It’s like an old fashioned squabble between two men trying to deny the inevitable watch. In my opinion, that is the story of British boxing in 2022, a year of constant struggles.
They fight for huge prizes and the old polite boundaries are constantly overshadowed by fear, injustice, great endings, pointless battles, good nights, history and pomp. Some get rich that old boys can only dream of, and others spend all year on the sidelines, waiting for that call, that bit of luck. They age without even trying.
A lot of 2022 is vulgar. It is not pleasant to watch or witness. There was little dignity in the old game. Lots of souls have been sold and that’s nothing new. That little piece of grass on the highest moral ground of boxing has barely been trampled in years.
Obviously there are heroes and villains on both sides of the rope. I received so many crazy and deceptive phone calls that I often wondered if I was living in some sort of twilight zone. However, we continue to look for the great battle after the great battle.
Broken fights and insults replaced punches. It happens too often and then men disappear – women never, that’s true.
And then there are others, fighters like Natasha Jonas. She changed the history of the women’s game this year. Sure, she was helped by the herd, but Jonas and that devotion, that dream, the ability to trust and forget the wall. It’s a wall, not a barrier. A year ago, she would have been the craziest bettor, betting like Elvis back. Yes, that kind of bet. Amazing.
The gym in Bolton, Amir Khan’s former outpost, has enough fairy tales, horror stories and redemption stories to break a camel’s cold heart. Jonas is just one, join the queue. Joe Gallagher lived there; it’s where he listens, learns, teaches, stands shoulder to shoulder, and sometimes speaks the harsh truth. He is an emotional man, a true boxer and 2022 has tested him.
In the gym, Callum Johnson experienced the ultimate pain. His January world title fight was gone before the Christmas lights were dismantled. He tumbled, unhelpful, and fell. It’s dark. Looks like he’ll be fine now, safe. He left the game, heart broken. That journey is the hardest a boxer can make.
The fight scheduled for January against Joe Smith is winnable, make no mistake. It will be a war with consequences; Smith vs. Artur Betterbiev. Johnson may have fought Anthony Yarde. Instead, Johnson got Covid by Christmas and it went off. His life, he felt, was over. Gallagher was there.
That cold January in that gym must have been grim; Mark Heffron, Jonas and Paul Butler are going through the motions, keeping warm, hoping for something. It can be a dump of lost hope, believe me. There’s a lot of waiting and hope in the boxing match – a lot of promise too.
Jonas finished first and won the world championship in February. That’s all she wanted; then she won two more times. Butler won the interim bantam title in April; Heffron moved into supermiddleweight and won the British Championship in July. The conversation at the end of the summer was happy. Callum Johnson was still missing and then he officially retired. It was a sad ending.
Gym slug back to glory. Can not deny that; Other gyms filled with talent have the same set of mixed emotions.
If there was an award for gym extremists, it would be Adam Booth that would go to two boxers: Michael Conlan and Josh Kelly. One is very close to glory and the other is very close to walking out the door.
If there was an award for transforming boxers in the gym, then Shane McGuigan would get it. The work on the Dubois team is remarkable, but perhaps his greatest work in 2022 is creating Chris Billam-Smith. There is also Adam Azim.
If there’s a reward for saving a lost cause, Ben Davison gets it. He got past Josh Taylor in the most confusing situations and then Leigh Wood won a night skirmish in the final seconds. Davison was there for both.
It’s a long list of prizes to save, use, loss, revenge, get obscene money, don’t get obscene money.
There were other men and women in the dressing room who received little credit; trainers, managers, fixers and promoters are just starting to get the boxers ready for the weekend. They are not all angels, they are not good people, but they are all in our business. All slug it out with something.
So as we drift towards the first boxing matches and nights in 2023, surely the stories will once again tell of Luke Fury, the name Oleksandr Usyk gave Tyson Fury, fighting the class. middle, the name Fury gave Usyk. About Deontay Wilder fighting Anthony Joshua. And Conor Benn and those damn YouTubers.
Gallagher will open the door, pull up the gate, turn on the light and get back to work. Booth, Davison and McGuigan will all do the same. It will be business as usual; The ups and downs of 2022 will make less and less sense as we get closer to Spring and its endless promises of massive outdoor battles.
The screams of shame and fame will return around the second week of January. They always are and it’s a relief.
