Boxing 2021

[Jose Jones]

Anyway, this all very neg worthy isn't it?  @easytoslip's fault for starting it. 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

F******* on the FF, and that blert as well.

 

Negs all round. 

[A Red]

"It was a good experience because in adversity you've just got to learn to control yourself, stay on top of things, so when I couldn't see anything - it's the first time that it's happened in a fight."

 

"It was a great lesson today. I know we can look at it from a negative point of view but, for me, I've got to take it as a great lesson and build on that situation.

 

Asked after the fight about what went wrong, the defeated Briton said: "I couldn't see in the ninth round, couldn't see anything really because my eye was shut.

 

(not true, there was swelling but it wasnt closed)

 

Its the plastic plastic rehearsed statements that have always wound me up about Joshua although I don't detest him.

[Dr Nowt]

The narrative a fight he was winning slipped away because of an eye injury in the 9th is absolutely risible stuff, pure Matchroom. As if McCracken hadn’t already considered the strategy in which he goes in there and tries to rough Usyk up and just unloads on him, and thought ‘Usyk has never been down in 400 odd fights as amateur or pro, while Joshua is wide open when he’s letting his hands go and has a chin like Amir Khan’. Granted, he has more of a chance than he does trying to outbox Usyk, but that’s only because 1in 10 odds of landing a Hail Mary shot because he gets tagged himself are better than 0 in 10 odds of juggling sand.

[Bjornebye]

2 hours ago, Skidfingers McGonical said:

F******* on the FF, and that blert as well.

 

Negs all round. 

It’s a good job nobody gives a flying fuck what you think x 

[easytoslip]

2 hours ago, Skidfingers McGonical said:

F******* on the FF, and that blert as well.

 

Negs all round. 

A blert eh, who gives a fuck about negs, it's just an opinion mate and no big deal. Calling someone something about an opinion you don't necessarily agree with is blertish itself 

Have fun.

[Remmie]

We don't all agree on Joshua but I think we can be pretty unanimous about Hearn being an oily fucking prick?

[Gnasher]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/29/up-to-10-suspicious-matches-at-2016-olympics-boxing-investigation-finds

[easytoslip]

31 minutes ago, Remmie said:

We don't all agree on Joshua but I think we can be pretty unanimous about Hearn being an oily fucking prick?

Aye. 

[Elite]

35 minutes ago, Remmie said:

We don't all agree on Joshua but I think we can be pretty unanimous about Hearn being an oily fucking prick?

He tries to act like one of the lads, when he's no better than all the other silver-spoooned public school boys.

 

He has the potential to make British boxing great with the stable he had and money available but he got too greedy.

[General Dryness]

Decent boxer, big puncher, glass jaw, tendency to run out of steam.

 

Joshua is the modern day Frank Bruno, only far less likeable. 

[Curly]

2 hours ago, A Red said:

"It was a good experience because in adversity you've just got to learn to control yourself, stay on top of things, so when I couldn't see anything - it's the first time that it's happened in a fight."

 

"It was a great lesson today. I know we can look at it from a negative point of view but, for me, I've got to take it as a great lesson and build on that situation.

 

Asked after the fight about what went wrong, the defeated Briton said: "I couldn't see in the ninth round, couldn't see anything really because my eye was shut.

 

(not true, there was swelling but it wasnt closed)

 

Its the plastic plastic rehearsed statements that have always wound me up about Joshua although I don't detest him.

He’s racist too isn’t he? Those tweets about the superior black race and that BLM speech where he was peddling the line of stick to your own with “buy black” and all that. Doesn’t help anything that. Unity we need these days

[Dr Nowt]

Could be an exciting second fight though. Might only last 2 or 3 rounds, whichever way it goes, if it’s more of the old brawling style from Joshua.

 

My money is on him landing something heavy early-ish, the Sky commentary team to wet their knickers a la Tyson Bruno 1, and then for their boy to get his senses scrambled as he comes in swinging.
 

‘He’s hurt him, JOSHUA HAS HURT HIM. Oh. Fuck’.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

1 hour ago, easytoslip said:

A blert eh, who gives a fuck about negs, it's just an opinion mate and no big deal. Calling someone something about an opinion you don't necessarily agree with is blertish itself 

Have fun.

Fucking hell lad. 
 

I was talking about Beckham being a blert. 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

2 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

It’s a good job nobody gives a flying fuck what you think x 

This No *F on The GF standard has slipped to below unacceptable levels these last few years. 
 

Place has gone to the dogs I tell thee.

[Gooch]

Can't take to Joshua either tbh. Everything that comes out his mouth just seems fake and manufactured. If he just came out and called someone massive cunt it would make him seem a bit more real at least. That shit eating grin also rubs me up the wrong way.

 

1 hour ago, belarus said:

He’s racist too isn’t he? Those tweets about the superior black race and that BLM speech where he was peddling the line of stick to your own with “buy black” and all that. Doesn’t help anything that. Unity we need these days

Think he DM'd Eddie Chambers about being a disgrace to the superior black race. denied it at first, then admitted it but his team said he got hacked. Not a good look.

[easytoslip]

45 minutes ago, Skidfingers McGonical said:

Fucking hell lad. 
 

I was talking about Beckham being a blert. 

Righto  you should of said. 

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

3 minutes ago, easytoslip said:

Righto  you should of said. 

Have. Negged.

[easytoslip]

47 minutes ago, Jarvinja Ilnow said:

Have. Negged.

Thanks, much obliged. 

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

1 hour ago, easytoslip said:

Thanks, much obliged. 

[Bjornebye]

3 hours ago, Skidfingers McGonical said:

This No *F on The GF standard has slipped to below unacceptable levels these last few years. 
 

Place has gone to the dogs I tell thee.

God will you stop crying 

[easytoslip]

28 minutes ago, Jarvinja Ilnow said:

Blimey a ruffian. 

[Captain Turdseye]

 

 

A new era in British boxing will start in Wembley on Saturday night, sandwiched in between Oleksandr Usyk’s seismic victory over Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury’s trilogy bout with Deontay Wilder.

The fun and games began back in the summer, when Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn announced that he would no longer stage fights on Sky Sports, the biggest broadcaster of live boxing in the United Kingdom and a channel that he had long enjoyed a near-ubiquitous presence on. Instead, Hearn decided to sign a “seismic” five-year deal with DAZN, which gives the deep-pocketed streaming platform the rights to at least 16 Matchroom UK fight nights per year.

Hearn and his stable departing for pastures new left Sky Sports with an awful lot of airtime to fill, with plenty of speculation that the network — which broadcasts many of other sports — could even wash its hands of boxing. Instead, they doubled down, taking on the not insignificant challenge of starting afresh in the industry independent of both the Hearns and Frank Warren, who between them have governed British boxing for decades.

Sky’s solution? To look to the United States with one eye and the other closer to home, announcing four-year deals with both Bob Arum’s Top Rank and Boxxer, an interesting British promotion founded by the enigmatic Ben Shalom, the youngest licensed boxing promoter in the country. More on him in a moment.

The deal with Arum makes obvious sense and means Sky Sports is now the only place in the UK where fans can watch Top Rank events, featuring the likes of Josh Taylor, Terence Crawford, Vasiliy Lomachenko, Teofimo Lopez and Naoya Inoue, to name a few. 

For far, far too long, such world-class fighters have not always proven easy for boxing fans in Britain to track down, often requiring either a detailed knowledge of obscure subscription television channels, or an appetite for illegal streaming sites and a laptop with exceptionally good antivirus software. 

But it is the partnership with Boxxer which — while perhaps not as immediately eye-catching — is especially intriguing. The fast-rising promotional company, founded as Ultimate Boxxer in 2018, has been on a significant recruitment drive ever since, with Shalom working alongside the vastly experienced John Wischhusen, previously Matchroom’s Head of Boxing. The goal? To build a new generation of household names and to showcase a series of fighters that have typically lacked exposure.

Shalom, just 27, is a rare new face in a sport which churns through combatants, but where the promoters tend to remain the same. He is also determined to think big. 

“We are very focused on where we want the sport to go and how it can be made more accessible to a bigger audience,” he tells The Athletic during a busy week applying the final touches to his first card for Sky. “Ultimately, we want to get more people interested in boxing.”

How do they plan on doing that? 

“By looking at how the cards are put together. How the shows are put together. How the scoring is presented to the viewer at home. The price of the ticket. How it feels and how it looks. And it’s only with the support of the biggest platform in the UK that our vision of really trying to improve the sport is going to happen. Sky saw that we really understood the sport — but also that we have a vision to move it forward.”

It’s a bold plan. Shalom promises the changes to how the sport is presented will attract a casual audience, while making use of “insightful data and behind-the-scenes access” to engage traditional fans, and acknowledges his ideas require time and patience. But the most noticeable change to Sky’s coverage is arguably their new in-house promoter’s reticence to take centre stage for himself. 

“I’m not going to hide,” he insists. “But I don’t want to compete with anybody and our business model will not be about Ben Shalom. It is going to be about Sky Sports and the fighters.” His Instagram account is private and sounds as though it will stay that way.  

Ben Shalom, at just 27, is the youngest licensed boxing promoter in the country. (Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images)

Boxxer’s first card for Sky Sports this weekend is a solid one, if understandably lacking in the pound-for-pound stardust of the previous weekend. David Avanesyan’s first fight since his stoppage victory over Josh Kelly, a defence of his welterweight European title against Liam Taylor, is the pick of the bunch. Home favourites Chris Eubank Jr. and Richard Riakporhe also feature, with the former bringing a pleasing symmetry to this fresh start for Sky Sports: his father headlined the first Matchroom show on Sky in 1994, outpointing the unremarkable Mauricio Amaral at Earls Court.

That victory 27 years ago neatly illustrates why Sky Sports and DAZN alike both deserve to be afforded some patience. Sky and Matchroom enjoyed a fruitful partnership but that success did not come overnight, with the sold out nights at Wembley Stadium only coming after years of hard graft at small hall shows up and down the country. 

Fighters like Riakporhe — an exciting cruiserweight who has bravely seen off talented domestic rivals Sam Hyde, Tommy McCarthy, Chris Billam-Smith and Jack Massey in recent fights — hope they find themselves at the start of a similar success story. 

“I grew up watching boxing on Sky and I have always dreamed of being one of their main fighters, so this is a dream come true,” he tells The Athletic ahead of his fight against Krzysztof Twardowski, an eight-round return to the ring following a serious hand injury that has kept him sidelined since late 2019. 

“This feels similar to when Eddie Hearn got his first fighters on Sky,” he says. “I remember when Audley Harrison asked Hearn to promote him, just at the point when he was starting to get more involved with boxing. And Hearn got him a world title shot in just a few fights, when he lost to David Haye in Manchester. That was really impressive and it seemed like after that a lot of fighters approached him, wanting him to be their promoter. And I feel like I am part of something similar now, teaming up with Ben and trusting him and trusting Sky to help me, and to get me the fights that I need and the titles that I want.”

Boxxer have also targeted rising stars in women’s boxing, handing professional contracts to decorated amateurs including Caroline Dubois, Georgia O’Connor and Ebonie Jones. 

“They have been clear to me that they want to give young fighters a chance,” Jones says. “Other places don’t always care about building up boxers from scratch because so much of it is about the image. But Boxxer have said they will look after their fighters.”

Looking ahead, there remains a not insignificant 6-foot-6, 17st 2lbs elephant in the room. Joshua may have lost his unified heavyweight titles to Usyk last weekend but he remains, for now, the biggest commercial draw in British boxing. Before that fight he signed a much-trumpeted golden handcuffs deal with Matchroom, but his deal with Sky Sports — who have shown each of his 26 professional fights —  is yet to be renewed. DAZN wait in the wings, with the streaming giant already broadcasting his fights to a global audience. A decision on his future is awaited eagerly by all sides.

BT Sport’s long term future is also unclear, following a recent report in The Financial Times that DAZN is in advanced talks to buy the telecoms company’s sports business. Were a buyout to occur, Hearn and Warren would need to juggle their respective Matchroom and Queensbury promotions. Regardless of any such business decisions, the revitalised competition between platforms and promotional companies can only be seen as a positive for British boxing fans, as the sport continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

[an tha]

Getting that lot instead of Hearn's shite is OK with me.

[sir roger]

I would scour the British rankings and just make sure the three lowest fights on the bill are closely ranked so you would normally get decent scraps without breaking the bank and if you can throw a local rivalry element in so much the better. Got to be better than foreign bums being brought in to fall over in a round or two.

 

I'm going to keep ESPN on for a bit at the increased £7.99 to see what happens with the BT Sport talks