Is it time BOXING hung up its gloves?

A 25-year-old who died after his brain was moved 13mm in a fight seems to sum up everything wrong with the brutal sport. But there are good reasons, argues the author of this absorbing book, why millions still love it...

‘People think boxing is a stupid person’s sport, but it demands very high-level thinking’

‘The reality is that, win or lose, you are going to get punched in the face’

Death Of A Boxer Pete Carvill

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On September 29, 2016, at the Radisson Blu hotel in Glasgow, Scottish boxer Mike Towell suffered his first ever defeat, the referee stopping the fight in the fifth round. Shortly afterwards, Towell collapsed. Doctors laid the 25-year-old on the floor of the ring and administered oxygen. Treatment continued in an ambulance, though by now oxygen had to be administered via Towell’s nose because his jaw had clenched shut. A scan discovered a large bleed on the brain, the organ itself having shifted to the side by 13mm. Doctors decided that there was no point operating – the injury was simply not survivable. The following day, his family by his bedside, Mike Towell died.

The story, from Towell’s early career through to his funeral and its aftermath, is the structure on which boxing fan Pete Carvill hangs his superbly written book. As with all the most interesting subjects, answers about boxing are never simple, and Carvill undertakes an absorbing examination of the sport, its rewards and its dangers.

‘Boxing is hard at the beginning,’ he writes, ‘and increasingly merciless as you get older.’ And yet, the heavyweight championship of the world ‘is a phrase that sits in the veins’.

A trainer tells of parents bringing their children to the gym ‘so they can get them off the computer games and get some exercise’. Another argues that boxing ‘sounds rough, but it’s all a lesson in control’. He and his colleagues gradually see results: ‘We’ll get messages that they’re focusing better in school.’ ‘They run the clubs not because they love the sport,’ says Carvill, ‘but because they love the boys.’

That word ‘control’ is crucial. Masculinity has ‘the unfortunate potential to be twisted into something awful if not channelled or directed in the right way’. Fighters tend to be gentle – ‘when you spend your life getting hit, any meanness gets beaten out of you’.

We meet Swedish boxer Anthony Yigit, who speaks six languages, and his adviser, a London lawyer. ‘People think that boxing’s a stupid person’s sport,’ says the latter, ‘but actually it demands very high-level thinking.’ Even fighters who are not gifted academically need physical intelligence, the discipline and skill that ensures survival in a world where reaction times are measured in milliseconds.

Zoe Hunte-Smith, warming up before a fight at London’s legendary York Hall, displays the professional’s habit of keeping her fingers loose as a punch is thrown, ‘only snapping them shut at the end of their arc’.

I was reminded of the press conference at which British middleweight Herol ‘Bomber’ Graham had his hands tied behind his back, then invited journalists to try and land a punch on his chin. No one could.

This level of precision is balletic, but the realities of life as a pro are brutal. Amateurs – even Olympic champions – only ever fight over three three-minute rounds, but pros must endure as many as 12. You start as a ‘prospect’, testing yourself against ‘journeymen’, fighters who are essentially being paid to lose, but only ever on points: their role is to teach you a thing or two.

Survive this stage (few do) and you progress to being a ‘contender’. Now you’re up against ‘gatekeepers’, who are ‘journeymen to the stars’. Get past them and you might just become a champion. But at any stage of the process, a single loss can set you back years, possibly finish you for good.

We see this happening in real time, as Brian Rose loses a contentious points decision, ‘I won’t come back from that. I had to win tonight’. Three months later, Carvill witnesses Rose’s next fight, ‘There is getting beaten, and then there is getting beaten up’. Even the weigh-ins can be a punishment. If a fighter is struggling to shed the final few ounces, they sometimes take a scalding bath, ‘getting out every 10 minutes or so to scrape a credit card down their arms and legs in order to carve away sweat’.

And the gloves you’d think are there to make things safer actually increase the risk – by cushioning the hand from the pain of connecting with an opponent’s skull, they allow punches to be harder.

If you were stupid enough to believe that boxers are stupid, you might assume that they’re blind to the dangers. Yet the most eloquent descriptions of just how damaging the sport can be come from fighters themselves, ‘The body forgets nothing you have done to it’… ‘the only time you have ever learnt your lesson is “too late”’ ...‘the reality is that, win or lose, you are going to get punched in the face’.

Of course there are safeguards. The referee’s instructions at the beginning of every fight include the order, ‘Protect yourself at all times’.

Boxers must pass regular medicals, and it was only by repeatedly lying to doctors about headaches and seizures (possibly linked to epilepsy) that Mike Towell prolonged his career to its fatal conclusion. The signs were sometimes there in training, when his ‘punches missed by postcodes’. But then he would win again.

In the end, the decision of when to retire, or whether to box in the first place, must belong to the individual. Zoe Hunte-Smith calls her chosen sport ‘a drug that never leaves you’. Who is anyone else to impose their own choice on her?

Many sports can kill. And many sports can cause brain trauma – look at the current debate about headers in football. But it is the cumulative damage that singles boxing out for special attention. One fighter says that he would only let his young son take up the sport if he was fully committed. ‘This is not a sport that you play. People get hurt in this.’

Carvill himself used to box, until a headache after a sparring session at the age of 35 told him it was time to stop. He still feels guilt as a spectator for enjoying ‘the sight of these people damaging themselves and one another’. But that doesn’t stop him loving the sport. Indeed, he calls the book a series of ‘love songs to those who ready themselves to be tested in the ring and who grow from the experience’. Like all the best love stories, it’s complicated.