Twice As Hard

The visual language of boxing in music videos

Imagine: you’re in the gym, stretching, minding your business, then suddenly the question rings out from the weights, a loud voice, near hysterics: “Man, how are you in a boxing gym and you don’t know who Terence Crawford is?”

Do you, reading this, assumed non-boxer, know of Terence Crawford?

For my purposes here, it doesn’t really matter. But if you were wondering, he’s an undefeated professional boxer who beat another nearly-undefeated professional boxer, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, in a widely-promoted bout last September. The names of these remarkable athletes are not common knowledge in my social world. Hardly even in my gym. Modern boxers, even the best of the best, aren’t household names, not like the Lebrons and the Ohtanis of the world.¹

But the images of the boxer—the iconography, the style, the movements—still have a strong grip on culture. The boxer represents strength, discipline, masculine beauty, power. Its visual language has become easily-referenced shorthand for those qualities, while the sport itself becomes more and more tangled up in its own controversies, more and more irrelevant to the average sports fan. The images, the narratives of boxing, are so powerful that they draw people to practice the sport even if they’ve never heard of athletes like undefeated Nebraskan boxer Terence Crawford.

Earlier this week, I saw local metal band Valiant Thorr play. They ripped through their 2009 ACAB thrasher “Tomorrow Police,” and as the vocalist roared, he planted a foot on the monitor, and I saw that he was wearing boxing shoes.

The metalhead’s boxing shoes, photographed at the merch booth.

I’ve been eyeing the use of boxing’s visual language in music for a long time, idly keeping notes. Inspired by Valiant Thorr’s performance, I dug into my records and pulled together a short list of five of my favorite boxing-themed music videos.

Interpol - Twice As Hard (2014)

A celebration of the amateur. There’s no narrative here, just images of training: boxers jumproping, shadowboxing, working the bag, sparring in slow motion. Rippling muscles, hard hits, and light feet. There’s just as many women as men—shocking to me when I first saw it around the time of release!

Troye Sivan - Stud (2021)

This is technically a live release from lockdown days, but I love the use of a boxing gym as a performance setting. Male boxers are usually positioned as powerful, imposing figures, not objects of desire. Sivan uses slow motion on the boxers’ bodies too, just like Interpol, but here the images drip with lust instead of power. It’s a hypermasculine sport. Homoeroticism comes with the territory. I love to see that quality highlighted.

Kirk Franklin - Declaration (This Is It!) (2007)

I grew up in the church, so Kirk Franklin was often playing somewhere. This is styled like 1940s, pretty camp, and Kirk Franklin is boxing himself. That’s often how the imagery of boxing is used, to show an internal battle, and the opponent represents some unwanted part of yourself. Good song, too, with the Michael MacDonald sample!

ATEEZ - ROCKY (2022)

There’s a ton of boxing “concepts” in kpop—I made a list of about five off the top of my head. Rocky is my favorite example of how boxing wear, like hand wraps and ring robes, become polished theatrical dance gear; and how the gestures of a fight, like stepping through the ropes of a ring, become perfect choreography. ATEEZ performed this song during the season finale of Don Lee’s Korean boxing competition show I AM BOXER² before the last match. It brought an odd energy. It’s a big loud show for everyone, but only a few people are going to get bloodied and beaten at the end.

Luis Miguel - La Incondicional (1989)

There’s only a brief moment of boxing in this narrative video about leaving the woman you love behind to join the Mexican Air Force. Boxing is deeply connected to military training—my coach is a vet—and here, as it often does, fighting in the ring represents part of a larger transition into “manhood” within the military apparatus. Even with just a brief glimpse of the fight, we understand its purpose. Boxing is a visual shorthand for a rite of passage.

Valiant Thorr wore boxing shoes because they’re the shoes of a warrior, and they, as artists, are raging and thrashing and fighting. Outside of the ring, boxing symbolizes power and masculinity; when you’re inside the ring, it begins to symbolize a lot more.

Did I miss any great videos? Let me know…

1. For a few reasons, but a big one is the lack of singular governing body in boxing, which leads to ridiculous situations like this fight, which was for the super middleweight title in the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Council, the International Boxing Federation, and the World Boxing Organization. Plus a Ring Magazine-designed belt for some reason.

2. I have a lot to say about this show. Coming soon!