Name: Forget your morals, enjoy the fight: big-time boxing’s evil genius strikes again | Jonathan Liew
Uploaded: 2024-05-21T07:00:35+00:00
Channel: Claudio Ctin
Description: Oleksandr Usyk’s scrap with Tyson Fury in Saudi Arabia upheld the sport’s time-honoured tradition of sportswashing I bought the fight. Obviously I bought the fight. It cost £24.95, money that was previously sitting in my “ethical” bank account until I decided to exchange it for the privilege of watching two men hit each other in

Oleksandr Usyk’s scrap with Tyson Fury in Saudi Arabia upheld the sport’s time-honoured tradition of sportswashing

I bought the fight. Obviously I bought the fight. It cost £24.95, money that was previously sitting in my “ethical” bank account until I decided to exchange it for the privilege of watching two men hit each other in the face live from Saudi Arabia. I tell you this so you can be assured that what follows comes from no place of sanctimony or moral purity or even intellectual coherence. Cuff me. Haul me in. What is the charge? Enjoying a fight? A succulent heavyweight boxing fight?

This is the evil genius of big-time boxing: it speaks to the darkest recesses of your soul, strips away the layers of equivocation and apologia, forces you to stare at the ugly thing until you can lie to yourself no longer. As Mike Tyson almost said, everyone has a principle until they want to watch someone get punched in the face. Terrible men throughout history have known this as fact, and perhaps the nicest thing we can say about the rulers of Saudi Arabia is that they are at least following a time-honoured tradition.