“How can you be consistently honest or just if you don’t have the mettle to take a hit?”
– Gordon Marino, Professor of Philosophy and Former Professional Boxer
Gordon Marino, quoted above, wrote a post titled “The Socratic Art of Boxing,” in which he discusses the apparent contradiction between teaching philosophy and coaching boxing.
In philosophy, we use words to pummel each other’s arguments, testing them against rigorous logic, in service of Truth. In boxing, we just pummel each other, physically, often until one or the other can’t get up off the canvas.
TKO.
But there’s much more to boxing than what appears at face value.
Marcilliat & Mills PLLC sponsors ‘Dangerous’ Donnie Marshall
As Marino writes, “How can you be consistently honest or just if you don’t have the mettle to take a hit?” Of course, not everyone must prove themselves in the boxing ring to show they have what it takes to persevere, but to boxers (and those who do traditional martial arts and MMA), getting in the ring is a surefire way to test yourself.
Watch Dangerous Donnie in action here:
To ‘take a hit’ means much more than actually taking a hit
It means getting back up again when someone knocks you down in life. It means persevering through pain and uncertainty. It means keeping a cool head when things are heated.
In his post, Marino quotes a few lines from the book Cut Time: An Education at the Fights:
“The deeper you get into the fights, the more you may discover about things that would seem at first blush to have nothing to do with boxing. Lessons in spacing and leverage, or in holding part of oneself in reserve even when hotly engaged, are lessons not only in how one boxer reckons with another but also in how one person reckons with another.”
In short, it’s about courage, in boxing and in life, and this is why Marcilliat & Mills PLLC has sponsored “Dangerous” Donnie Marshall, 2017 North Carolina Fighter of the Year.
Read more: The Socratic Art of Boxing