Boxing Fad Ignites Passion at Staid Utah University

Think of Brigham Young University, and here’s what comes to mind: clean-cut, deeply religious students diligently pursuing academics.

Now try this: A crowd of sweaty, screaming young adults watching two of their peers pound on each other.

Huh?

A boxing fad loosely based on the 1999 movie “Fight Club” has swept across this college town 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. Students both male and female, college and high school, are donning boxing gloves for a go at the sweet science.

In the movie, a group of bored yuppies forms a secret boxing club. That’s the way it was in Provo until television and newspaper reporters got hold of the secret.

Now “Fight Club” has sparked a raging controversy--and a raft of media hype--at staid BYU, a university run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“I think the people involved are trying to give the impression that BYU students aren’t that much different from students elsewhere,” said Chelsea Anderson, a married 21-year-old psychology major. “I think that’s wrong.”

Anderson, like 98% of the students at BYU, is Mormon. She believes in and tries to uphold the school’s honor code: be honest, chaste and virtuous; obey the law; use clean language; respect others and abstain from alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee and drugs.

Anderson admits to occasionally breaking the code by drinking a cola, although she asks for the decaffeinated kind first. But she abhors boxing.

“No! I don’t know anyone involved [in the Fight Club]. They should be embarrassed,” Anderson said. “I can’t think of any of our religious leaders who would condone it.”

She said the topic was so hot on campus that her psychology class took up the debate.

“It’s ironic that they’re imitating an R-rated movie when we’re taught not to watch them,” Anderson said about the film that apparently launched the fighting fad. “They’re really pushing the honor code.”

The 10 male BYU students who founded the “Fight Club” insist they never got the idea from the movie and said outsiders hold a warped conception of their slugfests.

“If it were like the movie, then of course it wouldn’t abide by the teachings of the church,” said Todd Bushman, a stout 22-year-old founder of the club and a pre-dental student at BYU.

He said his buddies started fighting each other for fun in February, using the biggest gloves they could find. They boxed for three rounds of 45 seconds, wore mouth guards and had a couple of husky guys referee.

News of the fights spread quickly by word of mouth, and soon hundreds of students were crowded into basements, backyards and, in at least one case, under a bridge to catch a glimpse of the show.

“At worst we got some bloody noses and a few black eyes,” Bushman said. “Nothing worse than any other sport.”

Still, the club succumbed to media pressure--with reporters from tabloid television shows, local newscasts and newspapers knocking on their doors. That prompted the founders to call it quits Thursday, a promise made and broken previously.

On campus, the Fight Club founders are not the only ones asking, “What’s wrong with boxing?”

“Look at Sen. [Orrin] Hatch. He was a boxer when he was our age,” said 23-year-old finance major David Jarvi. “Back in those days boxing was OK, but in today’s politically correct way of living you have to watch out.”

Jarvi, who moved to Utah three years ago to serve his Mormon mission--two years of door-to-door recruiting for the church--ruled out participating in an underground boxing bout but conceded that watching one would be interesting.

Television footage aired this week of two blond, long-haired women swinging wildly at each other, while about 300 students watch and cheer, shocked even the most tolerant.

It also heightened the media frenzy.

“I feel like everybody is out to get me,” said 20-year-old Amber Davis, one of the women in the video clip broadcast by a Salt Lake television station.

“The media is trying to make BYU students and the church look bad, and they’re not,” Amber said. “They hold very good religious values. Nowhere in the code does it say we can’t fight.”

Davis said she receives 10 calls a day from reporters seeking insider information on the club and said her conversation with an AP reporter was her last interview unless she got paid.

“It’s a little town, and there’s not much going on. You can snowboard and then do your homework and then what?” said Amber, who was a Utah Valley State College student at the time of the fight and is now taking one class at BYU.

Davis said she got dragged into the fighting one night when she was watching two guys go at it in a friend’s backyard.

“The guys just started chanting, ‘We want a chick fight, we want a girls’ fight,’ ” Davis said. “So I put on boxing gloves and fought.”

University officials, meanwhile, are keeping a low profile.

“We strongly discourage students from participating because of the safety issue,” said spokeswoman Carri Jenkins. “But we think it should be dealt with by local authorities.”