Just imagine, however, if we were to add the injunction against punches above the shoulders. The activity would be infinitely safer and thereby cease to be boxing. It would be like playing tennis without a net. The gravamen of this grim game is, and has always been, to inflict maximum injury on your opponent and to avoid it oneself. Much has been made in recent years of the repeated, career-threatening concussions injuries suffered by star athletes like Eric Lindros, Troy Aikman and others.
Stories abound of ex-linemen with useless and shattered limbs after their years in the trenches.
Former Oakland Raider safety Jack Tatum may have thought differently, but the violence that is wrought in these sports is for the most part accidental, a by-product of the larger aim of scoring and preventing goals and touchdowns. Boxing remains the one sport whose aim is the willful infliction of injury on an opponent. Pause to picture the late Jerry Quarry struggling mightily to sign his name. Pause to picture Muhammad Ali, not the Ali we knew in all his youthful bravura, but the middle-aged Ali, the Ali whose waxen countenance and trembling arms in Atlanta is now so engraved in the public imagination. We specialize in construction and resurfacing of tennis courts as well as sale of court surfacing material and court equipment.