Latest editorial
Heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua
WRITING in the Irish Times recently, Johnny Watterson deftly opined that “Boxing has always been the wild west of sport. Its dark underbelly, the guaranteed blood and the questionable morality has always been a bestseller.”
Another way of putting this is that boxing is the primus inter pares – first among equals – of sports when it comes to existing in a moral vacuum, impervious to the norms of conventional society, its cultural taboos and even at times its laws.
And though, normally, much like a 15-year-old masturbating under the duvet, boxing’s less-than-savoury aspects are concealed from public view, they do on occasion emerge into the open, shocking the more naive while confirming what the more cynical either suspected or already knew.
A November 15 protest in Mexico – driven by a right-wing social-media operation – has been miscast as a mass uprising against President Sheinbaum. In reality, the march was small, elite-backed and part of a wider attempt to sow unrest, argues DAVID RABY
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