Category: Boxing

The ring’s standout problem-solver steps away from ‘competition’ on his own terms and with an unblemished record across five divisions

Terence “Bud” Crawford has always fought like a man who wanted to leave no room for argument. Not simply to win, but to win so cleanly that dissent collapses on contact. So his retirement announcement on Tuesday didn’t feel like a sudden fade-out so much as the closing of a file: tidy, decisive, signed in his own hand. Three months after scaling two weight divisions to outclass Canelo Álvarez in Las Vegas and become the undisputed super-middleweight champion, Crawford says he is stepping away “on his own terms”. In the cruellest sport, that is rarer than a perfect record.

Boxing is purpose-built to keep you in. To lure you back with one more payday, one more belt, one more chance to settle a score that only exists because the promoters or the public insist it should. The hurt business has never been conducive to happy endings. The preferred vernacular is violent or sad or compromised: a stoppage you don’t see coming, a dubious decision, a diminished version of yourself preserved forever in high definition.

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The best we can hope for is that Paul does not get seriously hurt. Joshua, Netflix and the sport itself should know better

Precisely 85 years ago, one of the most fearsome heavyweight boxers in history stunk out the joint. Joe Louis was in the midst of his “Bum of the Month club”: a staggering run of 13 world title defences in 29 months against an assortment of stiffs, wild men and colourful characters. And when he arrived in Boston on 16 December 1940, most believed that Al McCoy would rapidly become his next victim. Only it didn’t quite turn out that way.

“McCoy was expected to crumple under the first punch Louis tossed in his direction,” the New York Times’ correspondent wrote. “Instead, the wily New England veteran made Louis appear ludicrous at times. Adopting a crouching, bobbing, weaving style, McCoy was an elusive target for the paralysing fists of the titleholder.” After the messy contest was stopped at the end of the fifth, a storm of jeers rang out. Louis had won, but only his bank balance had been enhanced.

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Three months after Hatton’s death, his bereft former trainer Billy Graham, friend Jane Couch and his brother Matthew are all trying to find a hopeful future amid the grief

“Of course I remember,” Billy Graham says quietly as he pushes back his straw trilby to show me his wounded expression. “I can remember everything.”

Graham, who trained Ricky Hatton for all but the last three of his 48 fights, used to sit with his fighter on the grimy steps outside their first boxing gym in Salford in the late 1990s. It was a more innocent time and, rather than being called The Preacher and The Hitman, they were just Billy and Ricky then.

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• Shields to launch $8m multi-fight deal in Detroit

• Double Olympic champion back at Little Caesars Arena

• Crews-Dezurn moving up to heavyweight for bout

Claressa Shields will defend her undisputed heavyweight championship in Detroit on 22 February, returning home for a rematch with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in her first fight since signing a landmark $8m promotional deal. The bout will headline a Dazn card at Little Caesars Arena, the home of the NBA’s Pistons and NHL’s Red Wings where Shields attracted a near-sellout crowd for her most recent fight last July.

Shields (17-0, 3 KO) and Crews-Dezurn (10-2, 2 KO) first met nearly a decade ago when they made their professional debuts against each other on the undercard of Andre Ward’s victory over Sergey Kovalev in 2016. Shields won a four-round unanimous decision that night in Las Vegas, a moment she still sees as formative. “I had just come off winning two Olympic gold medals, fresh out of the amateurs, and finding an opponent was tough,” she said in a press release announcing the fight. “Franchon stepped in. I’ve grown a lot since that first victory, but me and Franchon have unfinished business that needs to be settled.”

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• Crawford stripped of WBC belt in sanctioning-fee row

• Britain’s Hamzah Sheeraz to fight Mbilli for vacant title

• Unpaid fees end brief reign as undisputed champion

Terence Crawford has been stripped of his World Boxing Council super-middleweight world title after a dispute over unpaid sanctioning fees, a decision that puts Britain’s Hamzah Sheeraz in line to fight for the vacant belt.

The WBC announced on Wednesday that it had removed the American star as its champion, three months after he shocked Canelo Álvarez in Las Vegas to become undisputed at 168lb. The organization said Crawford had not paid its required fees from that victory or from his previous bout in 2024, despite “multiple” attempts to contact him and his team.

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Britain’s most successful female UFC fighter on knowing when to stand her ground, why she won’t box in Saudi Arabia and aiming to win a world title in the next year

“I give my hidings and I take my hidings and so they have seen me with snapped ligaments in my knee, broken feet, broken toes, broken hands, stitches, broken legs,” Molly McCann says of the damage she has endured as a fighter and the impact it has had on her mum and her partner, Fran Parman. “It’s traumatic for Fran and even more traumatic for my mum. I’m 35 and I’ve been in the gym since I was 12. I had my first fight at 16. I’ve spent most of my life fighting.”

McCann boxed as a teenager and she won an ABA title. But, at a time when women’s boxing was still undermined, she turned to mixed martial arts and eventually became the most successful female British fighter in the UFC. McCann retired in March after 14 savage UFC bouts; but, within days, she became a professional boxer. On Saturday night she will have her second contest in boxing’s paid ranks.

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A year and a half after his unstoppable rise was hijacked, the 26-year-old boxing star aims to become a three-weight champion against big-punching Brian Norman Jr

Rain falls in thin, needling lines over Hell’s Kitchen as Devin Haney walks into the Victory Boxing Gym. Somewhere along Ninth Avenue an ambulance threads through the congestion, its siren drawn out into a long, mournful ribbon that slips past the gym’s walls. He nods to a few familiar faces, peels off a Supreme Vanson leather jacket and begins to unwrap himself from the city. His father, Bill, arrives a step behind him, not so much entering the room as taking possession of it.

“The youngest undisputed champion!” Bill cries out, half to the gym, half to himself. “He’s done it on three continents! Twenty-six years old and still writing history! Let the sparks fly!”

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When a prankster meets a puncher it’s not about sport but an elaborate viral hoax that keeps us wanting more

“If it’s all straight up and proper, you would worry that he takes this kid’s head off,” reckons Barry McGuigan. “Could get his jaw broke, his head smashed in, side of his head caved in, God forbid he could get a brain bleed,” says Carl Froch on his YouTube channel. “It could be the end of him. It could be his last day on Earth,” David Haye tells Sky News, with the sort of apocalyptic glare I try to give my children when they want to jump in a muddy puddle.

Yes, this week everyone appears to be deeply concerned for the wellbeing of 28-year-old YouTube celebrity Jake Paul. The announcement of his fight against Anthony Joshua next month has generated a flood of foreboding prognoses, and fair enough. Stepping into the ring with a two-time world heavyweight champion when a) you’re not even a heavyweight, b) your record consists almost entirely of novices and geriatrics and c) you still fight like a marmoset trapped in an empty crisp packet: on some level, we all know how this might go.

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• Ukrainian gives up undisputed heavyweight title status

• Fabio Wardley becomes sixth Briton to hold WBO crown

Fabio Wardley has been upgraded to WBO heavyweight champion after Oleksandr Usyk elected to relinquish the title – and his undisputed status – rather than defend it against the unbeaten Briton.

Wardley wrested the interim title from Joseph Parker via a dramatic 11th-round stoppage last month and was mandated to face the Ukrainian before the end of September.

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The so-called Judgment Day will generate millions of dollars and attract huge ratings, but leave boxing a little more broken

The unsurprising confirmation of “a colossal global showdown” between Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua arrived on Monday morning with a dull thud. That grand description of an eight-round scrap between a former YouTuber and a former world heavyweight champion was supplied by Paul’s company, Most Valuable Promotions, which also announced that the contest will be screened live on Netflix on 19 December and called Judgment Day.

Boxing operates in a netherworld that appears to have sunk far beyond any fear of judgment, while Paul has always had delusions of grandeur as a novice pro. But even boxing may have to consider its own culpability should Paul be badly hurt and end up in hospital after this fully sanctioned bout with regulation 10oz gloves is held in Miami.

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• Fight will be live on Netflix on 19 December

• YouTuber to face former heavyweight world champion

Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul will face each other in a heavyweight fight in Miami on 19 December, it has been confirmed.

Rumours of the fight between Paul, a YouTuber-turned-boxer, and Joshua, the British former heavyweight champion of the world, had been trailed earlier this month and Paul’s company, Most Valuable Promotions, confirmed the news on Monday. The fight will be shown live on Netflix.

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• Benn dominates Eubank Jr by unanimous decision

• Judges turn in scores of 119-107, 116-110 and 118-108

Buffer has just finished making the fighter announcements as 50 Cent remained in Eubank’s corner. A crackling atmosphere at Tottenham’s home ground. The waiting is over. The final instructions have been given by the referee, the seconds are out and we’ll pick it up with round-by-round coverage from here!

Eubank Jr is now trained by Brian “BoMac” McIntyre who is always in the corner of Terence Crawford, the best fighter in the world by some distance. And so there was a little zing of excitement among the Crawford connoisseurs when the mighty Bud appeared on the giant screen as he moved around Eubank’s dressing room. He shook hands warmly with a beaming Eubank Sr before stopping to share a few words with Junior. Those moments will matter far more to the Eubank camp than the fact that Benn received a bigger cheer than they did when he was seen on the same big screen having his hands wrapped. Personally, I think that’s 1-0 so far to Eubank Jr/Crawford over Benn/the crowd.

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Their dads lit a fire that consumed me but Eubank Jr v Conor Benn embodies all that has gone wrong with the Dark Trade

Thirty-five years ago this month, on 18 November 1990, my life changed course when I watched Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn fight each other in Birmingham with a ferocity which left me astonished and breathless. After that savage and surreal contest, I began working on a book about boxing, Dark Trade, which allowed me to become a full-time writer.

Benn and Eubank were so different that my already deep interest in boxing caught fire. I became consumed by the fight game for decades until, earlier this year, I finished writing The Last Bell, my fifth and final book about boxing. I still loved the most interesting fighters and their incredible life stories, but the controversies around the manufactured rivalry between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr left me sick at heart.

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Gripping contest in April damaged both men who wouldn’t be in the ring again if it weren’t for their fathers’ fights

Boxing has always been a deeply cynical business. The overwhelming objective for most promoters, and many fighters, is to rake in as much money as quickly as possible without any undue concern about looking crass or desperate.

Anyone who has spent just a little time in the company of boxers will understand that they deserve whatever cash they can make out of such a hard and dangerous activity. But promoters have ransacked the pockets of boxing fans through the decades while peddling anything and everything from Joe Louis’s “Bum of the Month” club to this week’s proposal that Anthony Joshua may make tens of millions of dollars if he steps into the ring to face Jake Paul, the former YouTuber, next month.

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