Only one Mayweather: a critique of hope from the hopeful

Abstract

Professional boxing offers hope of vast wealth and global mobility for aspiring athletes in Accra, hopes bolstered by the understanding that Ghanaians are particularly suited to boxing's attrition. However, when boxers become active in the global industry, they encounter power relations which locate them as cheap, subordinate labour, and stymie their championship hopes. As boxers build lives through the sport, they reflect critically on the role their hopes of 'making it big' play in perpetuating industry inequalities, recognizing what I call the ideological function of hope. Despite this, they remain committed to hopes of dramatic success. Their simultaneous optimism and cynicism complicates contemporary accounts of hope as a strategy of resilience in contexts of profound uncertainty. Building on ethnographic research with Accra boxers, I theorize hoping as a paradoxical experience of critique and optimism in equal measure, to account for the contradictory ways people act when orienting themselves towards better futures. Introduction: Aspirations forestalledAbraham 1 is a talented welterweight boxer who turned professional in 2013 at the age of 23, after representing Ghana at the World Amateur Championships. 2 If asked about his future in the sport, Abraham would explain that he planned to build up a winning record, fight abroad, win world titles, and become wealthy through boxing: a common constellation of aspirations for professional boxers in Accra. Abraham and I became close from 2014 to 2016 when we both trained at the Attoh Quarshie Boxing Gym in Accra's old centre, Ga Mashie; Abraham building his fledgeling career while I conducted ethnographic fieldwork with Accra boxers.At the time, Floyd Mayweather, a vastly wealthy and unbeaten African-American boxer, was Accra boxers' principal icon of a masculinity associated with material wealth, conspicuous generosity, and global mobility (Hopkinson 2020; cf. Esson 2013). Like others, Abraham shared images on social media of Mayweather posing beside cars, private jets, expensive clothing, jewellery, and piles of cash; wore clothing branded with Mayweather's 'TMT' ('The Money Team') logo; and extolled his slick defensive style

“Punching is a sickness”

“…To maintain their fitness and specified weight, boxers are encouraged to control their diet and lifestyle outside the gym. They are sometimes fanatical and sometimes lackluster about these regimens, as their enthusiasm waxes and wanes or as jobs, family, and social lives take up time (Hopkinson, 2022). Ga, a minority language spoken mainly in the ethnically Ga neighborhoods of Accra, is the principal language among those involved in the sport in Ghana.…”

“…8 It can be distressing for winning boxers to become journeymen. But being a journeyman remains a respectable profession, involving complex dynamics of respect and shame (Hopkinson, 2022). 9 The dynamics of dependence and care between journeymen and male prospects I describe are different in women's boxing (in Accra and elsewhere), in part because there are far fewer journeywomen than men, and being a journeywoman is a less viable economic prospect.…”

“…As they cultivate athletic bodies and sporting dispositions, aspiring athletes shape relational subjectivities—positioning themselves as virtuous men and women through their relationships with family, friends, mentors, and guardians, whom they do not compete against in their chosen sport (Guinness, 2018; Hopkinson, 2022; Kovač, 2021). Despite this, many scholars continue to imagine relationships between competitors as individualistic and as shaped principally by an ethic of self‐interest 4.…”

Boxing family: Theorising competition with boxers in Accra, Ghana

“…Both John and Enoch earned more for this fight than they had for any other before. Each hoped that contesting a close, attritional and memorable bout on such a public stage would help them secure future higher-paid bouts, potentially abroad, and fulfil their gendered aspirations to material wealth, global mobility and public renown (Hopkinson, 2022; see also Esson, 2013). As Omar suggests, by competing John and Enoch call into being a future in which they both benefit, and in which they might both realize their sporting aspirations.…”

“…2.Being a white, British man with some boxing experience shaped my research profoundly. I was inferior to most of my peers in the ring, and insulated from the insecurity and inequality that pervades life as a Ghanaian in the global boxing industry (see Hopkinson, 2022). As such, I was not a ‘competitor’ in the broader sense described herein.…”