Beyond Boxing

We’re so close to fight night, and this week has been a week or so many plot lines. From the status of Don Charles being debated to the tension between Willy Hutchinson and Joshua Buatsi, and the weigh-in on Friday was kind of a good moment to bring everything together.

Fans were in good spirit. The promoters in good spirit. The boxers were clearly focused and energised, and it made for a great spectacle.

Boxing wouldn’t get this kind of spectacle without the Saudi money being involved and at some point, we have to accept that their money is just as good as anyone’s money.

There is no question that Anthony Joshua is a massive favourite in this fight against Daniel Dubois.

From his experience, power, size and strangely enough skill, he has a lot of things over Daniel, but the real test is whether he still has the desire in his mid thirties to to be the man in the division again.

To do so he’ll have to stop Daniel Dubois in an emphatic performance in order for us to believe that he could beat Usyk or Tyson Fury.

But, there are many ways that Joshua can win and in this episode, we will focus on some of the keys to victory for Anthony Joshua.

There is an argument to say that Daniel Dubois has not lived up to the potential he had as a as an 18 or 19-year-old making his way in the professional ranks.

But, he has shown his resilience and ability to fight back from setbacks to finally become a world champion.

On September 21 he has the opportunity to cement his reputation as a genuine world Champion by beating Joshua, easily his hardest challenge.

Here’s how he can do it.

Does a promoter have the right to recoup their investment costs from the fighters?

Matchroom have spent a lot of money promoting Joe and get him to world title status and it looks like now Eddie is in for a cash out mode and Joe Cordina, while not necessarily happy with it, has to accept that this is just how it works in boxing.

This is a great opportunity to shake off some ring rust, and kind of feel my way back into recording.

Boxing is in a really interesting place. There’s a lot less money in boxing than there used to be and as such, you have more people chasing less money and we are starting to see the effect of that on both international and domestic boxing.

In August 2024 everybody is an expert on gender.

Everyone is quick to the label someone as trans when we don’t even have a workable definition of gender for sport.

We lack a workable test with workable thresholds. People talk about these matters like XX versus XY is that simple when, as a human race, we haven’t gender tested at scale ever and now were literally about to start gender testing women just to prove they are women.

Is there anything more degrading than that?

Deep down a lot of the men defending women in this case do so because of a sexist view of how fragile women are.

While there is juice in the lemon we will keep on squeezing.

I guess that’s the philosophy of boxing for where we are in 2024.

As long as these ageing stars can give us entertaining fights they will keep creating entertaining fights because the new generation it doesn’t seem that there up there yet and so I can understand the value in a Joe Joyce versus Derek Chisora.

Is Boxing in South London working?

Now, we have seen so many boxers from south London Chamberlain, Riakporhe, Azeez, Bentley, Cheeseman all winning titles, but we’ve never felt confident that, at the top level, we had guys that can do it.

In fact we haven’t had a guy we felt confident a boxer could dominate since David Haye.

Is that a sign that is the problems run deep in South London Boxing,

I think so.

So the Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney saga continues.

It now looks like both guys could be on the shelf for a whole year with Ryan Garcia serving a drug ban and Devin Haney, seemingly needing to get his whole life correct before he boxes again.

The sum total of it is, in the 140 pound division we’ve got chaos where we thought we were getting close to order and so for the next year we are going to get inundated with flights that we didn’t ask for but we’re going to get anyway.

Boxing is such a hard way to make money, but it’s an even harder way to build a singular proposition. What Turki is proposing to do in buying up promotional companies to create a boxing league is commercial madness.

It taps into the ongoing boxing saga of finding rich men and separating them from their money. The shameful thing is that people don’t see it coming. Boxing is so good at massaging egos, boosting peoples self-esteem, and then making them pay for the pleasure.