SUCCESSES, FAILURES AND ODDITIES

Other Rumbles and Thrillas Eubank of Arabia

WHILE the Rumble in the Jungle remains the biggest fight in the most unusual location, there were plenty of big heavyweight bouts in the ’70s that strayed far from the sport’s typical stomping grounds.

Probably the sport’s second-most iconic tagline was the Thrilla in Manila, the concluding part of Ali’s tumultuous trilogy with Joe Frazier. Unlike Zaire, the Philippines has a long and proud boxing history, but even so, it was an odd location for a world heavyweight title fight. Similarly to the Rumble, the fight was bankrolled by a dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, seeking to burnish his regime’s reputation.

Ali also fought in the unusual settings of Switzerland (vs Juergen Blin, December 26, 1971), Japan (vs Mac Foster, April 1, 1972), Indonesia (vs Rudi Lubbers, October 20, 1973) and Malaysia (vs Joe Bugner, October 1, 1975). Meanwhile, George Foreman had beaten Frazier in Jamaica (January 22, 1973), José Roman in Japan (September 1, 1973) and Ken Norton in Venezuela (March 26, 1974) prior to his date with Ali.

WHILE the United Arab Emirates is a fast-rising fight destination nowadays, it had never staged a professional boxing show prior to Chris Eubank’s March 1997 stoppage win over Camilo Alarcon of Colombia in Dubai.

This followed an even more unusual excursion five months earlier to Egypt, which had also never before hosted pro boxing. There, Eubank knocked out Argentinian Luis Dionisio Barrera.

Both fights were mismatches, poorly received by their host nations, and financial flops. Cash-strapped and coming off successive defeats, the now self-promoted Eubank had hoped to simultaneously reinvigorate his career and tap into a new market. Neither happened, and Eubank called off planned bouts in Jordan, Kuwait and Morocco.

Socialist revolutions

GERMANY is now a boxing superpower, but professional sport was once banned in its communist East. Unification in 1990 saw a wave of new pros who had excelled as amateurs, led by Henry Maske and Axel Schulz. This spurred a Germany-wide appetite for pro boxing, as the country went from an average of 20-30 post-war shows per year to well over 100 annually since the mid-2000s.

Similarly, pro boxing in Russia has thrived since its introduction in 1989. Always an amateur powerhouse, it was inevitable professional champions would follow. The paid code has been a commercial success, too, with an average 68 shows a year since 2000. Most big-name Russians have fought at home, and even some A-list foreigners have appeared there.

North Korea had four pro boxing shows between 2006 and 2008. They were mostly off limits to the outside world, but did involve several foreign boxers and some WBC women’s title fights. Jamaican Alicia Ashley, who fought there in 2005, reports large crowds of ticket-buying locals were in attendance.

Kingdoms and cults

Despite concerns over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, promoters have found it difficult to turn down the millions on offer there. The kingdom is not taking the bottom-up approach; rather it is going allin with some massive fight nights, such as Anthony Joshua v Andy Ruiz II in 2019 and Callum Smith vs George Groves in 2018. Amir Khan has fought there, too, as has Tyson Fury, albeit in a wrestling match.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, but of much lower key, was the bizarre run of shows in Yemen between 2011 and 2015. They were all headlined by a character called Ali Raymi, who despite being a strawweight in his late 30s, amassed a perfect record of 25-0 (25). Raymi fought nobody you’d ever heard of, in front of mere dozens, but developed a cult following online. Raymi was killed in a bombing in 2015 and there have been no Yemeni boxing shows since.

Coining it during Covid

THE coronavirus pandemic forced promoters to come up with inventive workarounds to keep their boxers busy and businesses going. From bubbles to back gardens, the sport sputtered along with no or few fans in attendance.

But even a financial powerhouse like Matchroom couldn’t continue in that vein indefinitely, so when Dillian Whyte’s rematch with Alexander Povetkin went ahead in March last year, it did so in front of a small but appreciative crowd in Gibraltar. The promotion was so well received by the tiny British Overseas Territory – with a population smaller than the capacity of many sports stadiums – that it made special £2 coins to commemorate the occasion.

High farce in Hong Kong

LONG before Bob Arum tried to crack the Chinese market via Macau, he was embroiled in a fiasco in neighbouring Hong Kong in 1994. High Noon in Hong Kong was to be a stacked pay-per-view featuring Herbie Hide vs Tommy Morrison, Frank Bruno vs Ray Mercer, Steve Collins vs Lonnie Beasley and Rafael Ruelas vs Billy Schwer. But the brains behind it, a British entertainment and sports mogul called John Daly, who 20 years earlier had co-promoted the Rumble in the Jungle, failed to come up with the cash guarantees and the event was cancelled at 5.30pm on the evening of the show after Arum, Barry Hearn and Mickey Duff all withdrew their boxers.