RECENTLY dipping back into a collection of Hugh McIlvanney’s boxing columns confirmed that when the then 82-year-old called time on his decades-long career as the sport’s finest chronicler in 2016, he left a yawning gap that will never be filled.

The man was so gifted, his writing so sublime, that rather than privileged to be ringside at all the classic fights of the late 20th century, involving some of the greatest fighters and biggest personalities the sport has produced, it was instead boxing’s privilege to have him there recording the drama, its highs and lows, with the artistry of a Van Gogh before he cut his ear off. 

Just absorb the majesty of the opening sentences of McIlvanney’s account of the “Thrilla In Manila” between Ali and Frazier in 1975: “It takes a rare purity of spirit to irrigate the moral and aesthetic desert that is forever threatening to engulf the world of heavyweight boxing. What we saw in Quezon City, capital of the Philippines, in midweek represented a shining flood of that purity.”