by Evelina Black
The ground floor of Liverpool’s Fusion nightclub smells like stale sweat and beer. A boxing ring squats in the centre of the dance floor, the balcony above swelling with coaches and teenage boys sizing each other up, staring each other down. The parents and friends of the fighters wait downstairs, claiming rows of fold-up chairs and shouting loudly. They too size each other up, as if they too will be fighting, as if it’s a family battle instead of a sporting competition they have brought their child to.
A kid waddles past me, holding the bottom of a pint of Guinness with both hands. The dark liquid sloshes over the sides and onto the floor as he tries to navigate around the large clumps of people. I watch him wriggle into the chair next to his mother, settle down, and start gulping from the glass.
No one pays him any attention, and I feel increasingly like I’ve pushed open the club doors the way a cowboy would swing into a saloon, stepping back through time into a lawless world. A place where rules are suspended for a couple of hours, where kids drink openly and fight each other in a venue they’re banned from entering any other night of the week.
I speak to a dad, sitting quietly by himself, who tells me that he believes boxing is unfairly judged. He tells me his daughter does athletics, and when I ask him about the difference between the two, he looks at me, almost amused.
“All youth sports, especially at the higher levels, have an intense, quite violent competitiveness,” he says. ” The veneer of social niceties are just stripped back in boxing; it’s one of the few working-class sports left.”
This seems to be an accurate assessment, especially when the fighting starts. The lights dim, smoke splutters from a battered machine, and Aystar starts screaming from the speakers. Two small children, wearing baggy vests, bounce into the ring, barely having to duck to get under the ropes.
“Show him who’s boss Lennon,” screams a middle-aged woman, words smashing together in an almost incoherent cry.
“Smash his fucking head in,” an older brother growls, uppercutting and jabbing the air.
The kids sprint at each other, swinging wildly and missing more shots than they land. The shouting from the crowd never lets up. After a while, it fades into background noise, constant and pounding, but something you learn to tune out, not to take seriously despite how violent and inappropriate the screams may be.
When it ends, the boys stand together, arms flung over each other’s shoulders, holding up their trophies and grinning at the camera. This happens after every fight I watch, even the most brutal ones between the taller, older boys, who punch each other with sickening force and accuracy, snapping each other’s heads back with loud thuds. Yet afterwards, they hug, congratulate each other, smile with blood-flecked teeth.
There’s a lot of negativity associated with boxing: that it’s violent, barbaric, a breeding ground for toxic masculinity. But it’s also apparent that there are positives to the sport, often overlooked in favour of simplistic judgements, with boxing too often classed as either entirely good or wholly bad, as fundamentally right or wrong.
I speak to a coach about this, catching him in the middle of wrapping up the hands of one of his fighters.
“Boxing gets kids off the streets,” he tells me bluntly, “our gym promotes the initiative Gloves Up, Knives Down.”
I ask him to expand.
“It physically gets kids off the streets away from gangs— gives them a place to go that isn’t hanging around with the wrong people getting up to all sorts. And it helps them mentally. It gives them discipline, drive, a future they might not have seen before.”
I don’t ask him anything else, mindful of intruding on the boxer’s preparation time, but the conversation stays with me. It makes me wonder if boxing lost its rawness, if it became more sanitised, would it still be a space where working-class kids could belong and succeed?
Later, I approach a group of young boys leaning against the bar. I ask if they know what they want to do when they’re older.
“We wanna go pro,” one answers, rubbing his nose with the heel of his hand. A large cut on his left eyebrow swells.
I ask them how you become a professional, and I’m surprised to learn it’s relatively easy. In the UK, you just need to be 18, pass a medical test, and apply for a pro license. In theory, you don’t even need to do any amateur fights.
One boy waits for a pause in the conversation before speaking. “Going pro is easy; it’s making a living off being a pro that’s hard.”
I’m surprised, naively associating professional boxing with million-pound paycheques. He continues, “You need sponsors to make the proper money,” he explains. “And you can’t get good sponsors without good fights, and you can’t get good fights without a good promoter.”
Many, he says, get stuck in the middle. They get their pro license but can’t make a living as boxers. They have to work minimum-wage jobs, are unable to train full-time and therefore unable to compete with those who can.
The boys disperse, bored with my questions, leaving me alone to reflect on a sad reality: most of them will never be able to make a career out of boxing.
The sport is far from perfect, but it’s given these boys a purpose, a community, hope that there is a future for them. Even if it is just temporary. And maybe, one of them will get lucky, their talent and hard work will align in just the right way, and they’ll achieve their dream.
I watch them now, with their puffy faces and sweat drenched hair, jostling each other and cheering on their friends. I really hope it happens for them.
