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Tyson Fury
SCOUR the annals of heavyweight boxing since Mike Tyson departed the sport and you’ll be hard pressed to find a fight with a backstory as compelling as the one accompanying the championship contest between former lineal champion Tyson Fury and current WBC champion Deontay Wilder, scheduled for 12 rounds at the Staple Centre in downtown Los Angeles tonight.
Fury, as anyone who’s maintained even a casual interest in the sport in recent years knows, is not a fighter given to moderation. Neither in nor out of the ring has the 6’9” 30-year-old switch-hitting giant ever gone about his business with the quiet robot-like professionalism of a man whose every word is scripted and configured at the behest of managers, advisers and a PR machine with a beady eye on marketability.
Instead, where the self-styled Gypsy King is concerned, the crash, bang, wallop approach has never been better served, even though it has cost him dearly in the past.
Mary Kom’s fists made history in the boxing world. Malak Mesleh’s never got the chance. One story ends in glory, the other in grief — but both highlight the defiance of women who dare to fight, writes JOHN WIGHT
The Khelif gender row shows no sign of being resolved to the satisfaction of anyone involved anytime soon, says boxing writer JOHN WIGHT
When Patterson and Liston met in the ring in 1962, it was more than a title bout — it was a collision of two black archetypes shaped by white America’s fears and fantasies, writes JOHN WIGHT
In the land of white supremacy, colonialism and the foul legacy of the KKK, JOHN WIGHT knows that to resist the fascism unleashed by Trump is to do God’s work
