‘The fragile science of bruising’ – Observations on intercorporeal connections between coaches and boxers before and during a fight

Abstract

ABSTRACT Though boxing is usually perceived as an individual sport, the merging of boxer and coach into a joint corporeality is essential for prevailing the fight. Using several video recordings (respective transcripts and drawings of video stills) taken during professional boxer’s training sessions, fight preparation, and actual fighting, I show how this connection is established over long-term training, renewed immediately before a fight, maintained during fighting, and (at times) lost. Deploying an ethnomethodological approach, I illustrate the coaches’ methods of engaging in an intercorporeal relation with their boxers. When connected properly, they fight together with the boxers’ performance enhanced by the coaches’ perception and skilful experience. However, coaches and boxers permanently oscillate between an intercorporeal connection and a laboriously established substitution of such. Thus, their endeavour remains delicate and the connection’s fragility is exposed, especially during fighting itself when it is – literally – hammered on by the opponent.