There’s
something admirably primal about boxing. It’s a pure and honest sport. Two men
agree to step into a ring and pummel each other to their last breath. It’s that
simple. What boxing does is that it seems to speak to our innermost desires. It’s
the unleashed Id, running wild and delighting in the blood and ruin the sport
entails.
In
order to box, one must be able to withstand as much pain as he can deliver. The
boxer must be ruthless, but calculating and strategic. It’s a sport that simultaneously
combines our most primitive tendencies towards senseless violence and the most
advanced, tactical parts of our minds. But most importantly, the boxer must be
willing to self-destruct.
Ian
Palmer’s Knuckle is a film that gets
to the heart of the sport. This documentary, filmed over the course of twelve
years from 1997 to 2009, chronicles the decades-long feud between three Irish traveler
families – The Quinn McDonaghs, The Joyces, and The Nevins’. Despite all being
cousins, the longstanding feud regularly leads to challenges for bare-knuckle
boxing matches.
Unlike
professional boxing these bare-knuckle fights are fought outdoors and without
rounds. They merely go until one man knocks out the other or one man gives up.
There are referees to enforce a clean fight but otherwise it’s purely a raw and
personal brawl between two men who fiercely hate each other.
Palmer
mainly follows the Quinn McDonaghs, who repeatedly claim that they don’t
instigate the fights, they only accept the challenges. To them boxing seems
more like a chore that must be done once every couple of years.
In
contrast, the Joyce family, lead by the aging “Big Joe” Joyce, seems to breathe
boxing. Big Joe is a loud and rough figure akin to a WWE wrestler with his constant
threats and tirades. When it’s his turn to fight, Big Joe unleashes a flurry of
punches, protecting his title as “King of the Travelers.”
Unlike
many boxing movies, Palmer doesn’t shy away from the fights. In fact, he shows
them in their entirety. Many films tend to only use the fighting as a backdrop
for character studies (Raging Bull, Rocky), but Knuckle is as much about boxing as it is about the families
involved. There is a gaze during the matches that makes them exciting. They
could be horrifying, but they’re just the opposite.
That’s
not to say Palmer doesn’t also focus on the personal stories of the people
involved. There is as much of the film about the fights as there is about how
this feud has destroyed the relationships between these people. When he
interviews the wives of the boxers they all express a desire for the fighting to
end and for the families to finally get along again. Palmer also focuses on the
children, especially the young boys who have grown up watching their fathers
fight and are learning to continue the cycle of violence.
But
even Palmer is not immune. Through narration he finally realizes that at some
point he had stopped caring about the documentary and had let himself become a
part of this bare-knuckle boxing culture. He was no longer going to the fights
for the film; he was going because he enjoyed them. And I think that speaks to
boxing’s primal appeal. Even those who recognize it’s horror and devastation
are still drawn in. He can acknowledge that this feud has caused endless
damage, but even he can’t deny the seduction.
And
at its core that is what Knuckle, and
really boxing itself, is about. It’s watching destruction in action. But Knuckle goes far enough to show what
happens when it bleeds outside the ring and it’s no longer fun.
