Boxing & The Search For A Fair Fight

Boxing & The Search For A Fair Fight

By Garry White

If the bull wasn’t drugged, gnarled and docile, his proud horns clipped, I reckon I could get into Bullfighting. But it would only be a matter of time before the blood and gore would lay heavy on my stomach as the elaborate braid of the preening matador got shredded with human Rioja. At least it would be a fair fight though. Surely, if the human gets to bring a sword to this pseudo-masculine party, then the Bull should at least be in possession of his full one-tonne arsenal. 

The same goes for foxhunting and all the other blood sport, tweed, port wine, Purdey toting countryside shenanigans. Make it a fair fight and I’m in. Get those foxes up on their hind legs, with their hacking jackets and certificates in ‘cunning’ from Oxford University, arm them with the same tools and intellect, and I think I could definitely be in. Yet I think the average participant still prefers their blood sport to be conducted with somebody else’s blood, and now where is the fun in that…

So regrettably, as it stands, I’m out. The basic unfairness of a catchweight contest offends me. Even allowing for the fact that this is how boxing was largely conducted prior to its pre-twentieth century zenith. Two men of varying weight and carrying different levels of permanent injury stalking one another for the delectation of aristocratic and two-bob street urchin gamblers alike. Wherever there’s a ‘toff’ you’re likely to find an animal, vegetable or human taking a right royal pasting. Check out all the Lord’s and Right Honourable’s that traditionally found their names on the Boxing Board’s letterhead. 

The term ‘First blood’ even finds its origin in this regency bloodletting of pugilistica. Surely, it’s only a matter of time before Paddy Power and the lads bring it back? You’ll find it there among the specials. Make it a latter-day ‘Spot the Ball’ and see if you can pin the tail on the exact position of the laceration. You laugh. Give it time.

If an adult entertainer [polite description]/faux boxer can bring a coffin to a press conference and then suggest that this will be the future address of her opponent, then surely nothing can be considered off-limits any longer. Boxing in an ultimate display of rampant free-market laissez-faire economics has opened its doors to literally every chancer to hang their hat on it. 

It’s as if Mike Ashley had purchased the sport and was treating it to the full Lonsdale, Donnay or Karrimor treatment. Produce any garish old tat, stick a once respected label on it, and then watch its golden sheen gradually turn your hand green. 

It’s depressing, but in the words of Chazz Palminteri in ‘A Bronx tale’: “No one cares.”

But sometimes the sport needs to throw a bone at those of us that truly respect it. We need to see less hollow, shouty pantomime press conferences, that promise the world and then deliver as much action as a feather dropping onto a millpond. We need to see more 50/50 fights; even 80/20 would be an improvement against the 100% nailed-on certainty of the fayre on cards up and down the country. If I could summon the motivation, I would love to run some stats on how many times a home fighter has lost a challenge for a {perpetually) vacant Silver, intercontinental or International belt. If it runs beyond low single-digit percentage points, I will be amazed. Yet Saturday night primetime is filled to the brim with these. 

Give us more English, Celtic or area titles instead. This is where the genuine hunger resides; home to the real raging bull’s away from the rarefied climes of protected prospects cutting their teeth on flown-in opponents. The type of flatliners who have left every shred of their ambition absentmindedly next to their Gideon’s bible back on the chipped bedside table of their three-star hotel.

Because it’s there just below the realm of television in the blank tumbleweed landscape of the small hall that so many of the real fights are happening. Men operating in a hardscrabble world for flimsy pay cheques, burning every last drop of sweat for the elusive big time of a television show. In that ragtag world there still exists a sport that the black and white protagonists of yesteryear would recognise and be proud to call their own.  

Yet the media are also complicit. I am not talking about the newspapers or even the BBC, all of whom have long removed their flag from boxing’s battlefield. They only rouse themselves now for the big heavyweight showdowns and a narrow clique of favoured high-profile combatants. They have moved on. Their gaze turned elsewhere, mostly to football and their pound-signed obsession with it. A sport that we all know was invented by Sky Sports in 1992 and is now served up to the tribal masses like overflowing bottles of Victory Gin.  

But I am talking more particularly about boxing’s ‘new’ media. The websites and internet platforms who instead of protecting the primacy of ‘real’ boxing scramble for the scraps absentmindedly dropped from the table of Jake Paul, KSI and others. To engage with it is perhaps understandable in this crowded internet age of toddler-sized attention spans. Kids are interested in it after all, and as we know interest translates as clicks. But to cover it as though it was a genuine sporting contest between skilled athletes is an unforgivable travesty.

They will claim that they are bringing interest to the sport. That they are creating new fans for the future, but I don’t buy any of it. The opposite is true: like vampires, they are sucking the last of the interest out of it. Because there is nowhere for this charade to go but further down as boxing becomes little more than a carnival sideshow. By the end of the journey, no one will know or remember what boxing was anymore. And everyone that projects this monstrosity willfully turns a blind eye, or seeks to profit from it is ultimately complicit. 

But the battle is a hopeless one when the ‘real’ sport rarely and only grudgingly presents its loyal support with proper meaningful contests. Ones where there is at least a faint whiff of hope for the away fighter. And even when they do have the temerity to upset the apple cart there is usually a cast of hometown judges seeking to ensure that like a Vegas casino: the house always wins.

The best thing that boxing could do is at least throw the unloved away corner a bone. I know they have an investment to protect but no one likes a mismatch. Be that in terms of weight, preparation time, or slanted officialdom. The next time a promoter gives the call to some faded, coulda been, or never was, overseas stooge, how about they look a bit closer to home instead.

Leisure centres and sports halls throughout the land have an abundance of talent both untapped and ignored. They continue to plough their unprofitable trade-in near anonymity. Surely, these able practitioners could do little worse. Maybe they could even win. 

But we can’t have that. Can we?

Photo Credit: Lawerence Lustig/Boxxer