Boxing has always been a flawed and dangerous game – the emergence of Daniel Kinahan is no betrayal of the sport
The footage is horrible, harrowing, traumatic. All the same, you can’t look away. The scene is the Regency hotel in Dublin in February 2016, the event a nondescript weigh-in before the big fight the following night. There’s terrible rock music playing. A couple of gormless-looking bald men standing on the podium bearing clipboards. A local cruiserweight called Gary Sweeney steps on to the scales in blue Superman briefs. The gormless bald men peer forward and write on their clipboards. Sweeney steps aside. All of a sudden, we hear the whip-crack of an assault rifle.
At which point, a lot of things happen at once. There’s breaking glass, chairs being overturned. We see a blurred Sweeney, still in his briefs, desperately fleeing for safety through a side door. Through the pop-pop of bullets and the din of grown men shouting, a single piercing child’s voice: “Daddy, what was that?” Within minutes the gunmen have departed, leaving one man dead and two wounded. But the main target of the attack, according to Irish police, has already left the building. Daniel Kinahan will live to fight another day.
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