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Boxing’s return continues in a bubble as Joe Joyce offers reminder of the hurt game’s brutality

Two nights of fights, 184 coronavirus tests, £40,000 in costs and zero ticket sales – all adding up to one massive adventure

Steve Bunce
Sunday 26 July 2020 11:43 BST
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Prime Minister says sporting crowds could return by October

Under a canopy of care, the fighters made their way in and out of the ring in the BT studio in East London on Saturday night when professional boxing safely returned for the second time in over four months.

On a Saturday night in mid-March, boxing went dark in British rings, turning the lights off after a final night of six shows and 50 fights; it was a normal Saturday night in a booming professional business. As darkness fell, a summer of gloves collapsed with the sell-out at Spurs for Anthony Joshua in June, another trip to Las Vegas for Tyson Fury in July and a dozen other spectacles tumbling. Not to mention a big medal haul at the Tokyo Olympics – this pandemic has been very cruel to boxing, make no mistake.

Earlier this month, on a quiet Friday night, the boxing returned when Frank Warren put on five fights inside the BT studio, five fights that looked unlikely during the despair of April and May. On Saturday, there were five more – the British Boxing Board of Control has set five fights as the maximum for the moment – under the same expensive and essential protocol. It was an exercise in extreme caution, a night of nerves for the sixty or so people each allocated a role under the scrubbed BT roof. I’m one of them, I get a four-foot square of ground to interview fighters and that is my island for the night.

The boxers and their two trainers, the Board officials and key workers inside Warren’s office spend two days isolated at a hotel near the Olympic park. They are tested, they are in a bubble and they exist inside that bubble until the boxing ends and they are free to leave. So far, over the two nights of fights, 184 tests have taken place, all negative and at a cost of just under £40,000. There are no ticket sales, this is all a massive adventure.

“We have to keep boxing relevant, we have to put on shows, the fighters have to work,” said Warren. The type of money required to put on a show under the emergency guidelines means that only three promoters, the men with television contracts, can possibly have live boxing and not lose over 50 grand in cold blood until the day when big crowds can return. There is bold talk of crowds in October, but that is small relief for most of the 1,100 professional boxers sitting idling on their hands and wondering if they still have a profession.

The fight card on Saturday was mixed; some results were obvious – like most Saturday nights of boxing – some less so and the main attraction was a big heavyweight, a world-ranked heavyweight fighting in front of shadows and echoes. “It was a bit weird, but I’ve been in amateur tournaments with the same type of noise,” said Joe Joyce, who improved to eleven wins, no defeats, when he hit German Michael Wallisch in agonising and loud detail with enough full-bodied punches to put anybody off their Saturday night takeaway. It is brutal, the hurt game, when the crowd volume vanishes and a man of nearly 20-stone sinks a short hook to his opponent’s stomach or big right to the same man’s head. Wallisch made some desperate sounds as he was hurt – imagine a baby hippo trapped in a box. Big Joe left nothing to the imagination when he finally let his fists work on his broken opponent.

“That hurt,” mumbled David Haye, part of the BT team, when Wallisch went down for the last time. Haye was wearing his branded new range of face mask, the Black Mask, and looked underdressed surrounded by men and women in full face masks, gloves and the cleaning crew in their protective clothing. The ring is cleaned after each fight, the referee has to shower after each fight and the boxers have to dump their gloves and their bandages when they have finished fighting and then exit the building. It is a very complex system of red lines, one-ways and holding bays. It has to run smoothly and no mums, dads, girlfriends, managers, agents or hangers-on are allowed in – it is a strict, necessary and unpopular edict.

Joe Joyce beat Michael Wallisch by TKO at the BT studio (Getty Images) (Getty)

Joyce was supported by a typical boxing cast of insiders, outsiders, unknowns, teenagers and prospects. There was a maths teacher from Ilford, a wonderful serial loser from Plymouth, a trio of unbeaten contenders from just down the road at the Peacock Gym. The Southern Area super-bantamweight belt was decided over ten rounds when Chris Bourke, who once lost for GB in Kazakhstan, beat Ramez Mahmood, known as the Mathmagician because of his day job. Henry Turner, who is 19 but looks 12, beat Chris Adaway over four rounds; Adaway lost for the 68th time in 82 fights, was unmarked, laughing and smiling as he left the studio. It was Adaway’s fifth fight of the year and that just might make him the busiest professional boxer in the world so far in 2020. Sadly, they don’t make belts for that.

Denzel Bentley, who started boxing with gloves in wild fights between the blocks on his estate in Battersea, beat Preston’s Mick Hall and had to think for a bit. Louie Lynn, like Bentley part of the Peacock team, stopped Monty Ogilvie in two. Both wins were Saturday night specials, an essential but misunderstood part of the cold business of getting prospects wins. It is the side of the game that operates in boxing’s notorious muddy waters where brave men are picked to lose. It is a hard way to nick a living.

There are two shows planned for this weekend; boxing is back at the BT studio and Eddie Hearn puts on his first post-lockdown show when he converts the garden at his office – it was his childhood home – for an outdoor show on Sky. Hearn has three others booked, Warren has the same, and in October Warren wants to put Joyce against Daniel Dubois on at the O2. They were meant to fight on 11 April when just under 12,00 tickets were sold. It was the first major cancellation and it would be the right fight to welcome back the crowds. It would be a fight for the ages, a real clash, but until then there are many nights of five more fights, more toxic bins, more rules, more silence and more cameos from just a tiny group of privileged boxers who are now representing a business as it creeps from darkness.

These fights matter, trust me.

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