Conversations with "mainstream" white boxing fans

[BoxingSpecialist2]

Had a conversation recently with a 50-something white male boxing fan, that I just couldn't help but share here at this site (keep in mind I am a 25 year old white male, so he is more than twice as old as me).

When I watch boxing, if possible, I like to go out to the bar and watch the fight. Toronto has many bars which cater to boxing, and you can watch all the HBO PPV's, plus even more, many fights from the UK are shown here in Toronto. Concerning this weekend's Manny Pacquiao vs Brandon Rios fight, it's being shown at many bars in Toronto, because Pacquiao is a popular fighter, and bars make money by showing his fights.

While at the bar the other day, a 50-something white male, who I've often seen and talked with at the bar before says to me: "I don't get why they show all of Pacquiao's fights. He's no good." Then i said, that at least Pacquiao gives an offensive, entertaining, and no-BS type fight, and I said, at least Pacquiao doesn't fight like Hopkins or Ward, constantly holding and being involved in overly defensive boring fights. At this point the 50-something white male says to me "Pacquiao is a foreigner. I don't get why they show all of his fights since he's a foreigner. They should show Canadian or American fighters instead." Of course, by "Canadian" or "American" fighters, this 50-something white male is referring to mainly Black African-Americans such as Bernard Hopkins, Andre Ward, Floyd Mayweather etc. Somehow this man views these African-Americans as non-foreign and thus more deserving of television time than a foreigner like Manny Pacquiao.

Essentially, this 50-something white male is admitting the reason he doesn't like Pacquiao is because he is a "foreigner", and is angry that the television companies are showing so many of his fights because he is a "foreigner".

What's interesting is that I've seen this guy around the bar before, and he is the biggest admirer of Bernard Hopkins. This 50-something white male is like Hopkins's #1 fan. I've also heard him criticize the Klitschko's in the past and he relentlessly slammed Wladimir for his fights with Haye and Povetkin. So, as a 50-something white male, he seems to have a problem cheering for "foreigners" like Pacquiao and Klitschko (who he no doubt also considers a foreigner), but has no problem whatsoever supporting Black Americans like Hopkins.

Sorry to say but this is a problem I see in many older generation, conservative White males in Canada. They seem to have animosity towards anything perceived as foreign (Pacquiao, Klitschko, Povetkin, in fact we can make the picture bigger to include things like Islam, Asian culture, Eastern Euro culture), but what's interesting is that somehow they don't perceive Negroes, or Negro culture to be foreign. Literally, it comes to the point where they will favour Negroes over Asians, or even over other whites who are from remote or "foreign" (ie non Western) parts of Europe.

All thoughts/comments appreciated, and please feel free to share your own conversations you've had with white boxing fans (either online or offline)...

 

[white lightning]

I'm not as old as this guy but I'm older than you. I can tell you that this is not the case with every average older guy. In fact, I think more older people are awake than younger people. At least those who read books and have internet. That combined with life experiences will tell a person all that they need to know. They way this country has changed since the good old days is like night and day. The crime, sex, violence, etc in tv, movies and music is out of control. As well as society. I have been to watch the Klitschkos fight countless times and see most white males,(especially older ones)rooting for them. They grew up seeing nothing but black champions and were told countless times by the media that any white heavyweight champion ever again was nothing more than a dream. Some might have believed it at the time but have since waken up and now know different. Are some older whites still dumb and naive? Off course but so are many young white males too.

At least the older whites in their 30's through 60's didn't grow up obsessed with hip hop, r & b and dressing and or acting black. They listened to country or rock and preferred to hang around their own people. I'm not saying they hated others but they preferred to stay with their people. Don't let a few older white canucks think that most think that way because that old man is a fool.:tape:

 

[Awake in America]

I'm not quite as old as that guy, but close (46), and I have a brother in his early 50s. They came of age at a time when there really weren't many white fighters to cheer for. It was also a time when Western Civilization (a/k/a White Civilization, a/k/a Civilization) wasn't yet hell-bent on destroying itself. Just from personal experience, it was okay to cheer for black boxers or other athletes in our household (if they were not named Muhammad Ali), particularly against foreigners, but there was a caveat: it was not okay to cheer for them against American white fighters, or white fighters from South Africa, Britain, Australia, or Canada. Asians were not to be cheered for. Too many of my father's generation had spent time killing or being killed by Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

Again, there weren't many white fighters in those days of the 70s. We had Gerrie Coetzie and Jerry Quarry, and that was about it, or at least it seemed that way. There were no Eastern Bloc fighters except in the Olympics.

In the days when the NFL was probably 70% white, it was a lot easier to cheer for a black athlete. Guys that age also attended schools that were mostly segregated, so they didn't witness very much TNB. That's what those guys grew up with. Just my take on it.