Dark Times in Boxing?

Dark Times in Boxing? 

In the space of 7 days we will see two high profile fights with massive world wide audiences. This Saturday in Las Vegas Gennady Golovkin and Saul Alvarez clash again while a week later Anthony Joshua defends his world heavyweight titles against Alexander Povetkin at Wembley stadium.

Both fights of course have genuine interest in their own right and all the talk should be around the fights and the fighters, but sadly we all know the dark cloud that is hovering above both fights.

Alvarez and Povetkin as we know have very recently failed drug test issues which have been well documented. Both arguably shouldn’t be fighting period let alone in two of the biggest fights of the year.

The UFC after a string of failed drug tests involving some of it’s biggest stars a few years ago decided it needed to change and they started working with USADA to clean up the sport.

While it’s far from a perfect system and certain flaws need to be ironed out but it’s a start and was something which needed to be done. The UFC is only one promotion in MMA and other promotions sadly haven’t followed the stance of the UFC.

This is also the problem with boxing, different world governing bodies make a unified way forward almost impossible. Alvarez and Povetkin have had their fair amount of bad press but they are just the ones who have been caught, others no doubt are still to be caught.

The issue is how serious is boxing in wanting to clean up the sport. Testing needs to be ramped up, any punishment needs to mean something and needs to deter others. The solution is actually pretty simple if costly, but I have my doubts there is a real will to do it at least on the scale that is needed.

Sadly I expect it will get worse before it gets better and that might be sooner rather than later. In just over a week’s time boxing might just have a situation where Alvarez and Povetkin are the new middleweight and heavyweight champions of the world and if that does happen, many in the sport may well decide that is the moment we need to change.