5 ideas
If he fails, the referee or ringside doctor stops the fight and the loss goes on his fighter's record. The episode shows how a bout's outcome can rest on an unglamorous specialist working for almost no money, whose skill is visible only when it fails.
At the amateur and small-club level, nearly no one is paid enough to justify the hours: the trainers, officials, promoters, and the fighters themselves. Because the money is absent, what keeps the sport running is visible in pure form: obligation to the kids in the gym, love of the craft, and community standing. That is also why the sport keeps going even though it is barely solvent.
Judge a field by its bottom tier, the four-rounders, gym regulars, and local promoters, not by its televised stars. The bottom tier shows the actual daily practice, the real economics, and the people who carry the tradition forward. The headline events are a thin and unrepresentative layer on top of that base.
Dunn defends boxing as a sport whose goal is openly stated and whose rules, weight classes, and officials exist to manage that openly admitted harm. Sports whose injuries are a side effect can deny what they do to bodies. Boxing cannot, so its participants accept the risk knowingly rather than by default.
The small boxing gym works as a disciplinary institution for young people. It demands punctuality, weight control, taking orders, and controlled aggression, and it puts every claim to toughness to an immediate physical test. Trainers, including clergy who box, use the ring to teach self-command, turning raw aggression into something governed by rules and respect.