Each sport has its own set of unspoken rules, customs that are not to be violated lest you reveal yourself as a pretender or mere casual fan, but no code requires a morality check like that of boxing. With little regard for the sheer bravery it takes just to climb into the ring, fighters can be criticized for not running straight into the toughest bouts possible, for getting hit too much, for not getting hit enough (because this simply isn’t sufficiently entertaining), for not showing a great chin (though this isn’t a factor fighters can fully control), for retiring too early, for retiring too late, for giving inconsiderate interviews despite being concussed, and just about anything else you can think of.
It is as if the brutality of boxing emboldens fans’ tribalism instead of encouraging them to respect the participants. At times I think back to listening to podcasts about the sweet science when I had only a passing familiarity with it, and heard hosts insinuate, casually, that most fighters were probably on performance-enhancing drugs.
I was shocked and disturbed. Surely not, in this already-barbaric sport. There had to be safeguards; if people were going to endanger their health for the entertainment of the public, they deserved nothing less than complete assurance that their opponents were not chemically enhanced. The naivete of the novice boxing fan.
Boxing’s code rarely allows for marveling at anything less than complete heroism in the ring. Probably because of the standard set for great fights – two blood-and-guts warriors exchange hellfire at an unsustainable pace, yet somehow never slow down or go down until they’ve survived mind-boggling punishment – practically anything else evokes criticism. Boxers are to fight bravely, and when they are overmatched, they are to take their beatings with a smile on their face.
Immersion in the sport makes the code seem less unattainable, as you watch fighters manage to meet that supernatural standard. Oleksandr Usyk has cleared out two weight classes, the second while surrendering seismic physical disadvantages; therefore, every fighter who appears to have a high ceiling must be similarly ambitious, and similarly brilliant in their execution. Usyk runs straight at every challenge, why can’t Tank? Why can’t Shakur Stevenson fight more aggressively? Why did Anthony Joshua walk at Daniel Dubois with his hands down? Fighters with mighty records but a lack of truly recognizable names on their resume are simply waiting to be exposed, as if losing to a legend reflects badly on somebody’s character.
We begin to feel comfortable making these criticisms, as if blissfully amnesiac of the sport’s difficulty. We fall into traps: Mental health is disregarded or questioned. Fighters are not given time to develop or redeem themselves. We scorn those who do not meet our expectations, rather than blame ourselves for setting an impossible bar. Boxing becomes not just a place to satisfy our bloodlust but an outlet for all the ugly bits of ourselves.
And most of the time, boxing drifts along, seemingly unaffected by this tribalism. Fighters insist that they want to please us, despite surely knowing that we’ll turn on them the second they let us down even momentarily. Sometimes they judge each other for the same things – think Billy Joe Saunders shaming Daniel Dubois and his busted eye for taking a knee against Joe Joyce, insisting he’d never have done such a thing, only to quit on his stool after sustaining a similar injury against Canelo Alvarez. Empaths likely don’t last too long in this sport, either because they can’t handle it or because they’ve been laughed out of the room too many times. So we are left to our harshness, an echo chamber that wants all violence, all the time.
But every once in a while, we go too far. Devin Haney is currently suing Ryan Garcia, who beat him up in April. Garcia’s left hook couldn’t miss, that is true, and Haney failed to dodge it despite a great familiarity with Garcia through a lengthy amateur rivalry. Also true is that Garcia came in overweight and later tested positive for the banned substance ostarine.
This infraction – somehow – is not a grave violation of the boxing code. Terms are clear on PEDs: serve your suspension, fight well, and we’ll more or less forget you ever failed a test. So, Haney, despite being the victim in the ring, has become the villain outside of it, because the code is apparently inevitable enough to make everybody forget their principles.
The logic falls apart like wet paper. On the podcast Boxing With Mannix and Mora, writer and DAZN broadcaster Chris Mannix came down on the side of Haney. His co-host, former fighter and fellow DAZN talent Sergio Mora, disagreed. He stressed that boxing was tough, and that fighters had to deal with the consequences. Haney was stepping out of line by suing Garcia. He had violated the code.
“It’s like getting your ass kicked and running home and telling your mom,” Mora argued.
Mannix made a spirited counterargument: “We are headed towards the day where a fighter gets badly hurt or killed in the ring, and then the opponent tests positive for a banned substance. And then you know what happens? Then boxing is done. Then Congress is gonna get involved, states are gonna get involved, we’re gonna talk about boxing being banned. Boxing needs to get ahead of this. And if suing your opponent for testing positive for a banned substance serves as some kind of impediment for them doing it in the future? I’m all for it.”
“Snitches get stitches. That’s all I got to say,” Mora responded.
Mannix tried one more time, referring to his co-host’s second fight with Danny Jacobs, in which Jacobs battered his way to a TKO in the seventh round. Mannix posed a hypothetical to Mora: what if Jacobs had popped for PEDs afterwards?
“I would have sued his ass in a second,” Mora said, laughing. But he maintained his opinion on Haney despite his blatant hypocrisy, saying that he was older, and therefore in a more precarious position in his career.
I am growing convinced that any kind of proximity to boxing is a corrupting influence. Given his fighting background, I have little doubt that Mora genuinely believes what he is saying. Fans rallying behind the same principles have no excuse. Those among this party surely would have been horrified, if told before becoming a boxing fan, what they would one day go on to argue: that a fighter who was caught with a banned substance in their system is largely excused from blame, but the man he beat up is not. Anybody outside boxing would be horrified to look inside the sport and see these arguments. Any sane person would be, really.
The problem at hand here, I think, is that boxing can seem so much like dark fiction that we start discussing it like it really is. With each scandal, each positive PED test, each show of supernatural strength, there is an overriding sense that what we are watching cannot possibly be real. It is too foreign, too corrupt, too weird. No normal person would take part in it.
So we discuss fighters like characters in a fantasy novel. We search desperately for heroes and toss aside those who break the rules. Remember how Eddie Hearn marketed Jaron “Boots” Ennis after signing him, as a future three-division undisputed champion? That was six months ago; since, Ennis has beaten up David Avanesyan and been cornered into a farcical rematch with Karen Chukhadzhian. Eddie, I have a revolutionary theory for you, perhaps even more radical than the idea that it is okay for Artur Beterbiev to keep to himself: It would have been okay to start expectations at one division.
This, in our pie-in-the-sky hypotheticals and judgment of fighters as if they are fallen gods, is where we lose our way. Boxing is real, even if its reality unfolds in intensely bizarre and unfamiliar ways. The injuries fighters suffer in the ring are real and cause real damage: to their bodies, their psyches, and their brains. Haney, who is likely still mentally and physically recovering from the beating he took against Garcia, is a man who was wronged and boxing’s warped code has convinced its fans to wrong him some more. That warrants reflection.
We might not be able to identify with fighters’ physical prowess or willpower, but they are human too, underneath all that grit. Forget that and we’ll lose our own humanity along with our perception of it.