THE UNFAIR FIGHT
NAEEM ALI. Dale Arrowsmith. Taka Bembere. Elvis Dube. Jordan Ellison. MJ Hall. Lee Hallett. Callum Ide. Ricky Leach. Michael Mooney. Jake Pollard. Jamie Quinn. Darryl Sharp. Carl Turney. Lewis van Poetsch. Phil Williams.
Names – just a few names – that any regular reader of Boxing News will recognise, for they appear on these pages dozens of times a year, sometimes every week.
But this is not a fond familiarity. If you see these names, there is little reason to pay attention, for you can be almost assured of what happened in their fights.
In all likelihood, they will have lost. More often than not, they will have lasted the distance, but rarely winning a round. BN’s small hall reporters struggle to find anything new to say when home fighters beat journeymen by margins of 40-36 or 60-54 in almost every contest on a card.
Pulling a recent issue (July 7) of Boxing News from my archives at random tells the story. In one week, eight British shows combine for 55 contests. Of these, 47 feature a boxer with a losing record, and some of the stats are truly dreadful: Ten wins from 86 contests, six from 99, three in 85, two in 96… a solitary success from 25 bouts, from 33 or 49… precisely zero victories in careers stretching to 14 fights, or 18, or 36.
Most, if not all, of these loss columns will have been extended since. In that week, only two of the 47 boxers with losing records scored a win. Of the remaining 45, 39 went the distance. But that is not an indication of competitive matchmaking.
