Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s face in lights at the Riyadh Season in October 2021
WHEN in the 1970s high rollers arrived at the now extinct but then iconic Caesars Palace hotel and casino in Las Vegas, greeting them just inside its elaborate doors would be one Joe Louis. Louis’s appearance and role there as the hotel’s host marked an almighty fall from grace. That this former heavyweight world champion and sporting and cultural icon could be reduced to this in his twilight years was both insult and injury combined.
But, then, needs must and by now his ring earnings were long gone, lost to a penchant for living the high life and a hungry IRS which hunted him for unpaid taxes until his dying day in 1981. But, still, from former heavyweight world champion to shuffling novelty act at a Las Vegas hotel and casino? What cruel fate.
Fast forward to now, and Joe Louis has his modern-day equivalent in the personage of Roberto Duran. Duran is, as Louis was and remains, a genuine legend of the sport. His “Hands of Stone” ring name was more than justified during a career which saw him face the most formidable lightweights, welterweights, light middleweights, and middleweights not only of his, but of any era.
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
