We have heard it all before.
With all the controversy of Josh Taylor’s win over Jack Catterall last weekend, the problems of boxing have been brought right to the surface yet again, with the spotlight shining brightly on its indiscretions.
The absolutely bizarre scoring done by judges is nothing new in the sport, as the favoured champion who is deemed to be more marketable and has more weight behind their name, often comes out on top, regardless of their performance in the ring.
(Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)Throw in the fact that the best fighters rarely even fight each other, or that you have to endure a decade of posturing and empty promises before seeing two rivals finally get into the ring (like Amir Khan and Kell Brook a fortnight ago), anyone can see that boxing is clearly in a bad place.
17 weight divisions, with four legitimate world champions at each weight class, makes it almost impossible to follow, and now, on top of everything else, the fake ‘retirement’ is yet another annoyance for fight fans to deal with.
Tyson Fury has said that that his upcoming title defence against Dillian Whyte will be his last ever fight – a sentence I struggle to even type without my eyes doing a full 360 into the back of my head.
(Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)This latest cringey tactic by boxers is an attempt to stay relevant, make people miss you by taking yourself out of the equation, and then drive your asking price up in fight negotiations, by claiming that the money would need to be ‘spectacular’ to bring you out of retirement.
It’s also a salesman ploy, so that the fight can be marketed as ‘Fury’s last ever bout’ and the tickets become a ‘must-have’, otherwise you will never get the opportunity to see him live again.
You only have to look at the situation he is in to see that this is obviously a load of crap – he never wanted to fight Dillian Whyte in the first place.
(Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)He always claimed that he would win all of the belts and beat Anthony Joshua in an all-British super fight. To do the first of these quests, he needed to fight current unified world champion, Oleksandr Usyk, but that couldn’t be arranged due to the Ukrainian’s commitment to give Joshua a rematch.
Fury has actively and consistently said he had little interest in fighting his mandatory challenger, Dillian Whyte, so why is he fulfilling this obligation if he was going to retire anyway?
All fight fans want to see, is the best vs the best, but we are consistently robbed of this because of contract negotiations, sanctioning bodies, promotors, mandatory obligations, and let’s just be honest, sheer greed.
(Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)Boxing is the toughest sport in the world, and fighters deserve to be paid as much as they can while they risk everything in the ring, but this charade of already-made millionaires, claiming they would fight each other in the car park on any given day, but refusing to step into the ring because it won’t be their name that comes up first on the posters, is laughable.
“This is the final fight of my career, I’m retiring after this, $150m in the bank, healthy, young, I’m gonna buy a massive yacht abroad. I’m retiring, I’m out, this is my final fight, I’m done.”
In a world where nothing is certain, you can be safe in the secure knowledge that this will not be Tyson Fury’s last fight – a fact that you can take the bank, because sure as hell he is.
