Root and Stokes grind down weary India to stretch lead beyond 100

OVER these past couple of weeks the good, the bad and the ugly of boxing has been on display as never before in such technicolour detail.
The good was provided by the much anticipated welterweight undisputed clash between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence at the Fortress in Las Vegas on July 29. Both fighters climbed into the ring as products of the kind of adversity you would instantly associate with a cliched Rocky script.
From the unforgiving streets of Omaha, Nebraska, Crawford is a man who survived being shot in the head one night in 2008 while sitting in his car counting the cash he’d just won from shooting dice under a street lamp. The guy who shot him was a sore loser, clearly, yet as Crawford later tells it: “It was my own fault. I should’ve taken the money and gotten out of there, instead of waiting to count it in the car.”

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