Boxing's series of unfortunate events: Part 1

Being a boxing fan is like being in the worst, most toxic relationship of your life but with a person who is way out of your league. They wrong you and they wrong you, then they wrong you again. But then you get a look at their beauty, and you think, “ah well, I’ll give it another go.”

Well, this last month or so has tested that as much as it has been tested in the decade or so that I have followed boxing closely. In these two articles I am going to run through four happenings in the world of boxing and use those to explain the cluster-something that is boxing.

That’s right, this last month has been so bad that I couldn’t fit all of the terrible things that happened into just one article.

Before we get into it though, I want to explain why this hurts so much.

Boxing was having a good 12 months. Canelo Alvarez and Devin Haney both unified divisions in the four-belt era, Fury v Wilder III was almost exactly a year ago and was an all-time classic, Terrence Crawford left Top Rank paving the way for the Spence fight and we have had 2 Usyk-Joshua fights. Things were good.

But this last month has been incredibly bad.

We’ll start with the Canelo-Golovkin trilogy fight. This was years too late. Having great fights years too late is kind of boxing’s MO in recent years but this one especially was infuriating. The first one was too late after years Canelo ducking Golovkin and then was a terrible decision and every fight since has been too late as a result. The fight was a fizzer. Golovkin just didn’t have the juice he once did.

A great fight, years too late, is the least of boxing’s problems though.

Let’s move now to the state of the heavyweight division. There are two heavyweights with belts at the moment. They are, without question, the two best heavyweights in the world. Their names are Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk.

(Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images)

In April, Fury demolished Dillian Whyte to retain the WBC heavyweight championship. After that fight he “retired” (narrator: he was not retired).

In August, Usyk beat the brakes off Anthony Joshua for a second time to retain the IBF, WBO and WBA heavyweight belts.

Provided Fury was not retired, which he obviously was not, there was no reason not to unify the heavyweight division for the first time since Lennox Lewis (albeit Lewis was the champ in the three-belt era, not the four-belt era. Simpler times).

Since then, Fury has plainly refused to fight Usyk, dubbing him a ‘middleweight’ not worth Fury’s time. Fury and his team negotiated publicly, instead, with Anthony Joshua’s team. A quick check of the record will show that Joshua has lost three of his last five and his last two losses were to Usyk. Why should Joshua get the shot at the titles?

Obviously, the answer is money above legacy, but it’s pure boxing bullshit. It is especially bad from a fighter who loves nothing more than talking about how he’d fight for free and how he gives away all of his purses to charity.

I will note that there is no evidence that he has ever done this, and his talk about how he doesn’t have to talk about all of his charity work really loses some weight when he’s constantly talking about all of his charity work.

Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder exchange punches during their WBC Heavyweight Championship title fight. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

Negotiating in public is basically a synonym for negotiating in bad faith in boxing and neither side covered themselves in glory. Predictably, an average fight that nobody wants appears to have fallen through. Instead of going to Usyk, who is clamouring for the Fury fight, Fury seems intent on fighting either Mahmoud Charr or Derek Chisora. Chisora is a big name in Britain but an easy mark for Fury.

Charr, on the other hand, have you ever heard of him? Me either. The biggest fight he’s ever been in was against Alexander Povetkin, who predictably demolished him. He’s never been a champion or even sniffed a real championship belt. If Fury fights anyone other than Usyk, it would be an unconscionable disaster.

If he fights Charr, it should be a crime. Charr has no business being in the ring with Fury.

Now, let’s move to Errol Spence versus Terrence Crawford, the Kmart version of Mayweather-Pacquaio. This is a great fight between two of the five or so best pound-for-pound fighters in the world. Previously there have been significant promotional issues (and a car crash that could have killed Spence) that have left the two fighters fighting reasonable opposition but never each other.

Put simply, without this fight there would be a gaping hole in both résumés.

Crawford finally left the Top Rank stables in November of 2021, with significant acrimony and a lawsuit, apparently paving the way for Spence and Crawford to happen in 2022. All of the reporting said that Spence versus Crawford was set for mid-late November of 2022 and that we were at the one-yard line.

Well, don’t get too excited in this sport. It appears that there may have been a goal line stand.

Crawford has, by all reporting, accepted perhaps the most absurd contract I have ever heard of at this level of boxing for a star of his magnitude. He has accepted no guarantee for the fight (for reference, in Canelo-GGG, Canelo was guaranteed US$45 million and Golovkin US$20 million).

Even the UFC gives (tiny) guarantees. Additionally, he has accepted that he will take a percentage of the net revenue of the event, not the gross. Given the amount of ‘creative accounting’ that goes on boxing, this is one of the craziest things that I have ever heard of. Crawford is giving Spence and his promoter, Al Haymon, permission to rob him.

All Crawford wants is to be able to see the books. He just wants to make sure that the robbery is not too egregious. But Haymon is saying no, he cannot see the books. As Max Kellerman said when discussing this issue “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”. Max is right again.

This fight may still happen, but it should have been booked weeks ago. I take it back, it should have been booked years ago.

In Part 2 we will talk about the Benn versus Eubank Jr catastrophe, perhaps the most demoralising saga in recent boxing history.