapore, chances are you are from a decent enough family that found
the means to pay for it and invested their time to ensure you could study. The
very fact that you’re educated means that when you have to approach strangers,
they’re willing to give you the time of the day. When it comes to job hunting,
there’s a chance that you will either have a family connection or a school
connection. For me, Dad played golf with a Citi vice-president. So, when I
wanted to get an internship in a bank, I spoke to Dad (Incidentally, when I was
asked how I got the job, I was told not to be embarrassed by the fact that I
got in via a contact because that’s how everyone got their job.)
Later on, when
I ended up having to do freelance PR work, I had the good fortune of Mum’s
connections. I had no real experience in as much as my work record was such
that I had never stayed in an agency for more than a few months. However, the
mere fact that was my mother’s son and had been around her friends, meant that
I had something more valuable – I could pick up the phone and get hold of many
of the editors of magazines. I got enough successful jobs under my belt to
develop a track record as a guy who could get things done despite the lack of
formal experience.
Whether we like
it or not, people who have education do start life with certain advantages. Things
as who you went to school with help. Much as we may not like it, who parents
are does give us certain advantages.
While all that
is true for those of us who were blessed with the ability to get an education.
It’s a very different story for the people who had to grow up on the proverbial
streets. You’re talking about the people who could never make it through the education
system or had to battle difficult backgrounds. You’re talking about people
whose options in life are limited to certain career paths. I take the favourite
boxer of my generation – Mike Tyson. If you read his biography “Undisputed Truth,”
he talks about growing up in an environment where he saw his mother and her various
men in violent situations. Should it be any surprise that the guy was lucky enough
to end up in boxing. The options for a guy like him are boxing or a street gang.
One of the biggest
truths for people from the streets is the fact that the paths that are
available to them are often self-reliant. This was brought home to me by a
story of how the son of Evan Holyfield, the son of former heavyweight champion,
Evander Holyfield (who beat Mike Tyson twice) got knocked out by a guy who needed
to work as an electrician to supplement whatever he was making from boxing.
More on the story can be found at:
However, that
didn’t mean anything in the ring for the younger Mr. Holyfield. His opponent
was simply hungrier and wasn’t about to be intimidated by who the younger
Holyfield’s father happened to be.
Mr. Evan
Holyfield isn’t the first aspiring boxer with a famous father. In my generation,
there was Marvis Frazier, son of “Smokin Joe Frazier,” who actually took the
heavyweight crown from Mohammad Ali. Unfortunately for the younger Mr. Frazier,
he ran into the youthful and very energetic Mr. Tyson who had no respect for
who the younger Frazier happened to be related to and he promptly ended the younger
Mr. Frazier’s boxing career.
https://alchetron.com/Mike-Tyson-vs.-Marvis-Frazier
In a way, this
is something that people like me often forget. For people like me, having to “fight”
means using your mouth and telling people that you are fighter. For people on
the streets (where most boxers come from), it literally means beating someone or
having the stuffing beaten out of you.
In the piece “IFONLY POLITICIANS COULD LIVE AS PROSTITUTES BEFORE ASSUMING OFFICE,” I did argue
that it would be an idea for politicians to live as prostitutes because it
would make them more sympathetic to people. However, shoving politicians to
work in a brothel is a fantasy.
However,
getting people from elite schools to learn boxing or any full contact sport isn’t.
Such sports should become part of the curriculum and it should be given serious
weightage alongside academic success. If you don’t learn to survive in boxing
ring, you shouldn’t be allowed to graduate. Furthermore, regular boxing matches
should not be held just between elite schools. You need to have the elite
school students paired up with the, how would you say – less fortunate schools.
Combat sports
would help make our leaders much better. Consider the following:
Firstly, anyone
who has been in an actual fight realises that you can get hurt as much as you
inflict pain. Unfortunately, this is something that too many people don’t
understand. Take the example of the recent infestation of far-right politicians
who like to talk about being fighters how they want to take on everyone from
the safety of highly guarded facilities. Now, imagine if you had a system where
these guys could only graduate from school if they had fighting experience. They
would either be denied to get into positions of power or they develop the
ability to think twice before provoking unnecessary fights.
Secondly, if
you get kids from elite schools to compete against schools stuffed with the kids
who would love nothing better than to whack the “upper crust,” you will get an “upper
crust” that will understand that it’s in their interest not to brand themselves
as “uncaring elite” because they’ll be very aware of what everyone else might
want to do to them.
Thirdly, as
mentioned, who you happen to be related to or how rich you are, has no bearing
to surviving in the boxing ring. Having to survive in a boxing ring would help
breed a more self-reliant population that gets the idea that survival is about
being able to get up once they’ve been knocked down.
The case for making
combat sports an important part of the global education is getting stronger by
the day. Its time our policy makers seriously thought about it.
No comments
Post a Comment