From bad blood in Cardiff to Tyson Fury’s closest call, via a Stormzy ring walk, half a dozen British feuds settled in the ringThis was the first time two British boxers contested a version of the world heavyweight title, but the buildup turned ugly with a two-word insult: “Uncle Tom”. Lennox Lewis denied using the slur but Frank Bruno insisted it came from inside Lewis’s camp and it increased the bad blood between the aloof WBC champion and national treasure Big Frank. Continue reading...
Even the challenger’s win couldn’t ruin the atmosphere among a raucous 68,000 crowd at Tottenham Hotspur StadiumSpeak to those who were lucky enough to be at fights in this country and elsewhere at the height of the pandemic and many will tell you they did not feel that lucky at all. As was the case in other sports, the lack of spectators made for an eerie experience, but in boxing it also led to something altogether more disturbing – the sound of pain.You could hear every punch. Every thud to the chest, every crack to the head, and while as a journalist or general observer you know those echoes are always there amid the heat of battle it was unappealing,...
Boxing has always been a flawed and dangerous game – the emergence of Daniel Kinahan is no betrayal of the sportThe 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...
When international sport comes to the Arabian kingdom it must be with a raised voice on issues of human freedomAs Saturday night spilled into Sunday morning in Saudi Arabia, something unusual happens. The shrieking bass line of House of Pain’s Jump Around starts pumping out across the Diriyah stadium, where Anthony Joshua’s heavyweight showdown against Andy Ruiz Jr is about to begin. A few people stand up. Then several more. And suddenly hundreds of men and women in traditional dress are pogoing and waving their hands in delirium.This, to put it mildly, is not something one expects to see in a country that is a byword for patriarchy and religious extremism. But when I speak to one local, he tells...
Anthony Joshua’s fight in Saudi Arabia this week once more raises questions about the choice of venue for big eventsTwo scenes. Two British sporting icons. Variations on a theme. Scene one: a supremely jet-lagged Anthony Joshua in a Heathrow hotel in September. After several softballs about his rematch with Andy Ruiz Jr, the question finally comes. Why fight in Saudi Arabia when Amnesty International says the regime is using you to sportswash its “abysmal” human rights record that includes using public beheadings as a weapon to crush dissent?“I appreciate them voicing an opinion,” replies Joshua, before stressing he is not a superhero who can zap away the world’s problems by donning a cape. When pressed, he mumbles something about “reforms”...