Fight Sports and American Masculinity: Salvation in Violence from 1607 to the Present by Christopher David Thrasher (review)

In 2016, welterweights Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter faced off in the first boxing match on prime-time television on CBS in forty years. The bout was electric from the start, with Porter pressing the action and Thurman landing thundering counterpunches. Midway through, Thurman stepped back briefly to box instead of brawl. The crowd responded with a chorus of boos. When Thurman won a unanimous decision, the crowd wailed in protest.

This was probably the fight of the year, yet spectators made their disapproval clear. What explains this bloodlust? In Fight Sports and American Masculinity, Christopher David Thrasher argues that these spectacles demonstrate the masculine power granted by violent sports. Countering what he calls the "economic determinism" prevalent in studies of fight sports, he conducts a wide survey of the historical underpinnings of these competitions and contends they offer rare moments of connection between diverse populations.

The book is an impressively researched revision of Thrasher's dissertation, as he appears to have read nearly everything on the subject. Chapter 3 includes an astounding 454 footnotes. Thrasher traces fight sports from the "anything goes" affrays of the colonial era through the rise of wrestling, formalized boxing, and mixed martial arts (MMA).

Despite the book's considerable strengths, there are several puzzling aspects. Thrasher stresses that these sports were influential sites of identity formation for American men, saving them from becoming unmanly. But masculinity is ill-defined and undertheorized. Who achieved this manliness? As Thrasher notes, a crowd and gambling elevated a felony to a "sport." Yet few of these spectators engaged in violence, and their twisted cries of joy as an assailant gouged out an opponent's eyes leaves a sickening feeling. Did the salvation Thrasher emphasizes extend to these fans? Or are they selfishly exploiting the performed masculinity of men who will surely suffer the consequences? Who is saved?

Thrasher also strains to divide culture and economics, while his research illustrates how they intertwined. Financial need and exploitation, he shows, molded the culture of violent sports, as most combatants were slaves or marginalized men who, despite ring success, usually died penniless, alcoholic, and brain damaged. In one telling example, Thrasher claims that John L. Sullivan's shift away from bare-knuckle boxing "demonstrated how political elites shaped fight sports by shifting their economics." In the next paragraph, he argues that Sullivan's refusal to fight African Americans "demonstrate[d] that the boundaries of fight sports were often more about culture than economics" (86). These developments were complex, and Thrasher could have used more analysis of how culture and economics interweaved to create these sporting "rules." Poorly compensated cage fighters might be surprised at the assertion that culture trumps economics when the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) recently sold for $4 billion.

The study is full of illuminating stories, but at points the anecdotes pile so high that the analysis is lost. A chapter on the introduction of martial arts, for example, includes digressions on Joe Louis and televised fights, Rocky Marciano's disgust over corruption, the rise of football, and the revolt of the black athlete.

These detours are unfortunate, because the larger narrative builds toward the perplexing emergence of MMA. Many critics have long predicted (and wished for) the decline of boxing, but few foresaw it being replaced by a more brutal sport. Thrasher skillfully examines this evolution, noting how immigrant cultures have long changed American fight sports. Yet Thrasher stumbles when describing the allures of MMA. He asserts that the UFC's violence "was largely an illusion" to lure bloodthirsty fans raised on violent video games and in search of authentic experiences (225). He even claims that researchers have proven that MMA is "safe" (232).

Again, his evidence suggests otherwise. Thrasher maintains that, in 2005, MMA moved into the mainstream, highlighted by a legendary match between Matt Hughes and Frank Trigg. A lot of words come...