Summary Of Norman Cousins Who Killed Benny Pa

American writer Joyce Carol Oates is an expository writer that provides a successful informative piece about the dangers of boxing. This sport has been shadowed by events that influence athletes to prolong their careers with dangerous intuitions. In “The Cruelest Sport,” Oates implements exposition, narration, modes, and tone to effectively persuade her audience of the threats boxing impose.

The ultimate goal of a boxing match is a knock out. The knockout punch brings satisfaction to the winner of the boxing math and the crowd. This one punch can make a fight exciting. However, if there is not a knockout punch, the fight is often times dull. After a knockout punch, one man loses consciousness while the other man dances around the ring raising his hands in victory and is swarmed by his coaches and the press. Oates continues to argue that boxing is the cruelest sport by comparing a boxing match to a tragedy. If a fight has no knock out by the end, it seems like the fight is missing something. The knockout punch is a cruel but key aspect to boxing which makes people love

Boxers sometimes face the challenge of defeating their opponent for many reasons. Those reasons could be to prove they can win, to earn money and to not disappoint or lead down fans and beaters. Many boxers choose boxing because they are good at it and it’s a way of earning money, just like Benny Paret. Boxing is a dangerous sport since every boxer become badly hurt and ill at the end of every match. Most boxers suffer from brain damages as a result of many hits in the head. Cousins explains that Benny Paret was killed because of a massive hemorrhage in the brain, caused by an impact directed against the head (par. 7) Cousins also wrote “Not every blow to the head will kill a man but there is always the risk of concussion and damage to the brain” (par. 7). Fighters that survive repeated concussions still go and fight, but the problem here is that the damage in the brain may be permanent. Sometimes boxers should consider their health problems before fighting again.

Boxing, an official sanctioned sport in the early 20th century, is a sport that is known as one of the most violent and physically demanding sports on the earth. Professional boxers that get paid to fight must be in top shape in order to preform at the highest level. Being a professional boxer is a tough life. Boxers train hard for many months leading up to one fight and either win, lose, knock out the opponent or even get knocked out. The sport has been around for centuries, but has most recently taken off over the last 100 years. It is a multibillion dollar industry with fighters taking home hundreds of thousands of dollars if not even millions of dollars for big matches. In his novel Papa Jack, Roberts tells the story of the famous African American boxer Jack Johnson. He details the boxers rise to fame and fortune and his downward spiral that would soon follow. In Papa Jack, Roberts displays life of a professional boxer through firsthand accounts with events that happened during Johnson’s life and shows how boxing not only influenced his life but also how he influenced the African American community.

The death of one is not worth the money earned from winning a fight. This is important to realize because the expense of one’s life is worth way more than the winnings of a cage fight. In “On Boxing,” Joyce asserts directly why she thinks boxing is not a humanized sport: “In the boxing ring, even in our greatly humanized times, death is always a possibility - which is why some of us prefer to watch films or tapes of fights already past, already defined as history” (source c). Joyce is stating that many watch tapes from the past when boxing first started because it was much safer then, than it is now. Also in “On Boxing,” Carol states directly her opinion for the sport boxing: “In no other sport can so much take

Elliott J. Gorn’s The Manly Art is a unique book that tells readers the origins of boxing in American culture. The book was published in 1986 by Cornell University Press, the book discussed the development of boxing and American society. Gorn takes sport history, a commonly misunderstood and misinterpreted topic and wrote a book that not only was easy to read but allowed readers to gain knowledge on the sport. Gorn says “To understand prize fighting, I have discovered, is necessarily to understand something about nineteenth-century America. Ideology, ethnicity, social class formation, violence, urbanization, gender roles, religious world views, productive relationships, all are a part of sports history in general and boxing in particular.” (Gorn, pg. 12)

Boxing in the 1960’s was one of the biggest sources of entertainment to most American’s. Back in the 60’s one could compare a heavyweight championship fight to our modern day super bowl. If American’s didn’t have a television, they would be standing by their radios listening. Unfortunately during the same time period race relations were at an all-time low. Boxing was integrated, although black boxers were still under pressure to conform to white America’s social limitations. One man stayed true to himself, so that others would find courage to do the same.

whom they were hitting or why, just that they had to fight. This was true in the

Sixty years ago in a small town in rural Minnesota, there lived a rowdy young man by the name of Jack Smith. He had a very obsolete personality and could easily instigate a fight with anyone he met. By the age of seventeen, Jack had already been expelled from high school due to a myriad of reasons that included numerous fights. However, the final straw was when he hit a teacher in a fit of rage after Mr. Robencraw insulted his intelligence for failing yet another quiz due to his extreme procrastination. For years he wandered around Minnesota, a vagabond with no purpose in life. But that was until he met the legendary boxing trainer Rob Rammers , whose famous saying was scurry like a spider, sting like a scorpion. Meeting Mr. Rammers changed Jack's life completely. Under Mr. Rammers training Jack became a truly great boxer and soon, Rammers decided that it was time to take the world by storm. During his first fight, Jack was up against another powerful newcomer that was well documented and was the favorite for the fight. Jack was booed when e went into the ring, but he quickly quelled the crowd by delivering an instant knockout with his devastating right, and because of that right fist, he was thenceforth known as Bazooka Jack. His success did not

He focuses not on the match, but on the industry-putting people who are able to kill in a ring for profit. Cousins is extremely condemning of the sport, not blaming Paret’s manager or even Emile Griffiths, the man who delivered the blows that eventually led to Paret’s death. Instead, Cousins approaches it factually, stating matter-of-factly, “Benny Paret was killed because the human fist delivers enough impact, when directed against the head, to produce a massive hemorrhage in the brain” (Cousins). Cousins is completely against this sort of fighting, and declares that it is a legitimate killer. He furthers his point by addressing the fact that, “You put killers in the ring and the people filled your arena. You hire boxing artists… and you wind up counting your empty seats” (Cousins). In that passage, the juxtaposition and antithesis of killers versus “boxing artists” makes the significance of the business aspect clear, and in turn showing how higher value is placed in money and a good show over a person’s life. Furthermore, Cousins presents his arguments with superb diction, using phrases like, “prevailing mores” to appeal to a higher educated audience. His audience is not anyone who wants to know about the fight, but rather those who share in his opinions and believe there is a fault in

In addition, to boxers frequently punched in the face, arms, stomach, and several other body parts, they face punches of nearly two thousand pounds of pressure and more. For example, in 1930 August 25 Frankie Campbell engaged in his last fight with Max Baer. During the second round of the fight, Frankie Campbell knocked down his opponent Max Baer, which then lead him to become inflamed. In the fifth round, Max Bear hit Frankie Campbell with an enormous amount of pressure to where he knocked his brain from his skull. Another instance was on March 24, 1962, where Emile Griffith hit Benny Paret twenty-nine times in a row including eighteen punches in six seconds. Which immediately led Benny Paret into a

Norman Cousins thoroughly and effectively explains, in “Who Killed Benny Paret”, why the fan base of boxing caused the death of Benny Paret in the match between Emile Griffith and Benny Paret. Norman empowers his writing with powerful syntax, influential rhetoric, and impeccable structure, creating an excellent compare and contrast essay.

Boxing is by far one of the most entertaining sporting events world-wide. There is just something about watching two individuals exchange primitive aggression out on each other. Norman Cousins Who Killed Benny Paret demonstrates the implicit hazards of the bloody sport called boxing. The story goes that, Benny (Kid) Paret, a prized fighter was coupled up against fighter Emile Griffith for a twelve round brawl on March 24th, 1962. Paret would soon suffer some serious injuries that placed him in a coma for nine days, and eventually lead to his death. In the wake of his loss, whom or what, is actually to blame for Paret’s death now comes into question.

Perhaps Johnson’s most famous title defense was against former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries in 1910. Jeffries had been retired for six years and had refused to fight Johnson before Jeffries retirement. The battle was labeled the “Fight of the Century” with a crowd of over 20,000 in attendance. Johnson’s eventual victory in the 15th round led to riots throughout the country as the last of the “Great White Hopes” had failed to salvage the title.

Boxing, also known as pugilism, is a very old and famous type of combat sport which was invented few centuries BC. It is an ever-changing sport which develops into different styles through time and it is regarded as one of the most popular and exciting types of sports nowadays. Some people make it their profession and fight for prizes, and money while some enjoy it as a hobby and a way to be physically active and have a healthy lifestyle. As it is a very entertaining kind of sport and it is part of the Olympic Games, the sport has garnered many fans worldwide. A lot of people prefer watching it and following championships and different athletes.