To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.

The line uses deadpan, absurd comparison—typical of Jack Handey’s humor—to puncture the lofty metaphor that boxing is “like ballet.” By stripping ballet of the very elements that define it (music and choreography) and then adding violence (“the dancers hit each other”), the joke exposes how superficial such analogies can be. It also plays on the idea that both activities involve disciplined movement, timing, and performance, yet the lived experience and purpose are radically different. The humor comes from the speaker’s earnest tone while making an obviously nonsensical equivalence, turning a cliché into a comic deflation of pretension.