Andy Clarke in Conversation with Boxing is Love Researcher Rakim Sajero on Boxing as ''A Two-Fisted Testing Ground of Manhood''

28 September 2025, London Edited by Joe Hicketts

Rakim Sajero (second row, left) pictured with Andy Clarke (second row, centre).

Rakim: Today, I am going to talk about an essay by Randy Roberts called “A Two-Fisted Testing Ground of Manhood”. It looks at boxing not just as a sport, but as something that reflects culture, race, gender, and history.

Eldrige Cleaver

The article is based on a quote by Eldridge Cleaver, a founding member of the Black Panthers. I will come back to that, but there are four main themes I want to cover. The first is boxing as part of history.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, many historians focused almost exclusively on military and political history. Cultural forms like sport, including boxing, were largely ignored. That is one of the central points Roberts is making in this piece. I am not sure if that sparks anything for you.

Andy: Yeah, it does. I think it is interesting when you consider who gets to write history in the first place. What questions are considered legitimate, and who decides that?

Sport is deeply social. It crosses class, race, and cultural boundaries, and people have always cared about it. But even now, getting a book published is difficult. Back then, when people simply did not want certain topics written about, it would have been very easy to stop them.

The establishment largely believed that social hierarchies were fixed. The racial order was set. The gender order was set. Everyone supposedly knew their place. Sport could be threatening because it forced people to confront areas they would rather not examine.

Rakim:Yeah. The next theme I want to bring out from the essay is representation, particularly of marginalised groups. Most notably, Black fighters. You mentioned Joe Louis earlier.

Andy:Joe Louis is one of the greatest fighters of all time. What is fascinating about him is how carefully his public image was controlled.

We talked earlier about Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion. He was everything white America did not want: confident, brash, wealthy, unapologetic. He lived exactly how he pleased. In the end, they punished him for it, trumped up charges, sent him to prison, and forced him to box abroad.

After Johnson, you had a succession of white heavyweight champions. Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, then fighters like Max Schmeling, Jack Sharkey, Primo Carnera, Max Baer, James Braddock. Some were Jewish, some Italian, but they were all considered white.

Joe Louis in 1946

When Joe Louis was coming through, everyone knew he would win the title. His handlers made it very clear that he could not behave like Jack Johnson. White America would not tolerate it. He did not need to be submissive, but he had to be careful. Careful with his words, careful with his image.

If he upset the wrong people, they would deal with him the way they dealt with Johnson. That shaped what Louis said, and often what he did not say. Looking back, he can appear quiet or lacking personality in the press, but that was a deliberate business decision. It gave him longevity, which he absolutely achieved.

Andy:But when we talk about masculinity in boxing, I am curious. When you lost for the first time, how did that feel? Were you angry, embarrassed, upset? And why did you come back?

Because even if it is a close points decision, you are still standing there while the other person has their hand raised. There is a lot of ego tied up in boxing, and it can go one of two ways.

Rakim: My first loss was really my own fault. I learned that I did not need to prove how tough I was all the time.

I had just had a fight that felt easy. I went back to my coach and said it was too easy and asked for another fight as soon as possible. He agreed and matched me with a guy from Repton called Sam. We are actually still in touch.

The morning of the fight, I woke up at three a.m., violently ill. I was throwing up. I even texted my girlfriend saying I was sick. But I told myself I had asked for this fight, and backing out would make me look stupid.

Rakim Sajero

I went anyway. I was still throwing up after the weigh-in. I was drinking loads of Lucozade and energy drinks just to try to keep something down. By the time I got into the ring, I was delirious. I had lost so much fluid that I was barely present.

I kept telling myself: do not get knocked out. Just move, fight back, survive. I lost by unanimous decision, but I did not get stopped, and at the time, I felt proud of that.

Back in the changing room, my coach, Steve Palmer, tore into me. He said it was irresponsible. I told him I was ill, and he said that was exactly the point. If something had happened to me, that would have been on them. I should never have got in the ring.

I went home annoyed, mostly at myself. I realised I had been trying to prove toughness rather than being sensible. The real embarrassment was not losing, but putting myself in that position.

Other people probably just saw a loss. But I knew why it happened. I had to learn some compassion for myself and understand that toughness is not always about pushing through at any cost.

That was my first loss, and what it taught me.

Rakim: Bringing it back to Roberts’ essay, those ideas around race, gender, and culture show how boxing has shaped history, and how people inside and outside the sport understand it.

Andy: When you look at the history, cities like New York are particularly interesting case studies. In the early twentieth century, New York exploded with immigration.

You can trace which communities entered boxing, used it for a generation or two, and then left it behind. Jewish fighters, for example, dominated early on. But once the community had established itself, parents made it clear to their children that boxing was no longer necessary.

The same happened with Irish and Italian communities. But when you look at who remains in boxing today, particularly Black and Hispanic fighters, it tells you something uncomfortable. It suggests that socioeconomic conditions have not improved in the same way and that boxing remains a necessity rather than a choice.