Manny Pacquiao and the Essence of Boxing

“Boxing,” Hugh McIlvanney has written, “is a sport in which two men try to batter each other senseless. No matter how you dress it up, the basic objective is to render the opponent unconscious. You can say that more people are killed in motorcycle racing, that more people are killed in mountaineering. But in neither of those two activities is the fundamental objective to knock the other guy out. Motive, not statistics, will always separate boxing from other sports.” On th…