Fighting Feelings

Abstract

This article explores the mentorship of low-income young men of color by examining amateur boxing coaches and the training techniques that they use. Studying both the actions and the intentions of boxing coaches offers insights into the increasingly rare experience of adult male mentorship for low-income young men of color. Data for this article come from a 13-month ethnographic study of a South Los Angeles boxing gym and in-depth interviews with the gym’s boxing coaches. This article explores two aspects of the training process from the coach’s point of view: the creation and enforcement of rules to differentiate the boxing gym from “the street” and the use of “emotional regimens” in training. The coaches in this study acted as “old head” mentors for their fighters and used emotional regimens to encourage a particular form of masculinity with their amateur boxers that simultaneously embraced and forbade certain expressions of “street” masculinity.