Guernsey Gladiators

Visiting the Colosseum in Rome late last year, I couldn’t help but imagine myself a spectator in its stands.

Tens of thousands of spectators pouring into the vast elliptical bowl, hoots and howls centred on its sandy stage, onto which saunters – the gladiator.

Hundreds of thousands of these souls perished to the Roman demand of justice and entertainment, slaughtered by spears held by charioteers, eaten alive by lions, gutted by their fellow doomed comrades.

Knowing the grisly reality of their fate, gladiators would sometimes run or refuse, on the slim chance that would afford them a better fate. More often, it meant being beaten to death or sold into slavery and life-ending labour in the mines.

Gladiators arrived on stage knowing that they had no choice, that they must fight, and for a few, that was their ticket to immortality, and even freedom.

Visiting Jersey with seven Guernsey boxers on the weekend, I had a definite sense of the gladiatorial, and how the sport of boxing is so similar, and yet so different.

So similar: a stage upon which souls fight to conquer each other in accordance with given rules for the entertainment of paying spectators.

So different: gladiators face each other firstly because they must – it is do or die – and secondly for that glimmer of glory and elusive freedom.

Our boxers donned their gloves and jumped into the ring, ready to put their work in.

Why are they jumping into the ring?

I’m not going to whip them if they don’t, nor am I inclined to sell them into slavery.

There is no money in this equation, in fact, it has cost us all to make it over to Jersey.

Why voluntarily don gloves and jump into the ring and risk life and limb if you don’t have to?

Why voluntarily fight when it takes months and years of adherence to a strict regimen of training and diet, suffering setbacks and hard knocks and knockdowns, risking failure and injury and death, just to publicly test and showcase your skill and grit and honour and courage and willingness to just keep going even though your arms and lungs and legs scream for you to stop?

Or, I wonder, did that question just contain all of the answers?