ABSTRACT
This chapter scrutinizes the moral difficulties entailed in cornering (coaching) an actual boxing match. While the morality of the sport of boxing is often debated, critical discussions of the ethics of coaching professional boxing matches are far less prominent. This chapter seeks to demonstrate the morally fraught position of a boxing corner (coach) vis-à-vis his or her boxer qua professional competitor and as a person. For while the basic Kantian notion that athletes are to be respected and treated as persons—or inviolable ‘ends in themselves’—by their coaches is both commonsensical and well-established in sport ethics, in the case of pro boxing the fulfillment of this kind of coach-specific duty to athletes more often than not proves elusive in the heat of competition. The chapter highlights how and why cornerman obligations are highly conflicted and a seemingly ineluctable part of the sport of professional boxing.
