WHIFF OF FOUL PLAY

THERE’S an old boxing adage, recited all too often: ‘You have to take the fight to the champion to win the title.’ There are, of course, no special scoring allowances for champions and no requirements that challengers have to fight aggressively to win.

Those, at least, are the scoring rules, but rules can be tweaked in favour of champions, or, more to the point, in favour of A-listers. This is not usually the result of conscious bias on the part of judges and referees, but they may be influenced by the crowd, the promoter’s attention and by unconscious expectations. How often have we seen the big promoter’s golden boy getting the benefit of the doubt in a close encounter?

When an A-list fighter is also a national hero, and when the alphabet body controlling the fight is based in the same country, the likelihood of favouritism of one kind of another rises. Which brings us to the tale of two Mexican heroes. No boxer in Mexican history