Peace: A period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
Ambrose Bierce, American Essayist, (1842-1914)

Boxing isn’t an entity. It isn’t sentient. It isn’t a building, a person or a particular group of people. Nor is it an organisation or corporation. It isn’t owned. It isn’t a charity. It isn’t a sanctioning body, or a certain array of promoters. It isn’t one thing, or a sum of many. It isn’t a game. It isn’t a business. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t have a conscience.

It isn’t even an it.

On days like today, when the shit hits the fan and someone has been caught with their hand in the till, or cheating to get ahead, the orgy of activity that occurs beneath the word boxing is often referred to in this way. As a thing. A conscious, aware, tangible, living, breathing thing. Boxing is not any of those ‘things’. And as such, the idea ‘boxing is hurting itself’ or, more dramatically, ‘shooting itself in the foot’, is a phrasing which hinders progress and the serious discussion required to find solutions to the problems all too frequently perpetrated in the name of the sport.

Continue reading “Boxing isn’t to blame for cheating. Cheats are to blame for cheating.” →