Tyson Fury celebrates Black History Month
Sport has a long tradition of being co-opted as a metaphor for life, and boxing probably offers the most brutal and immediate example. Life is a struggle, it is a fight, and to succeed – sometimes just to stay in the game – you have to be strong and agile, and you have to be able to think on your feet.
The recent heavyweight fight between two extremely frightening men, Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder, could not have presented a better microcosm of what blights the modern world; race.
Fury is the self-proclaimed ‘Gypsy King’, a 6’9” behemoth who has lived a life of crazed and drug-addled ups and downs. Wilder’s life has been equally fraught, if not worse. This was definitely not a grandmaster chess tournament. The difference between them during the fight is that Fury put Wilder on the canvas twice, licked blood off his opponent’s shoulder, and won on a technical knockout. He was broadly agreed to have trounced his opponent. The difference before the fight was culturally rather more interesting.
Fury, although goaded by the press into making statements which they could then find racially inflammatory, was actually rather studied and thoughtful concerning his replies to questioning, at least for a man who has spent his life having his cranium pummeled by other huge and violent men.
Confronted by a press pack desperate for any trace element of white racism, Fury described himself as ‘fat and white and that’s it’. Wilder, on the other hand, had this to say, just for starters;
‘[W]e know it’s Black History Month… so I’m looking forward to providing my service to my greatness on Black History Month [sic] and… making Tyson Fury a black history trivia question. When I knock the Gypsy Queen out they gonna have an answer to a black history trivia question’.
I don’t imagine the homophobia there worried either the press or the black community too much. It’s okay when black people do it. And, boy, was Wilder right about one thing. We certainly do know it’s Black History Month. They may as well make it a year-round thing.
Fury did, however, mention the racial element to the contest, as follows;
‘I’m not really into all this racial thing about a black man versus a white man on Black History Month… This is not a racial war… It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, pink or green. We are humans… There’s nothing about racial about this fight’.
Indeed, how could there be, as we are told 24/7 that race is a social construct?
Well, racial or not, Fury mauled Wilder, so if it was about race, Whitey sure ‘nuff won. Talk loud if you say that to Wilder, though. Fury shattered his eardrum.
The rest of us waited for the social media plantation to make Fury’s win racist, the same way they did when New England Patriots won the Superbowl under the command of very white icon Tom Brady. They really did. A sports result can now be racist. Unless it’s the 100 metres.
Now that white people are constantly told that we are all racist, perhaps we should kick back, crack a cold one, and enjoy it. Perhaps Fury won because he is white. Perhaps he out-thought his opponent. He certainly out-punched him.
So, the next time a white kid goes down sucker-punched by a black kid in the so-called ‘knockout game’- in which blacks knock out unsuspecting and innocent whites on the streets of America (although whites are never innocent because slavery) -they can take heart at the fact that the Gypsy King knocked out a racist.
Photo credit - Mac Dreamstate