boxing is for wimps

I think the title says it all. Oh, you might not think so...after all, you have stuff like 2 sweaty guys in oversize swim trunks pulled up higher than anyone this side of a male senior citizen...seriously, who, other than boxers and 90 somethings wear any clothing pulled north of their belly button? Here is a clue for you:if your shorts/pants/pantaloons hide whether you are an innie or outie you need sartorial advice from someone who is under 65 or has not had their bell rung by 40,000 blows to the head with a blunt object...someone else's fists seems like it might qualify, no?
But back to the wimpiness of boxing...I am sure boxing lovers will point to the violence inherent in two finely tuned athletes battering one another past the point of coherent thought or vertical mobility and claim their sport is hardly for wimps...I, of course, would reply by pointing to Butterbean, the guy who looks like he swallowed two or three of those finely tuned athletes as an appetizer before sitting down to the real meal of three wooly mammoths and is a popular boxer...or to George Foreman who took time out of his busy schedule promoting a health food cooking machine and checking out senior citizen specials at Dennys to demonstrate that even a flabulous, out of shape guy whose age is somewhere between Dorian Gray and Methusaleh can still win a championship.
Still, there are some indications I could be wrong, that boxing might be a tough man type activity...stuff like the one punch knock-outs, the always inebriated look Ali always has after one to many shots to the dome, the cauliflowered ears, the reports of men crippled and killed in the ring, and even...wait for it...
Mike Tyson. Some of Mike's classics:
"I eat your children"
biting off part of a dude's ear...
yeah, so Iron Mike sounds truly tough, a scion of a dark, violent, deadly sport. Then again...he did get clocked by Buster Douglas. You remember Buster...the guy who made Peter McNeeley seem like a worthy opponent?
But the real way I know boxing is actually a pretty wimpy sport, more akin to the Powder Puff Girls than the Power Rangers is pretty simple. All you have to do is look at their referees.
Now, there are a lot of referee oddities...the way basketball referees wear pants while the players wear shorts...the high-tech look of the new NFL ref and ump unis...the oversize look all baseball home plate umps have with their chest protector hidden under their shirt...but none dares do what boxing refs do.
No, the real reason we know boxing is for wimps comes down to referee sartorial requirements. In what other violent activity, in what other "manly" activity do you find the final arbiters, the men who must command respect wearing bow-ties?