THE YEAR BOXING GOT BACK UP OFF THE CANVAS
From fights in Eddie Hearn’s garden to Anthony Joshua’s destructive return, 2020 was...
The abolitionists almost had their way with boxing in this time of Covid-19. Almost but not quite, despite the amateurs being plunged deeper into the dark than theatres and the noble art being denied so much as a penny of the billions in funding lavished by the Government on almost every other activity they could think of.
Did nobody in his adolescent Cabinet think to advise Bruiser Boris that boxing is the second most popular sport with the male population of this country? And with a growing following among women, too?
Getting behind King Football served this Prime Minister’s populist agenda but Mr Johnson missed a trick here. The evidence is still in front of him. Boxing has survived through lockdown after knockdown.
Leading promoters Frank Warren and eddie hearn kept punching away, often biting the bullet of financial loss simply because the shows must go on.
Their fighters kept climbing through the ropes whenever they had the chance, swallowing blood and purse cuts as they did so.
Fasted die perched a ring in his essex back garden with its hill- top views of London. Doyen Frank hired the cloisters of Church house in the reverent shadow of Westminster Abbey, its august splendour posted with requests for us to refrain from swearing.
Around the country such valiants as Mick hennessy and Dennis hobson kept the flag flying, the latter innovatively bringing the drive-in to ringside.
Through it all Robert Smith, general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, kept beavering away for his sport to be given the same right as others to stage events under strictly sanitised conditions.
Thus the hard old game fought on throughout a year ignited by Tyson Fury’s explosive beginning, to Anthony Joshua’s belated reappearance.
For this correspondent, 2020 began in earnest with a trip across the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama’s famed Crimson Tide college football team. There to meet the most devastating puncher since Mike Tyson.
Deontay Wilder’s dynamite power would not be enough to deter Fury a few days later. On February 22 in Las Vegas, the Gypsy King stunned the world by fulfilling his own prediction that he would smash the also undefeated Bronze Bomber to smithereens. he did just that inside seven blistering rounds, becoming world heavyweight champion a second time as the towel fluttered in from the American’s corner. That should have given lift-off to a momentous year for British prize-fighting. There were a handful of looseners lower down the order but then clang, down came the coronavirus curtain. Scott Quigg, whose absolute dedication made him Bury’s only world champion, heard it the loudest and retired. Not until August did this green and increasingly unpleasant land see anything approaching a major fight. And then Alexander Povetkin went and knocked Dillian Whyte into dreamland in hearn’s back yard — and off his nominal perch as
No 1 contender for Fury’s WBC heavyweight title. hit the pause button, again. There was a disturbance of the force in the US early in October as Vasyl Lomachenko — Luke Campbell had found out for himself why the Ukrainian was then widely regarded as the best boxer in the world — lost his unified world lightweight titles to young sensation Teofimo Lopez.
On the last day of that month, Oleksandr Usyk boxed the ears off Derek Chisora to put his spoke into the complexity of the world heavyweight championship picture. Could Ukraine’s former undisputed cruiserweight champion yet be next for Joshua instead of Fury in that long- awaited mega- fight? hopefully not.
November saw two Brits at the opposite ends of their careers run into big trouble. Kell Brook’s fourth- round stoppage by
Terence Crawford the master mastercraftsman seems to leave Sheffield’s Special K with nowhere worthwhile to go, unless he can finally lure Amir Khan into the opposite corner.
Then potential heavyweight star Daniel Dubois suffered the first defeat of his young career. The persistent jab of former Olympic silver medallist Joe Joyce forced him into a 10th round retirement in their British title fight with a broken socket of his gargoyle left eye. As Dubois headed into an abeyance of six months’ surgery for multiple fractures, Joyce also edged closer to world heavyweight contention.
Later that night the circus came to La-La town as two legends now fast approaching senior citizenship in America came out of retirement. Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr boxed to an eight- round draw which, although it was sold as an exhibition match, drew a bigger pay- per- view audience than anything else in these 12 months.
But it has to be said that these grand 50- somethings still look more like real boxers than the YouTube celebrities who also drew big virtual audiences. Sadly, Floyd Mayweather is trading into that farce by taking on one of those Paul brothers for a few million more in the new year. Normal service resumed this month as Joshua came out of pandemic mothballs to treat the first live, albeit small, crowd allowed back into boxing halls to an eye-catching knockout of Kubrat Pulev.
Less happily for the UK the year’s action has ended with Callum Smith, the youngest and best of Liverpool’s four boxing brothers, being overwhelmed by Canelo Alvarez in the San Antonio Alamodome fight for the WBA and WBC world super-middleweight titles.
So much for a six-inch height advantage, heavier natural weight and reach longer than the best of pickpockets when coming up against the Mexican great who now stands atop the pound- for- pound world rankings.
So it ends as Canelo’s year. It has been the year of the pandemic. It has also been a year tarnished by farce.
But with that dramatic battering of Wilder, his ongoing campaign for mental health, his front- cover accolade as Ring magazine’s fighter of 2020 and a personality far bigger than that BBC award which he punched through the ropes, this is very much the year of Tyson Luke Fury.