Who Killed Benny Paret - Analysis Essay

Concussions can truly mess with an athlete’s brain and can give him or her lifelong troubles.

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 fact is that every fan wants to see action, not a couple guys dancing around. This is why the UFC is only interested in fighters who are willing to compete and put on a good show. Whether someone pays the money to watch an event in person, or watch an event on pay-per-view, they expect to see an actual competition. If all they see is two men dancing around trying to wear each other out, they are going to start losing interest in the sport. This is what is happening in boxing today. The question to be asked shouldn 't be if MMA is dominant over professional boxing. The question should be why boxing is still legal?The final facet of the two sports I want to discuss is safety. Both sports are sanctioned by an athletic commission that can approve, deny, revoke, or suspend all licenses for unarmed combat. The fight takes place with a referee in the ring, or the cage, with the fighters. Doctors are always on hand as well. These measures

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

Journalist, Norman Mailer, in his essay, “The Death of Benny Paret”, describes his firsthand account of the beatdown, and ultimate death of the professional boxer. Mailer’s purpose is to integrate a logical, formative description of the events that took place with his emotional reaction to witnessing the profound death of a man who he supported and revered. He adopts an excited tone, which fluctuates throughout the piece and eventually turns somber, and somewhat bitter, in order to both inform and to channel the emotional rollercoaster he experienced on this night to his audience.

The audience cheered, but upon further inspection the paramedics realized that he had broken both his tibia and fibula and would be unable to continue racing for the rest of the season. It is not that the audience—sport spectators—want to see people become severely injured; instead, they view these injuries as one of the entertaining aspects of the sport. In John McMurtry’s essay “Kill ‘Em! Crush ‘Em! Eat ‘Em Raw!” these concepts are developed upon to show that society takes pleasure in watching violence, thus revealing a sadistic, inhumane American culture. The author utilizes comparison, hyperbole, and antithesis to build upon this argument.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or better known as CTE has gained momentum in areas of public awareness and scientific involvement in recent years due to the popularized sport on American Football. During recent years, the media has been swaying and educating the public on the adverse outcomes that CTE can initiate. However, the first discovery of this disease was diagnosed by pathologist Harrison Martland and can be related back to the late 1920’s; the first true cases were identified in the physical sport of boxing. During that time, CTE was commonly known as dementia pugilistica meaning “punch drunk” from the wobbly nature of boxers during repetitive hits to the head.1,2 It was determined that dementia pugilistica (also known as boxer’s

During a match, players will take many hits to the head. At this time, their brains are being rattled around. They may not look injured, but this is an injury that will affect them in present time or in the future years to come. According to Boxing Regulation, many MMA fighters will obtain dementia pugilistica. This disease is similar to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. With these risk of trauma, more people are losing their lives.

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.

According to the Centre for Disease Control New Jersey, roughly 1.4 million people sustain traumatic brain injuries in the United States from the result of contact sports. Out of those 1.4 million people, 50,000 die due to the severity of their brain injury.“But brain injury is preventable. Surely given what we already know about the brain and getting at least a glimpse of it’s awesome complexities, we should not be making sport or deliberately trying to do it damage,” says Joan Beck in her article, “Stop Pretending Boxing is a Sport”. Violence in sports should be removed because, it is treacherous to the human body and leads to severe injuries; especially head injuries.

Gorn goes to discuss the rules and regulations of boxing, stating; “The two athletes settle on a site for the fight. Strip to their shirts, roll their sleeves up…” (Gorn, pg.37) By adding this information and going to such detail as he does; “At the end of the fight the boxers are bruised, disfigured, and covered with blood, which they spit out, vomit out, or drip from the nose.” allows the reader to get a feel for how violent these fights were but also to allow readers to dive into the fight with their feet first. Gorn goes on to discuss more fights and discusses ‘The Great

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

The movie Cinderella Man is a biographical film of boxer James J. Braddock that illustrates his struggle through the Great Depression. Movies often exaggerate the suffering of the Great Depression or just gloss over it, but Cinderella Man accurately shows the prevailing attitude of the time through the facial expressions of the actors and the obstacles they overcome. In the film, the people on the street and in the crowd in the boxing arenas appear worried and never smile. The only time that people appear happy is while watching the excitement of a boxing match. This shows how important sporting events like boxing were to a public which had very little to cheer about. In a time when few people had television sets in their houses, listening to a boxing match on the radio let people imagine the fights through their own interpretations in their heads. The movie correctly shows how boxing was a temporary shelter from the suffering for many.

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.

For the people who know me know that I that I am a diehard baseball fan, basketball fan, and football fan. However, one of my favorite sports to watch is boxing. I started to enjoy the sport of boxing after I saw the first Rocky movie. The Rocky movie was my first introduction to the sport of boxing. Even though Rocky is the fictional character he is one of the most iconic boxing figures in the sport. Sure, there are boxing legends like Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, and Oscar de la Hoya. But for some reason, Rocky Balboa is the reason that I am a fan of the sport of boxing. As much I loved to talk about the Rocky movies or the other boxing legends that I mention above fights this is not what this paper is about. This paper is about the sport of boxing at the international level. In this paper, I will be going over boxing at the history, rules/regulations, and how it impacts society.