Child Boxers (Photo courtesy of Daily Sabah).
Anyone else watch House of the Dragon and remember the kids boxing in the bars with adults betting on them? Did anyone else wonder if that happened in real life? Then we think the same!
So, were there children involved in the history of boxing? Are there currently children involved in the sport? We’ll discuss it below!
Have Children Been Boxing Through History?
Yes, children have been boxing throughout time. People under the age of 18 have been boxing as a school sport, a recreational activity, and a way to resolve big feelings for a very long time.
Most children throw hands at each other as this is typical youth behavior. Young men have been learning the sport as late teens to perfect their craft and box for work as adults for a long time.
Generally, most people would not feel that these situations are acts of exploitation.
There could be room for debate that if children are forced to train for a sport as a teen (and younger) so they can use that skill to go to college, go pro, or find work, that could be considered exploiting. That’s sort of a natural result of capitalism, and it’s hardly exclusive to the sport of boxing.
Exploitation of Child Boxers
One of the first examples of children being abused in the name of boxing in American history dates back to slavery. Slave owners would arrange matches for young teens for entertainment purposes. Obviously, the boxers had no ability to consent, which is a cornerstone of exploitation.
Fights were sometimes done in groups, and the boxers were even occasionally blindfolded. Adults would come together to watch the slaves compete, gambling on the “entertainment.”
This remained a past-time in American history, with black teens still being forced to box without their consent, for free, by white men even after emancipation.
Muay Thai Child Boxing
Training
The greatest amount of child boxing in modern times exists in Thailand. In this instance, boys and girls are competing as early as seven years old. The first age-weight class begins with roughly 50-pound, 7-8-year-old children. There are over 30,000 child boxers in Thailand as of 2013.
Choices made by families of children who are experiencing extreme poverty are likely not appealing to most. It can be tough to mentally grasp the realities of life for some of the poorest people in a developing country. Many of the children would work in rice patties at seven or eight if they weren’t boxers. Others, especially girls, may be subjected to doing worse.
Some of these children are supporting their entire families. Not only would they be working in a rice paddy as a young child, but their senior citizen grandparent would also have to remain working well into their 70s. It’s not an appealing life, but it’s a harsh reality.
Children as young as seven will run for miles every day, train with punching bags, and practice with other children most days.
Game Nights
On game nights, the children prepare. The adults are roaring to go, with their bets ready. A match of seven or eight-year-olds can garner up to over $1,000 in a bet. There are no DraftKings in Thailand for child boxers, so the system is poorly organized, but it works.
Adults cannot wait to see tiny children punch each other. Muay Thai is typically an ethical and highly skilled form of boxing. That is not the kind you’re going to see when you see elementary school-aged children swing it out. The children’s methods become more sophisticated with time, but particularly when they’re very little, skill is not what attracts people to the matches.
It looks more like an out-of-control recess fight than martial arts. Grit and determination are the name of the game in this unique take on boxing. Punches and kicks fly until someone can’t get back up, usually.
Granted, there are timed rounds. But the people aren’t throwing their Thai Baht to see calm sports. The idea is to knock out your opponent at all costs.
Long-term Effects
It’s hard to watch if you’re looking at it from the angle of trauma to young children’s bodies, particularly the head. What are the long-term impacts of such extreme trauma on the brain at such young ages? What about the long term effects of a child’s skeletal system that isn’t fully formed yet?
The lack of medical care available to many of these children is also a distressing factor. Children are routinely being knocked out, but access to care is nil.
Of course, weighing the long-term effects of, say, working in a rice patty or worse as a young child is also worth considering. What would the impacts be on the nutrition of children whose families do not have access to the much-needed funds? There’s no easy answer. But adults gambling over children punching each other in the head without doctors around does give me the ick. How about you?
Catch the earlier editions of the Punch Drunk and Boxing Free series here.
