Beyond Boxing

The fun and games of a boxing weigh-in.

Without doubt, Moses Itauma is a special talent and you sense his moment will arrive soon. The hope is that his career lasts a long time and that means he has the pressure of remaining hungry, dedicated and in love with the sport. What a good feeling it is to see big shows, in big arenas, in the UK. You cannot beat that atmoshere.

Geopolitics have really accelerated the boxing recession. Everyone is fighting for the last few dollars left on the table, but the fans aren't buying into all of it this time.

The fact that Mayweather-Pacquiao II is the biggest fight in boxing says everything about the mess boxing has become since they left the scene. Had we had the fights we deserved, maybe we wouldn't be watching this. But, respect to both men for never letting their standards drop and still being legitmate top 10 welterweights at their age.

Boxing is dog-eat-dog. Not many boxers get the opportunity to do the eating, but Conor Benn did. Watch the Matchroom Mujaheddin start attacking Conor, for their heroes and masters...

There’s clearly a lot more to this Conor Benn and Matchroom relationship than we are being led to believe because Conor would’ve made good money with Matchroom, and so for him to leave and move to Zuffa, and essentially relocate his whole career to the United States tells us that maybe the garden wasn’t as rosy as people made out. You never saw them being particularly close which is always a red flag. It’s the same with Anthony Joshua so you feel like Conor Benn moving to Zuffa Boxing has left Match very exposed and very devoid of star power in the UK.

It’s very hard if not impossible to to fight someone you’ve looked up to for a long time and Teofimo Lopez faced that challenge against Stevenson. He had to fight someone he knew was more skilled more experienced and an all-round better fighter. The sad part about it is he did nothing different to what he would’ve done had he fought anybody else a mistake that Stevenson prayed upon and that mistake made the fight very easy for Stevenson. People will now think less of Teofimo, but he remains a good fighter. It is just in the big moments, he’s not able to maximise his talent and that’s something he has to address.

The grass is rarely greener than where you are right now. Daniel Dubois has perhaps learned that lesson. In life, there is value in committing and building partnerships and legacies, which Daniel and Don Charles have a chance to do.

Dalton Smith has brought hope to Sheffield and this could be a new dawn for Yorkshire boxing. But... the big story is the fall-out from the movie Giant. Whichever side you go for just know that these relationships are more complex than we can ever learn from video interviews. What we can say is that both men will look at that period and know they could have handled the whole situation better.

The UK-Africa boxing experiment has been a disaster. It smells of colonialism, or at bet, a cynical cash-grab without having to invest in UK fighters. But, it points to the desperation these promoters have to make money at all costs, no matter how much damage it does to the brand.

When you carry on like Andrew Tate and you say the things that he says, the only way you should ever lose a fight is on your shield. You can never go out soft, the world will not allow you to go out soft after everything you have said. On Saturday night, we saw Andrew Tate go out soft he looked very hollow looked very weak, looked very human, very average and all he did in fighting Chase Demoor that way was give all of his opponents the ammunition they needed. Probably wasn’t the smartest decision.

When it’s all said and done, moments like this Jake Paul v Anthony Joshua circus will be the moment Boxing lost it soul. For generations, we were able to tell the public that the sport was so hard you had to be a specialist in this thing we called Boxing. We told people it took years of mastery. It took a very tough human being. It took a very special individual to be able to compete in Boxing and I think in the space of seven years the influencer community is showing us that actually it doesn’t. Boxing is not that special and once Boxing lost that tag of being special, the commercial opportunity started to filter away because it just became a murky corrupt sport where people seem to want to launder money in and out of the sport…and now we’re here.