Manning Up: Modern Manhood,Rudimentary Pugilistic Capital,and Esquire Network’s White Collar Brawlers

Materials and Methods

We reached these conclusions by considering the history of white-collar boxing and then conducting a critical textual analysis of the inaugural season of WCB, which consisted of the six episodes that aired between November 19, 2013, and December 24, 2013. Through close readings of the individual episodes and the series as a whole, we analyzed the “underlying ideological and cultural assumptions of the text” (Fürsich, 2009, p. 240). Although it is impossible to eliminate researcher biases, particularly in a subjective approach such as textual analysis, we employed several strategies to mitigate these tendencies—strategies situated within three methodological phases: previewing, viewing, and reviewing.

In the previewing stage, we met to watch three episodes of WCB. We were especially interested in messages concerning several dominant constructs, including gender, race-ethnicity, social class, and sexuality, but heeded caution from Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck (1998) that textual critics should “start with the text and/or textualizations and see where they take them, rather than starting with some judgments and then searching out evidence to support them” (p. 299). We therefore looked for any element in the show “(a) that happens a number of times and (b) that consistently happens in a specific way” (Miles & Huberman, 1984, p. 215).

Using this approach, it became clear that WCB relied on a standard narrative structure and perpetuated distinctive ideological messages about how men and masculinity should be judged. These elements became the “filters” for our “analytical lens” (Saldaña, 2009)—aspects that guided the second phase of our approach. At this point, we devised a coding system and viewed the remaining episodes via Amazon Streaming, which allowed us to pause, rewind, and replay the show for purposes of clarity and transcription. Through “investigator triangulation” or “the use of multiple researchers in collecting and analyzing data” (Johnson, 1997), we considered multiple ways of reading the program and attended to (in)consistencies in our interpretations.

Once we viewed and coded each episode of WCB and transcribed select scenes, we reconvened to discuss our findings. Gender, social class, and, to a lesser extent, sexuality emerged as the most salient identities represented in the show. Race-ethnicity proved complicated. There was a good deal of diversity among contestants, trainers, and gym owners, but producers seemed to downplay, if not ignore, its significance. In accordance, we adjusted our coding protocol, and revisited each episode to corroborate, validate individual researcher’s interpretations, and to cross-check the transcriptions for accuracy.

There are limitations to textual analyses (see, for example, Carragee & Roefs, 2004; Creeber, 2006; Philo, 2007). But, as Fürsich (2009) argues, among its many strengths, textual analysis “goes to the larger question of which life stories or life plans, and which gender, class, and ethnic identities the current cultural sensibilities (as expressed in this text) encourage and which ones they exclude” (p. 247). In the end, we identified three themes, situated at the nexus of gender and social class, that WCB broadcasts. First, the show romanticizes the blue-collar masculinity of the boxing gym, depicting its performance as central for white-collar men to achieve ideal masculinity—to become “real men.” Within this theme, we also note that the show limits the social mobility of its actual blue-collar workers. Second, according to the show, the competitors reclaim “primal” aspects of masculinity that their white-collar lives do not provide by reshaping their bodies. And third, WCB depicts the moral and physical lessons the brawlers learn through their pugilistic apprenticeships as transferable to everyday life, making them better men and more productive in their white-collar professions. These elements combine to represent the show’s ultimate creation—a normative construction of white-collar masculinity dubbed “modern manhood.”

Again, to analyze how WCB accomplishes this, we will highlight the way the show adopts provisional and rudimentary aspects of “pugilistic capital.” Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1986), sociologist Loic Wacquant (1995) theorizes pugilistic capital as a type of “embodied cultural capital” that boxers attain by accumulating a “set of abilities and tendencies liable to produce value in the field of professional boxing” (pp. 66-67). As he found in his study of professional boxers, a fundamental aspect of pugilistic capital is cultivated through the sport’s disciplinary “body work,” which

consists of a highly intensive and finely regulated manipulation of the organism whose aim is to imprint into the bodily schema of the fighters’ postural sets, patterns of movement, and subjective emotional-cognitive states that make him into a conversant practitioner of the sweet science of bruising. (p. 73)

We emphasize that WCB appropriates and recasts this process. While we mean to highlight the similarities and differences with Wacquant’s original conception, more significantly, our intention is to show the political implications that result from this modification. The show’s subjects are represented as working to change their bodies’ “volume and shape” as well as their “subjective-cognitive” states. Yet, their trainings last just six weeks—a bat of an eye in the career of a committed boxer. As Wacquant notes, it takes four years of sacrifice and risk to produce a “seasoned amateur” and another three years to “(re)learn the game as a professional” (pp. 70-72). Furthermore, as Wacquant points out, only a select few possess the inherited physical features required to be candidates for this intensive and prolonged regimen. Nevertheless, this is not the case for the white-collar workers of WCB. In the show, it would seem that as long as one holds a white-collar job, regardless of body type or fitness, one becomes eligible for access to expert pugilistic instruction.

Thus, rather than becoming true boxers, rich in pugilistic capital, Esquire represents the competitors as assuming counterfeit versions of it. As the show depicts, however, the imitative pugilistic capital that is gained proves satisfactory. In particular, this portrayal of white-collar workers only needing marginal gains of pugilistic capital carries important ramifications. As we will discuss, by representing the brawlers’ apparent and successful transformation in this way, WCB reifies class difference and reaffirms the hegemony of white-collar masculinity—what the Esquire brand repeatedly identifies as “modern manhood.” This notion of masculinity is a construction of manhood that, with the help of shows such as WCB, Esquire both creates as an ideological measure and sells as an attainable ideal.

A Brief History of White-Collar Boxing

Esquire’s ability to mold and reify its desired standard of masculinity draws on a multitude of historical resources. The phenomenon of white-collar boxing certainly predates WCB. Sociologist Lucia Trimbur (2013) notes that recreational athletes took an interest in boxing since at least the 1700s (p. 119). Historian Elliott J. Gorn (2010) documents the importance of pugilism for reinvigorating bourgeois manliness at the end of the 19th century. To dispel concerns about neurasthenia, loss of vigor, and overcivilization, middle- and upper-class men turned their attention to working-class pastimes to restore their “manly” prowess. Sparring, Gorn asserts, became the “perfect recreation for businessmen whose nerves were frayed” (p. 201). Historian Gail Bederman (1996) similarly found that by the 1880s, although boxing and prizefighting had been “long associated with the working-class,” such pastimes “became fascinating to middle- and upper-class men” (p. 17). Amid the purported closing of the American frontier, the emergence of an industrial economy and wage labor, as well as the entry of women, immigrants, and non-White men into the workforce in greater numbers, “the power of Victorian manliness eroded” (Bederman, 1996, p. 17). What some scholars have termed a “crisis of masculinity” thereby led many middle- and upper-class men to view rougher working-class masculine characteristics, highlighted through sports such as boxing, as attractive (Bederman 1996; Messner, 1988).

As “a product of the industrial-age social order,” Cannon (2012) argues, boxing projects “working-class experience and values” (p. 325). At the same time, the sport’s genealogy is incessantly tied to ideas about manhood. Although women’s boxing has a rich history, sociologist Kath Woodward (2014) explains,

It is men’s boxing especially that recreates legends of heroism and constructs myths of masculinity in which practitioners and followers make attachments and identifications such that enfleshed qualities of men’s bodies elide with the cultural attributes of masculinity . . . Boxing is not just about men; it is about masculinity. (p. 89; see also Sammons, 1988)

By engaging in this manly, working-class pastime, men of all social ranks attempted to instill, reclaim, or regenerate seemingly essential attributes of manliness.

Throughout the 20th century, professionals who boxed (as opposed to professional boxers) took interest in the sweet science, though more often as spectators than participants. In the 1980s, however, a pastime explicitly identified as white-collar boxing began to take shape. In 1986, the Los Angeles Times described New York’s Gramercy Gym as “a secret hide-out for pinstriped executives undergoing what one of them calls ‘primal therapy’—a $75 course in white-collar boxing.” Devotees relayed that hitting the bag was a form of catharsis, a surrogate for slugging their bosses (Jones, 1986, p. 19). At least one adherent saw the trend as a “backlash against the sensitive New Age man of the 1980s” (Pereria, 1991, p. A1). Another felt it provided a corrective for the “hippy generation that thought men should be delicate and sensitive like women” (Lawrence, 2012, p. 75). Within a changing social and cultural context, professional men expressed the need to tap into something more primal—more violent—as a reaction to what might be described as yet another masculine “crisis” (Kimmel, 1987). ¹

Bruce Silverglade, the longtime owner of the storied Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, New York, generally takes credit for coining the term “white-collar boxing” (Hollander, 2010, p. A19). Silverglade claims that in 1988, Gleason’s hosted the first white-collar bout when “Dr. David Lawrence, a multimillionaire businessman with a Ph.D. in English Literature agreed to face Dr. Richard Novak, a lawyer and veterinarian.” As Lawrence later explained, speaking directly to the salience of social class, it was christened white-collar boxing “because we were both so over-educated” (quoted in Hollander).

Although others may have used the term before him (see, for example, Trimbur, 2013, p. 123), Silverglade was the first to establish a white-collar boxing league, which quickly became a profitable venture despite its illegality under New York law. More gym owners began to stage “smokers,” or unsanctioned bouts for the executive classes and, by the early 1990s, white-collar professionals, male and female, were “donning boxing gloves (albeit the more heavily padded 16-oz. variety) in record numbers,” as the Journal of Business Strategy reported (Davids, 1994, p. 62). This experience was different from boxing-inspired fitness classes. Said one Washington, D.C., gym owner, “At the YMCA or these health clubs, you go through the motions. A boxing gym is real” (quoted in Boeck, Finn, & Murphy, 1988, p. C2).

As New York Times journalist Judy Klemesrud (1983) reported, the call to box seemed to stem from men’s desire “to step out of the intellectual sphere and be more earthy, to experience a more physical and sensuous side of himself” (p. A49). Psychoanalyst Eric Margeneau attributed this appeal to the sport’s “immediate experience. When you’re involved in white-collar pursuits you don’t get the chance to immediately experience the sensation of your own power . . . In boxing you do” (quoted in Prescott, 1986, p. 39). According to boxing instructor Eddie Yoshimura, many of his clients were businessmen “who deep down have a need to throw some punches” (Prescott, 1986). It was not about throwing punches, countered white-collar boxer Jim Finely, but about proving one “can take a punch . . . Let’s face it,” he continued, “boxing primarily has been for black youngsters in cities. Many white middle-class boys can go through life without ever having a fight.” By appropriating romanticized elements of an undeniably racialized, classed, and gendered sport, these “white middle-class boys” could temporarily escape from a life that had become, as Lawrence (2012) pronounced it, “too civilized” (p. 149).

Thus, at the turn of the 21st century, white-collar boxing emerged for many of the same reasons as it did at the turn of the 20th century: Men, by dint of their white-collar professions, felt dislocated from antimodern, physical forms of manhood. Enervated by their jobs and the daily grind of (post)modern living, they sought working-class expressions of masculinity. Training, sparring, and fighting other men offered a curative to the professional classes for whom a blue-collar sport like boxing once seemed a foreign country. In white-collar boxing, they could visit that country, tour the landscape, interact with local residents, pick up a couple of souvenirs, and return home invigorated, more complete, and better prepared to conquer the postindustrial workplace. Indeed, participants reported that the “discipline” they learned from boxing helped them “win battles in the business world” (Wilner, 2005). The sport “takes a great deal of focus, determination, and commitment,” white-collar boxer John E. Oden (2005) wrote in his biography, “what client would not want to do business with someone who demonstrates these four characteristics on a regular basis?” (pp. 7, 14).

By 2005, according to Silverglade, approximately 75% of Gleason’s patrons were “white-collar boxers, which today means Wall Street traders, judges, lawyers, business hot shots, and college types looking for interesting ways to get in shape” (Wilner, 2005). Women, too, strapped on the gloves in greater numbers, particularly in the wake of Million Dollar Baby’s “Swank effect” (a reference to actor Hillary Swank, who starred as a boxer in the 2004 Oscar-winning film; Wilner, 2005). More often, though, white-collar boxing draws comparisons to another Hollywood feature, Fight Club (1999). With its “portrait of emasculated men looking for an outlet for their baser instincts,” wrote Guardian journalist Stephen Moss (2014), himself a devotee to the sport, Fight Club “acted as a recruiting sergeant for gyms that offered white-collar boxing.”

White-collar boxing has since become a global phenomenon, flaring up in the United Kingdom, Dubai, Australia, Singapore, Winnipeg, Barcelona, and points in between. While many of the fights remain ungoverned and unsanctioned, there are now a number of organizations designed to regulate and promote the sport, including the International White Collar Boxing Association and the World White Collar Boxing Association. In the fall of 2013, Esquire Network also began to play a popularizing and legitimating role through its broadcast of WCB.

Esquire: Defining the Modern Man

It was Kai Hasson’s encounter with white-collar boxing at a San Francisco gym that inspired the making of WCB. Hasson and his friend, Nate Houghteling, both Ivy League graduates, had recently left their white-collar jobs to start Portal-A Interactive, a digital media and video production company. The 26-year-olds had no pugilistic experience when they began a 2010 online series that documented their adventures in amateur boxing or, as the men explained on the WCB website, to tell “a story about a couple of suits looking for a life of substance” (“About”; WCB). Over the course of 23 biweekly episodes that aired on YouTube and Blip, more than 2.5 million viewers watched the men train for 3 months, culminating in a bout that showed Houghteling (“The Moose”) edge out Hasson (“The Half-Asian Sensation”).

For the next few years, the men shopped around WCB to various networks before Esquire Network purchased the rights (Morabito, 2013). Esquire Network (or EsqTV), a joint venture between Hearst Magazines (publisher of Esquire) and NBCUniversal, celebrated its launch on the 80th anniversary of the iconic men’s magazine. It is the essential corporate venture. Beset on attracting as a large an audience as possible and enabled by the magazine’s masculine reputation, producers behind the new channel aimed to appeal to a specific gendered population: “a more mature, upscale and affluent male demographic—or in Esquire parlance, the ‘modern man,’” as opposed to the “more tough-minded, testosterone-heavy men’s networks such as Spike and History” (Granger, 2013, p. 32). ² Notably, by “studying up” and critically examining Esquire’s version of the gender order, we draw out how the “modern man” is produced through representations such as WCB. It is not an essential reality waiting to be objectively discovered but a socially constructed vision of manhood that privileges certain men over others.

Although executives tout EsqTV as a cultural intermediary responsible for “Defining the Modern Man,” just what the modern man is meant to be remains a somewhat vague proposition (Ramsay, 2013). The phrase comes from the magazine. According to scholar Kenon Breazeale (1994), established in 1933, Esquire was “the first thoroughgoing, conscious attempt to organize a consuming male audience” (p. 2). With its tagline “The Magazine for Men,” Esquire “championed a mode of virile sophisticated heterosexual masculinity,” historian Stefan K. Cieply (2010) claims, catering to “a niche readership of upwardly mobile sophisticates” (p. 161; see also Merrill, 1995; Pendergast, 2000; Polsgrove, 1995). Although EsqTV is not intended to replicate its printed forbearer, David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, means for the television station to “capture the essence of the magazine” (quoted in Estes, 2013).

Several journalists have tried to sort out what it means to be a “modern man” and found similarities between Esquire in print and on film. Seth Stevenson (2013) of Slate assessed that the “magazine, and now the network, view erudition as a worthy goal and for the most part treat women as intellectual counterparts—not mere objects of lust.” New York Times columnist Neil Genzlinger (2013) suggested it might be easier to discern “what a modern man isn’t.” Indeed, network executives set out to differentiate the modern man from those other male characters who feature prominently on competing “men’s networks.” As network president Adam Stotsky qualified, “Much of today’s programming targets men in a one-dimensional way” with “down market shows” about “tattoos or pawn shops or storage lockers or axes or hillbillies” (quoted in Carter, 2013). A show about professional boxers or life within the boxing gym could easily go the route of a “down market show” (an unquestionably elitist and condescending classification) but, by making white-collar men—rather than boxers themselves—WCB’s focus, EsqTV producers presume to avoid this track.

Consequently, in WCB, viewers learn how white-collar workers might gain valuable lessons from their bumbles through the pugilistic realm, though, due to their class status, there is never any doubt that their stay is impermanent. The brawlers are thus depicted as more than singular masculinists. Instead, they are portrayed as able to exist to varying degrees in multiple social worlds, from the boxing ring to the office. This level of multidimensionality is perhaps the key feature of Esquire’s creation. The modern man is an intellectual, well-schooled, and relatively well-off. He does not necessarily need or regularly use his body and physicality, but, if he musters the gumption to do so, it is within him to develop and deploy his physical capacities.

The “About” page on EsqTV’s official website offers additional insight into how it wants to define the modern man. In EsqTV’s own words, the station features “programming that speaks to classic and contemporary passions and interests, from fashion and style to food and drink, travel and women and relationships.” Initially, EsqTV strove for its goals with The Getaway, a travel show that followed different celebrities around the world, and Alternate Route, which took viewers across the United States, “in search of people, places and objects that embody the timeless American spirit” (“About the Show”; Alternate Route, n.d.). Knife Fight, an “underground, after-hours” cooking competition, joined the craft-beer celebration Brew Dogs, along with How I Rock It, a lifestyle/fashion series produced by Ryan Seacrest and hosted by the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Baron Davis. WCB rounded out the list to signal the channel’s mission, as Stotsky characterized it: creating and selling “[t]he modern man, what being a man today is all about.” ³

However, as opposed to EsqTV’s other, rather highbrow shows, WCB sought to “tap into something quite primal,” Stotsky maintained. Matt Hanna, Esquire Network’s senior vice president for original programming, elaborated,

We felt like there was some sort of cathartic release. We live in a world where challenging someone to a fight just doesn’t happen very often anymore . . . We thought this was a cool way for them to find another side of themselves that work wasn’t necessarily providing for them. (Quoted in Flint, 2013, p. B3)

Even when traveling the globe, eating diverse food, drinking microbrewed beer, and dressing in style, white-collar living, Esquire seems to be saying, is incomplete. Although white-collar professions maintain an elitism associated with intellectual labor, advanced education, and higher salaries, it appears to lack physicality, the opportunity to test one’s mettle—one’s manliness—in the context of a physical challenge. By infusing their white-collar lives with a bit of pugilistic capital, the brawlers represented on WCB presumably fulfill Esquire’s vision. They become modern men. They live up to an ideological ideal of masculinity created by Esquire and defined by an assortment of skills that include both mental and—to a particular extent—physical abilities.

The Men of WCB

Much like Esquire’s idea of the “modern man,” WCB insinuates, but never explains, what it means to be “white collar.” As used in the early 1900s, white collar referred to clerical workers, managers, or other salaried employees associated with the middle class—those who wore white-collared shirts, as opposed to the blue-collared denim or chambray shirts of the wage-earning proletariat (Mills, 1952/2002). ⁴ The term’s inflections have since shifted, and the distinction between white- and blue-collar work has blurred, particularly with the transition to a postindustrial service economy, the advent of new technologies, advanced capitalism, and globalization. According to the 2008 International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, white-collar jobs “generally require a fair amount of formal schooling, including college degrees ranging from associate’s degrees through professional degrees . . . Much of this white-collar work is performed sitting at a desk in an office environment.” These jobs tend to be “well paid, largely because of the amount of education and skill building required to enter these occupations” (“Blue Collar and White Collar,” 2008, pp. 337-341). The education, income, and social capital associated with white-collar work imbue it with a sense of exclusivity and superiority. WCB’s main subjects fit this mold. The six episodes focus on men who work in finance, information technology (IT), and sales.

Heterosexuality also seems to unite the show’s 12 competitors, as the men all mention relationships (past, present, or desired) with women. In accordance with the Esquire mission, WCB does not belittle its female characters. They are wives, mothers, girlfriends, coworkers, and even “ring girls,” but there are also episodes that feature women as figures of authority. Female endurance trainers and nutritionists work with the brawlers and, on two occasions, women serve as sparring partners. There are gendered tensions in these moments. Still, they invariably culminate with expressions of respect. “I’ve never been raised to hit any kind of woman,” worries Allen Lu. “I came solely to see Allen get his face beat in by a girl,” confesses his opponent. “I intend to hurt Allen tonight,” forecasts Jennifer Chieng, the “girl” in question. On sparring with Sonya Lamonakis, a four-time Golden Glove champion and the third-ranked heavyweight in the world, commodities broker Paul Civitano remarks, “I feel terrible about sparring a girl. This is a nightmare. This is hell right now.” When it is over, though, he concedes, “She could have killed me if she wanted to.” While the issue of fighting a woman initially seems to weigh heavy on the men’s psyches, WCB takes the distaff pugilists seriously by showing that the women can not only hold their own but can easily take out any erstwhile male pretender.

Participants represent a number of different races and ethnicities, though the show never directly establishes these identities. It is, of course, problematic for researchers to make assumptions in this regard. Nonetheless, the presumed racial-ethnic diversity of the brawlers is inconsistent with what Trimbur (2013) found with Gleason’s white-collar “clients,” the majority of whom were white. Set in contrast with the trainers, all men of color (as they are in WCB), Trimbur argues that the clients “buy the cachet of men who they believe fit the form of an authentic black masculinity,” which in turn “generates new types of anti-black racism” (pp. 140-141). Conversely, the “authentic” masculinity the white-collar men are depicted as hoping to purchase in WCB has more to do with social class. As we argue, the show celebrates a working-class habitus while, ironically, reinforcing classism. Hence, the network’s distinct brand of “modern manhood” does not appear to be bound by race or ethnicity but rather by one’s career and lifestyle aspirations.

When it comes to the white-collar brawlers-in-training, the only overtly stated qualities viewers learn are the men’s heights, weights, ages (all in their mid- to late 20s), and occupations (see Table 1). This last identifier—what they do for a living—is represented as the defining characteristic. After all, this is what puts the “white collar” in “white collar brawlers.” Importantly, the men have not risen to the highest positions of power within their various organizations, but rather hover somewhere in the middle. Their tenuous assignments mean that there is potential for upward (and downward) mobility. As such, in the show, boxing not only fills some type of masculine void in their lives, but the tempered pugilistic capital they appear to accrue from the experience evidently helps them ascend the corporate ladder. According to the writers of WCB, the ideal of modern manhood that Esquire presents can have a real and significant impact for white-collar workers.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

White Collar Brawlers, Season 1 (2013).

Episode number and title	Air date	Setting	Brawler 1: Name, age, profession	Brawler 2: Name, age profession
1: “A Bloody Mess”	November 19, 2013	New York City	Ryan Sainsott, age not given, financial planner	Andrew Devine, age not given, financial planner
2: “Punched in the Snoot”	November 26, 2013	Pittsburgh	Alan Lu, 28, financial analytics	Paul Matthews, 28, finance project manager
3: “Thank You Mommy”	December 3, 2013	New York City	Anthony Hartzog, 27, information technology consultant	Sajjad Baccus, 27, information technology support
4: “Can’t Eat a Jab”	December 10, 2013	Pittsburgh	Jeff Morgan, age not given, information technology recruiter	Corey Walker, age not given, information technology recruiter
5: “Swinging Like a Mad Man”	December 17, 2013	New York City	Paul Civitano, 25, commodities broker	Shane Hardine, 24, commodities broker
6: “Seeing Stars”	December 24, 2013	Pittsburgh	Kyle Stewart, 29, car sales	Cameron McDowell, 25, car sales

The 2013 inaugural season alternates between two renowned locations: Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn (“a gym that has churned out 132 world champions since it was founded in 1937”) (Fanslau, 2013) and the 3rd Avenue Boxing Gym in Pittsburgh (“known for producing not just top-flight amateur boxers but also for creating the kind of gym-as-sanctuary environment rarely seen these days outside of the movies”) (Sciullo, 2013). Each episode involves two men working out their white-collar problems in the ring—problems that range from the absurd, to the slightly more serious, to the manufactured. A botched sandwich order created a rift between two commodities brokers in Episode 5: “I wanted my food the way I wanted it,” explained Shayne Jardine. His coworker Paul Civitano just “couldn’t perform that.” IT recruiter Geoff Morgan suspects Corey Walker is stealing his prospects in Episode 4. In a similar beef, car salesman Cameron Montgomery accuses Kyle Stewart of filching his customers (Episode 6). The men in Episode 2, Paul Matthews and Allen Lu, are “frenemies,” while IT consultants Anthony Hartzog and Sajjad Baccus seem to have an amiable rapport until boxing reveals festering animosity (Episode 3). And so, as the New York Post describes, rather than “stewing in passive aggression or an HR-mediated sitdown,” the protagonists in WCB use their “intra-office rivalry to relish in the competitive thrill and physical test of a boxing match” (Morabito, 2013).

All of this, of course, is the result of an intentional narrative structure used to position the shows participants as likely benefactors of a pugilistic foray. It is telling, then, that more than the competition between the two brawlers, it is their individual trainings that make up the heart of the show. Each contender prepares for 6 weeks under the tutelage of the venerated gym owners and their veteran coaches. The six episodes all follow a set formula: Viewers meet the two men and learn about the conflict between them. We see them in the workplace and at home, hear from coworkers who speak to the men’s character and significant others who know them best. Producers typically position one of the men as the underdog and the other as the antagonist but, as the show unfolds, the audience learns more about the men’s lives—the source of the underdog’s lack of confidence and details that chip away at the antagonist’s cocksure persona.

Midway through their trainings, the men engage in their first round of sparring. This is always a significant test, primarily because it gives the trainers the chance to see how the men “take a punch,” an ostensibly crucial aspect of manhood. The episodes then climax in a match that lasts for three, 2-min rounds with 1-min rest periods in between. Unlike professional pugilists, the men wear pads, headgear, and fight with 16-ounce gloves. Judges score the fighters by the number of punches they land, and the referee can end the fight with a standing eight-count or a technical knockout. Ultimately, however, what is important in WCB is not who wins or loses, but rather, as viewers learn in the final scenes, what the men gain from the experience and how the process will affect their lives, relationships with one another, and their professional status. Indeed, the limited pugilistic capital the show’s participants have acquired gets deployed and then judged in ways far different from what Wacquant (1995) finds with true-to-life boxing. It is not wins, loses, boxing titles, or direct prize money that matters.

Blue-Collar Attributes for White-Collar Workers

The most obvious theme to emerge throughout all this is that the show actively romanticizes the urban boxing gym. When the white-collar men arrive, the show creates a sense that they are visiting another world, one that temporarily leaves behind their suit-and-tie, windowed-office (sometimes cubicle), sanitized existence for the dark, sweaty, grungy club. It is a startling arrival scene as the camera flashes on the bodies of real boxers—bodies that are muscled, lean, and in motion—“the visible indices of the bodily labor that makes up the trade of the pugilist,” as Wacquant (1995, p. 66) describes. If, as Silverglade reports, 75% of Gleason’s patrons are white-collar workers, those customers do not figure into the scenery. Instead, the directors of WCB center the viewers’ attention on “pugs at work,” providing points of comparison for the fledgling brawlers, who meet the gym owners and trainers before they are weighed, assessed, and put through a series of “old school” exercises: push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, jumping rope, and running. WCB depicts the boxing gym as a place of hard-boiled, hard-bodied masculinity, stripped of the frills and comforts of white-collar life. As the show portrays, the white-collar visitors leave their first day of training in shock. “I was truly defeated that first day,” remarks Stewart. The show thus makes evident that, at first, its subjects do not possess the physical nor mental characteristics needed to thrive in this blue-collar enclave.

Meanwhile, the owners and trainers, through their manners, speech, style of dress, extensive knowledge of boxing, and implicit working-class experiences, are depicted as exhibiting a blue-collar habitus. This is not a source of derision for the white-collar types, but rather one of admiration. The show’s message is again clear: The more experienced, tougher men have the ability to impart upon the brawlers the masculine attributes that they lack. ⁵

No character is more illustrative of this than Jimmy Cvetic, the owner of the 3rd Avenue Gym in Pittsburgh, a White man with 40 years in the sport who “has been in the ring with Muhammad Ali.” It is also made known that he is a retired homicide and narcotics police officer with a “built-in shit detector.” With his unique blend of low-key humor and keen human insight, WCB makes Cvetic a central character as he goads the brawlers into making the show’s requisite transformations. He chastises the white-collar men as “nerds” and “bean counters,” comments on their “chubby little rumps,” and scoffs that one fighter “couldn’t knock a sick whore off a piss pot.” But the show also goes at great lengths to demonstrate that he cares deeply about their development: “I’m your teacher. You’re going to learn something about yourselves. This is not just about boxing, gentlemen. I’m going to teach you a way of life.” Cvetic is able to strip away the caustic attitude of brawler Cameron McDowell, for example, to discover that he is dealing with overwhelming personal and family issues, including a stressful job, three children, and ailing parents. As a result, Cvetic assesses that McDowell “does not have balance . . . you got to learn to get balance in your life, dude. And the way you do that is you study, not only boxing, but life.” By the end of the episode, as WCB would invariably have it, McDowell realizes that Cvetic is right. He works hard to correct his imbalances and emerges seemingly better for it.

The brawlers are thus set in contradistinction to their pugilistic mentors, but this also occurs in other, subtler ways. While the show depicts the white-collar brawlers as striving for multidimensional lives, the boxers, trainers, and gym owners are always situated in a boxing setting. The audience learns a few things about Cvetic and Silverglade, but those items are almost always tied to pugilism. Likewise, when it comes to the trainers, they appear as permanent denizens of the gym. Delen “Blimp” Parsley, James “Country” Thornwell, Jonny Spell, Darren “Coach D” Dolby are all men of color with “great credentials” for boxing, but viewers learn little to nothing about their lives away from the sweet science. Indeed, the only family member of a trainer that WCB introduces is himself an up-and-coming pugilist, who only enters the narrative to serve as a sparring partner.

WCB therefore gives viewers a somewhat contradictory message about the boxing experts. On one hand, they are granted authority. They have the experience, knowledge, and skills that the white collars need to become modern men. In this sense, they offer “an interesting commentary on our current society and its need to mythologize the working class,” as scholar Lisa A. Kirby (2013) suggests (p. 110). Contemporary society often idealizes what is colloquially referred to as a “blue-collar mentality.” This is particularly true of sports pundits and authorities who invoke the term with regularity, for it implies toughness, determination, the willingness to sacrifice for one’s teammates, to endure pain, and a strong work ethic. It also implies an aspect of moralism—to doing things the “right way,” not taking shortcuts, keeping one’s word, and an unspoken code of honor. In short, it is a sensibility that typifies what Connell (2005) refers to as “exemplary masculinity” (pp. 214-215). And this is precisely the stuff the brawlers are portrayed as learning through their adventures into the blue-collar world of boxing.

Yet, there remains a tacit understanding that the boxing experts are confined to their milieu, especially in terms of social class. While the novice brawlers freely enter and leave the gym, the show does not afford the pugilistic specialists similar mobility. A bit of pugilistic capital becomes one of the many assets the white-collar men possess. Yet, their social and cultural capital—results of their education, jobs, and professional networks—seem to be completely out of reach for their trainers. Woodward (2014) argues that “the working-class man who is attracted to boxing may have limited access to any other form of capital” for his body is “his only capital” (p. 100). As Wacquant (1995) also found with professional pugilists on the South Side of Chicago, boxers’ embodiments of pugilistic capital—the shape and abilities of their bodies themselves—is the only “form of capital” with which they can barter (p. 65, emphasis in original). This version of blue-collar pugilistic identity is implicitly present in WCB.

Of course, Esquire’s white-collar subjects are not reliant upon their bodies and its capacities in this way. Instead, in the world of WCB, boxing leads them to cultivate meager amounts of pugilistic capital, which then get placed in the service of making the white-collar brawlers better contributors to their place of postindustrial employment. According to the show, the skills learned through boxing become a supplementary, rather than a solitary, resource. Large stores of intellectual capital combined with marginal amounts of pugilistic capital thus position the show’s participants at a solid and ascending middle- to upper-class social status. Yet, tellingly, for the trainers, pugilistic capital remains all they have access to, and this leaves them to reside at their lower socioeconomic rank. Through this narrative, Esquire has constructed a gender hierarchy that—while turning to physicality for assistance—retains authority and power for those tasked with intellectual labor.

The Importance of (Rudimentary) Body Work

It is important to highlight that in this setting physical ability does matter, albeit in specific ways. The show makes certain that the acquisition of this pugilistic capital does not come too easily and that the major barriers are physical. While the extent of the bodily change is minor compared with what is needed to become a genuine competitive boxer, the possession of rudimentary pugilistic capital still proves essential to WCB’s narrative.

At first, the brawlers do not have bodies suitable for boxing and therefore to become multidimensional modern men. Several potential brawlers arrive out of shape, like “two tubs of shit,” as Cvetic puts it. (Post)modern life and white-collar jobs have made them soft. Baccus is a “play dough, dough-boy type,” according to his opponent. “I’ve never been the fit guy,” confides Stewart.

I’ve always been the husky kid, or chunky, or chubby. I’ve never had a six-pack in my life . . . I’m not somebody who’s been comfortable with my body. I don’t know what its limits are. I don’t know what its capabilities are.

Initially, Stewart cannot complete a single sit-up, much to the amusement of the gym’s inhabitants. Over the course of the episode, though, he seems to transform, bolstering his confidence, toughening up, manning up. It is what he can do to and with his body, not what he does in his white-collar job, that finally earns him respect. In this way, the show underscores a unique form of corporeal utility.

Even the few physically fit brawlers soon learn that their trim, muscular physiques are purely decorative and of little use in boxing. Hartzog, a “gym rat” and “workout guru,” tells viewers, “I like working out because it makes you feel more confident. You can go in the pool with no issues; you can go to the beach with no issues.” His interest in his body is about aesthetics, rather than productivity—he chooses form over function. Sainsott, a financial planner, lifts weights but this does not translate well to the sport. It makes him “stiff,” his trainer explains, “he can’t hold his arms up.” Matthews runs marathons, but Cvetic knows that will not serve him well in the ring: “Paul, he’s in shape. But he’s never been hit,” the trainer observes, “Now he knows what it’s like to get punched in the snoot. I think that’s pretty funny.” In the reality created in WCB, the unique skills of boxing are initially absent in the white-collar workers and yet, still fundamental to modern masculinity.

Over time, the brawlers are represented as beginning to acquire a bit of the bodily currency needed to become ideal men. They become leaner, stronger, and their stamina increases. “Physically,” one man’s girlfriend hyperbolically remarks, “his changes are ridiculous.” Yet, even though they start to amass some pugilistic capital, no one suggests that any of the men turn pro. Their abilities and tendencies are clearly limited, at best, to the white-collar variety of boxing. Still, they develop their bodies enough to hold their own against one another. In augmenting their masculine bankrolls with the most meager pittance of pugilistic capital, the men come that much closer to purchasing the multifaceted version of manhood that Esquire constructs and prizes. Esquire not only produces an ideal of masculinity through WCB, here it reveals the ideal to be readily attainable for white-collar workers.

It is difficult to imagine another sport or activity that would accomplish similar results in the context of American popular culture. Boxing is associated with a “particular version of masculinity” built on practices that “involve strength, aggression and the ability to inflict pain upon one’s fellow combatant and to withstand or preferably avoid pain or damage oneself,” argues Woodward (2014, p. 106; see also Heiskanen, 2014; van Ingen & Kovacs, 2013). These seem to be the crucial elements missing from white-collar men’s lives, and they are the attributes that the men in WCB profess to desire. Initially, inflicting violence on a coworker is positioned as the driving theme in their 6-week pugilistic voyage. When he suspects that fellow IT recruiter, Walker, has stolen his clients, Morgan remarks that, “The only way to really settle this score is if I beat Corey into a pulp in the ring.” In another episode, Cameron McDowell discloses,

I really, really want to punch Kyle in the face . . . It’s one way I can finally settle with him, just take him in the ring and put him out . . . I’m ready to knock him out. Put him to the ground, put him to the pavement, whatever I gotta do.

In a later scene, Stewart likewise confides the same, “I want to hit Cam in the face.” It is made certain then that WCB’s subjects want the power and dominance that rudimentary pugilistic capital has to offer.

Furthermore, the men soon learn that being able to take a punch is even more important than delivering one. This message is especially pronounced the first time the men spar, which unfailingly reveals their lack of proficiency. They confess that it is “scary,” and they have “never really gotten hit in the face.” Trainer “Country” Thornwell conveys the significance of this rite of passage, claiming that getting hit reveals the “biggest thing” in a boxer: his “heart . . . What do you do when you get hit? Is you going to turn and run, is you going to reach and grab, or are you going to punch?” Fellow trainer “Blimp” Parsley likewise comments, “you can’t really see a fighter’s heart until you see him take a punch.” The ability to withstand physical punishment is both test and teacher. After his sparring session, Sainsott divulges, “That dude punches hard. I don’t take it like a bitch though . . . Remember that in the final fight. I may not be the most skilled, but god damnit I try the hardest.” Another brawler, predictably, finds the metaphor: “It’s all about getting back up when you get knocked down . . . Next time I feel like I am suffering a defeat, I’m gonna overcome it.” The bodily necessities of modern men may be absent to begin with, but they are wanted, within reach, and, as the WCB narrative would invariably have it, eventually attained.

Better Manhood through Boxing

In each episode of WCB, each participant ultimately emerges improved by their pugilistic experiences. Within WCB’s narrative, sparring provides a crucial plot point toward reaching this end. A number of recurring themes herald their transformations: The men find assurance, balance, fortitude, and focus. As Matthews reflects,

I’ve noticed some changes in myself throughout this process. The confidence I’m getting, the determination, that perseverance I’m learning is really starting to pay off. This experience has given me a lot of skills and abilities that I think I can apply. I’m going to keep applying them the rest of my life.

In the end, they give respect to boxing, their mentors, and their opponents, and they win respect from those around them. More importantly, they learn to respect themselves for deeper, more “authentic” reasons than their prebrawling lives allowed. ⁶ As WCB would have it, there is absolutely no doubt that, for white-collar men, obtaining minor amounts of pugilistic capital makes a positive difference.

Significantly, according to the show, the men find they can harness the lessons of pugilism in the service of their professions. For Devine, boxing shows that “actions mean a lot more than thoughts,” while Sainsott finds that the “intense training I’ve had has given me a no bullshit attitude in approaching my work.” Their metamorphoses are revealed to be clear to others as well. For example, a coworker of Ryan Sainsott’s notices that

this experience has made Ryan more focused. He’s been able to turn all of his work in on time now at the highest level. I’ve spoke to a number of managers here, and they’ve complemented his work as well. So, I think this experience has definitely helped him out from a work perspective.

Remarking on Allen Lu’s transformation, a colleague judges that “his whole demeanor has changed. His attitude has gotten a little more focused.” Lu confirms this:

Since I started this, my life has continued to improve. I got a promotion, a new executive position in a new company. I think part of it [is] because of the confidence, you know, that just working out and dedicating myself to something, setting a goal that was nearly, I thought unattainable, and you know, I got there.

In short, WCB concludes by solidifying the notion that the brawling experience improves the white-collar men physically, psychologically, and advances their careers. And again, this stands in striking contrast to actual boxers who, in the show, have obtained full-fledged pugilistic capital but then remain confined to their blue-collar, working-class worlds.

Perhaps the biggest lesson the men take from their dabbles in the blue-collar boxing gyms is that everything they needed to be successful men and successful workers was already “inside of them.” The take-home, neoliberal message is that boxing simply brought out qualities that they possessed all along. This means that it was they—not others or contextual factors—who held the real keys to attainment of white-collar masculine superiority. By finally removing their dress shoes and putting on a pair of boxing sneakers, the white-collar brawlers pick themselves up by their bootstraps. As Thornwell, Devine’s trainer, expounds, “You just gotta have confidence in yourself. Whatever I want don’t mean shit. It’s what you want. It’s in you. It’s not in me. I can only show you. It’s in you.” Esquire’s modern manhood becomes constructed as something essential, which can be brought to life with one’s own effort. It thus becomes both naturalized and deserved.

Cvetic artfully espouses this “blue-collar” sagacity. Early in Episode 2, as he works with Lu, who clearly needs the extra guidance, he tells his student that he must “Ask these questions to yourself: What do you have? What do you want? What do you need?” He then presses Lu.

Lu fails Cvetic’s test. It is only after he forges his masculinity in the peripheral fires of pugilism that he can satisfy his tutor’s questions. Later, Lu has fractured his rib, delaying his fight with Matthews by 6 weeks. Upon learning the news, Cvetic again presses him:

Cvetic later confides to the camera, “My little buddy Allen, he gave me the right answers to that rhetorical question, and it made me feel very proud.” Allen, in turn, evaluates their exchange.

We were just having a very heart-to-heart conversation. And then, I was able to answer it because I realized, you know, yeah you gotta have that balance in your heart before you can go out and achieve anything. And to be able to know that, I think it was very satisfying. It was like I found a piece of myself that I didn’t know was out there.

To what extent the exchange between Lu and Cvetic was manufactured or even scripted is hard to say. Nevertheless, WCB writers and producers made sure to highlight this footage, for it allowed them to make clear that with the guidance of Cvetic and other pugilistic mentors, the white-collar brawlers “truly” achieved a higher form of manhood. Esquire created the ideal of a “modern man” and then legitimized it by providing “real life” embodiments for viewers to consume and aspire toward.

The Creation and Consumption of Modern Manhood

“Studying ‘up’ in the power structure” means realizing that even the most normalized and privileged categories are social creations—often constructed through popular mediums such as television. In WCB, by romanticizing blue-collar masculinity, cultivating a productive body through demanding work and discipline, striving for and obtaining rudimentary pugilistic capital, and internalizing pugilism’s physical and moral lessons, white-collar participants emerge apparently transformed. In presenting the show in this way, Esquire is actively producing a normative ideal—a masculinist ideology—for men to consume and for it to sell. Through it all, the first season of WCB mythologizes, even fetishizes the urban boxing gym, a space made to represent a means for recovering a purportedly essentialized aspect of manliness from which the professional class has become (or, perhaps, is always) estranged. Training, fighting, hitting, and being hit are represented as offering important pedagogies that make the white collars tougher, multidimensional, and thus improved members of a postindustrial economy. As such, they are ultimately depicted as and judged to be better men.

Yet, the white-collar professionals are the only characters granted access to the world of the “other,” and the temporary intersection of white- and blue-collar realms does little to abate class distinctions. By striking a balance between the “soft” masculinity of their white-collar occupations and the “hard” masculinity of boxing, WCB teaches that it is possible for intellectual labors to appropriate value from pugilistic experiences. In contrast, while harbingers of essential masculine knowledge, those entrenched in blue-collar worlds such as boxing do not seem to gain status through their openness to train and interact with white-collar workers. The fledgling brawlers of Esquire’s WCB thus become representative of the reification of social-class boundaries that serve to strengthen the supremacy of white-collar masculinity or “modern manhood.”

Boxing then remains a technology for shaping contemporary masculinity and social-class identities. The sport, once among the most preeminent American pastimes, has been in a spiral of steady decline in the past 50 years. Its inherent brutality makes it a tough sell to advertisers and television network executives. The turn to pay-per-view television created an even narrower market. The rampant corruption, organizational problems, the ascendency of international champions, and the popularity of Mixed Martial Arts have quickened Americans’ already waning interest in boxing (Roberts & Smith, 2015; Silver, 2008). Moreover, as Woodward (2014) insists, it remains “the sport of the poor in spite of intermittent forays of the aristocracy into the ring and the more recent celebrations of white-collar boxing” (p. 61). But boxing’s premodern, even antimodern, inflections, including its emphasis on physicality, self-mastery, tenacity, violence, and individualism, appear still to appeal to young, affluent, educated men whose daily lives may be void of these masculinity-establishing attributes. At least, such is the narrative that WCB sells. Esquire seems to have both realized and helped perpetuate this social and cultural dynamic through the show. WCB makes it apparent that turning to the ring, in limited ways, provides adequate access to those “primal” male qualities that supplement and buttress white-collar masculinity—Esquire’s supposedly more advanced and powerful “modern manhood.”