There is nothing more political than the tired mantra that sport and politics don’t mix. It is a mantra spouted by those who operate on the basis of see no evil and hear no evil, just so long as the money keeps rolling in, and is a recipe for acquiescence in the status quo no matter the injustice or oppression or brutality that such a status quo enshrines and involves.

Probably more than any other sport, boxing has been a consistent and constant barometer of prevailing social mores, political conditions and cultural values in any given space and time. The careers of Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali, to name three prominent examples, were saturated in the politics of their respective eras, as was Barry McGuigan’s on this side of the Atlantic, with the legacies they established and left behind all the more significant and enduring as a consequence.

Whether or not Anthony Joshua’s legacy is permanently trashed by agreeing to make Saudi Arabia the location of his highly anticipated rematch against Andy Ruiz Jr it’s still too soon to say. But it is undeniably tarnished by it. More importantly the reputation of heavyweight boxing, already damaged due to recent drug scandals, is tarnished by it.

During the initial press conference on Monday to formally announce the date and venue of the Joshua v Ruiz Jr rematch, held in the sumptuous environs of London’s Savoy Hotel and at which neither fighter was present, Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn proclaimed, “This event [in Saudi Arabia] could change boxing forever.”

Without evincing the least tincture of irony, in this one sentence the Essex based head of Matchroom Boxing voiced words more profound that he could probably ever come close to being able to comprehend. Because without any hyperbole or exaggeration, the mountain of money this fight is guaranteed to generate will in the truest be blood money.

And not the usual lower case b-blood money that’s commonly associated with a sport that involves two men slugging it out in a ring either. In this case we’re talking upper case B-blood money; specifically the ocean of it spilled by a barbaric despotic regime at home and also for the past four years across its southern border in Yemen.

Neither Eddie Hearn or Anthony Joshua have at time of writing elected to address the issues raised as a result of holding the fight in Saudi Arabia; issues raised by the likes of Amnesty International, which has called for Joshua to do some research into conditions in the country and use his considerable platform to speak out about the Saudi regime’s grim human rights record. 

This is to his and their discredit.

The one saving grace in what has rapidly turned into an imbroglio may well be Andy Ruiz Jr, whose response to Hearn’s press conference announcing the date and place of the rematch was a public statement of his own in which he made clear that as far he’s concerned the fight will not be taking place anywhere other than the US. Hearn’s response to Ruiz’s stance is a threat of legal action over breach of contract, based on the rematch clause the Mexican world champion, fighting out of California, signed in advance of the first fight.

But what is a rematch clause compared to the three belts that Ruiz now holds after beating Joshua in emphatic style at Madison Square Garden in May? He is the current world champion, after all, so why is it that since the first fight he still finds himself being treated as an extra in the AJ story?

If Ruiz and his team stick to their guns and refuse to go to Saudi Arabia for the rematch, does Hearn seriously believe that suing him will do anything other than elevate Ruiz’s standing in the sport while diminishing his own? 

Andy Ruiz Jr is as real and authentic as they come. Anthony Joshua on the other hand is a fighter who increasingly comes across as being afflicted with a chronic case of money disease. Yes, this is prize fighting, wherein generating money is a prime motive. But surely there is a line across which integrity becomes a foreign land. And surely protecting the integrity of the sport must be a priority for all those who are involved in it from the lowest to the highest level, lest it descend into the gutter. 

Ali crossed the line a couple of times in his career, it should be said. He crossed it when he agreed to Don King’s proposal to face George Foreman in Zaire (today’s Democratic Republic of Congo), which at the time was ruled by the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who 13 years earlier had been party to the vile murder of Patrice Lumumba. Ali also crossed in by fighting Joe Frazier in Manila in 1975, capital of the Philippines, which at the time was ruled by the dictator and kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos.

But at least Ali had to his name by then a vast hinterland of integrity to draw on over his stance on the war in Vietnam and as an unfailing champion of black pride and self-assertion in the teeth of entrenched racial oppression in America throughout the 1960s. 

Anthony Joshua has no such hinterland to boast of. Indeed nothing like it. Which is why on his current trajectory he’s in danger of establishing the legacy of a fighter who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.