The Dark Side of Boxing

The Dark Side of Boxing

Two big fights in a week, two fights which delivered most of what we ask for inside the ring, but it’s what went on outside of the ring that leaves the bitter taste that all too often goes hand in hand with the sport.

Gennady Golovkin and Saul Alvarez gave us the kind of high-quality savage beauty we rarely see and Anthony Joshua and Alexander Povetkin provided further drama in the ever-increasing re-emergence of a revitalised heavyweight division. But both fights were over-shadowed by failed drug tests and perceived insufficient punishments and you could argue with much justification that Alvarez and Povetkin had no place being any part of such massive events.

A fight like Golovkin and Alvarez shouldn’t leave me cold, but sadly it did, Alvarez having his raised didn’t help my mood. When Alvarez got the decision, one I felt he didn’t deserve, I remember just shaking my head and not just because of the judge’s verdict on an admittedly close fight. I just can’t feel the same about Alvarez anymore, there will always now be doubt, about what he did prior to his failed tests and what is still yet to come.

Povetkin is exactly the same, a career in my mind that is tarnished forever. Before the first bell of his failed bid to relieve Joshua of his heavyweight belts, I thought Povetkin who was attired in a black robe, looked like a Sith Lord, was he so blatantly representing the dark side of the sport I wondered. When the fight started after his good start I thought the ‘wrong’ man would be again having his hand raised. But unlike the fight in Las Vegas the week previous, the judges were not needed to decide the outcome, the fists of Joshua delivered their own brand of justice.

In the same week, Jon Jones the former UFC light heavyweight champion received a seemingly far too lenient 15-month ban for his second failed drug test. Jones will return to action in the near future, a title shot will be imminent. Brock Lesnar will soon be rewarded for no legitimate win in over 8 years and a recent failed drug test of his own, with a UFC heavyweight title shot.

Alvarez, Povetkin, Jones and Lesnar have all gone through the due process and are perfectly entitled to earn their living in both sports. Many will till turn a blind eye and forget the tainted history of all 4 fighters, hopefully, many more won’t.