Should laws allow boxing?

Pro: Boxing develops physical fitness, improves the coordination of eye and hand, tones the muscles, and enhances cardiovascular performance. It can teach good sportsmanship, as any sport can. And the training and discipline associated with this activity may promote the development of good character.

Con: Boxing aims to cause physical harm. The goal of boxing is the destruction (or at least temporary impairment) of certain physical capacities of an opponent. The knockout punch deprives the recipient (even if only temporarily) of consciousness. Repeated punches destroy parts of the brain. Mohammed Ali, for example, along with countless others, suffered irreparable neurological damage as a result of boxing.

Pro: Boxing provides a living for the boxers. Those who have no more marketable skill than boxing might find good opportunities for earning money in the sport.

Pro: There is a great demand to see the sport, so promoters have opportunities to make money.

Pro: Boxing provides entertainment to the spectators. Fans of boxing enjoy the vicarious pleasure of exerting much energy and enduring great pain to enjoy victory and achieve celebrity.

Con: Boxing typically exploits poor people.

Con: Boxing desensitizes its spectators to the physical suffering of others. It promotes an acceptance of violence as a common feature of human life.

Con: Boxers may become ill from blood-borne pathogens released in the wounds common to the sport.