Fight Sports and American Masculinity: Salvation in Violence from 1607 to the Present

300 Pages·2015·47.885 MB·English

by  Christopher David Thrasher

Fight Sports and American Masculinity
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Fight Sports and
American Masculinity
Salvation in Violence
from 1607 to the Present
Christopher David Thrasher
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
♾
ISBN 978-0-7864-9704-1 (softcover : acid free paper)
ISBN 978-1-4766-1823-4 (ebook)
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2015 Christopher David Thrasher. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, i ncluding photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover: There Was a Man: Abe Lincoln Licks Jack Armstrong
(from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of
the Indiana State Museum and Allen County Public Library)
Printed in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To my wife—I could have done it all without you,
but I am grateful that I did not have to.
Acknowledgments
If I have accomplished anything in life, it is only because people have
been nice to me. For anything worthwhile within these pages, I give all credit
to my benefactors. All errors are entirely my own.
I am grateful for the priceless archival assistance provided by the entire
staff at the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the
University of Texas at Austin.
I would never have been able to finish my doctorate without the guidance
and support of my advisors at Texas Tech University. I thank Dr. Gretchen
Adams, who provided me with insights into early American history and more
importantly into the cutthroat realities of academia. I appreciate the efforts
of Dr. Barbara Hahn to help me understand many aspects of Southern, eco-
nomic, and technological history. If I ever bump into you on Bourbon Street,
Dr. Hahn, the drinks are on me. Special thanks go to Dr. Zachary Brittsan,
who expressed no hesitation in assisting with a project far outside his area
of primary expertise and often provided words of encouragement that meant
more than he will ever know.
I express my undying gratitude to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Randy
McBee. No scholar could ever ask for a more patient, more kind- hearted, or
more unapologetically demanding mentor.
I reserve my deepest thanks for my parents, David and Theresa Thrasher.
From the moment of my birth, they indulged my curiosities, encouraged me
to fall in love with learning, and convinced me that the answers to life’s mys-
teries lay within the yellowed pages of long- forgotten books.
vi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Preface 1
Introduction: Global Fight Sports from Prehistory to 1607 13
I. “To Cut Out the Tongue or Pull Out the Eyes”: Fight Sports in
the Americas, 1607–1810 29
II. “A Boxing We Will Go”: Boxing Takes Root in the United
States, 1810–1915 49
III. “With the Energy of a Trip- Hammer and the Vehemence of a
Sioux”: Asian Martial Arts Come to the United States,
1850–1941 99
IV. “We Live in Our Heroes”: Boxing Reigns Supreme in the
United States, 1915–1941 140
V. “Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting”: Asian Martial Arts
Gain Unprecedented Popularity in the United States,
1941–1981 166
VI. “We Shall Not Stand by Helplessly”: The Birth of Mixed
Martial Arts, 1981 to the Present 198
Chapter Notes 237
Bibliography 280
Index 290
vii
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Preface
Throughout America’s past, some men feared the descent of their gender
into effeminacy, and turned their eyes to the ring in hopes of gendered sal-
vation. In 1888, the writer and pugilist Duffield Ossborne ended his defense
of the arena with a stirring call to action.
Come then! Let thinking men who value their manhood set themselves in array,
both against the army of those who, unmanly themselves, wish to see all others
reduced to their own level, and against the vast following who, caught by such spe-
cious watchwords as “progress,” “civilization,” and refinement,” have unthinkingly
thrown their weight into the falling scale. Has mawkish sentimentality become the
shibboleth of the progress, civilization and refinement of this vaunted age? If so,
then in Heaven’s name leave us a saving touch of honest, old- fashioned barbarism!
That when we come to die, we shall die, leaving men behind us, and not a race of
eminently respectable female saints.1
Ossborne’s comments highlight many of the themes of gender and civ-
ilization in this work. In this essay, titled “A Defense of Pugilism,” he speaks
to “thinking men who value their manhood.” He then suggests that these
men are opposed by those who “unthinkingly” value a warped sense of civ-
ilization which robs men of their masculine identities. He mocks “unmanly”
opponents, suggesting that if civilization is now tied to femininity, then men
should retain a sense of “old-fashioned barbarism” so that, as he states in his
final sentence, “when we come to die, we shall die, leaving men behind us.”
Ossborne clearly sees manly identity as something under assault, as some-
thing more valuable than “civilization”—or at least as some define civiliza-
tion—and he defends boxing as a force with the power to preserve masculine
identities.2Ossborne’s call was largely reiterated nearly a century later by the
sportswriter Curry Kirkpatrick, who presented his appeal in Sports Illus-
trated.
We shall not stand helplessly by and allow a great American institution to be
so threatened by the cottage- cheese mentality pervasive in society. Is Don -
1