The American boxing champion, who twice held the world heavyweight championship, has died aged 76. He leaves behind a towering legacy
Continue reading...World Boxing to decide new gender eligibility rules in ‘two or three weeks’
- Governing body wants rules ready for Brazil tournament
- Investigation sparked by row at Paris Olympics
World Boxing has reached “an advanced stage” of its investigation into the gender eligibility row that blighted the sport at the Olympic Games last year, and expects to announce its findings in a matter of “weeks rather than months”.
Boris van der Vorst, the president of boxing’s governing body that was given a green light on Monday to run the Olympic competition at Los Angeles 2028, said: “There’s no specific timeline, but I expect it within two or three weeks. We want to have it before our next competition in Brazil.” Van der Vorst said all recommendations would need approval by him and the WB board.
Continue reading...Imane Khelif hits back at Donald Trump and targets Olympic gold defence in LA
- Algerian tells ITV News she plans to defend Paris title
- Khelif says Trump comments ‘do not intimidate me’
Imane Khelif has said she is looking forward to defending her Olympic title in Los Angeles, and will not be intimidated by the United States president, Donald Trump.
The 25-year-old Algerian boxer, who won gold amid controversy and huge media attention at the Paris Olympics last year, has signalled her intention to repeat the feat in 2028 and hit back after Trump wrongly claimed she was transgender in August.
Continue reading...Boxing’s Olympic future set to be secured after IOC recommendation
- President Bach backs sport’s inclusion for 2028 in LA
- Status had been in doubt with governing body suspended
Boxing’s fragile Olympic status is on the verge of being secured after years of uncertainty. On Monday the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said that his executive board had recommended that boxing should be included in the 2028 Games to be held in Los Angeles. It appears to be a formality that the IOC membership will ratify the decision in the coming days as Bach and his colleagues confirmed last month that that they now recognise World Boxing as the sport’s new international federation.
“After the provisional recognition of World Boxing in February we were in the position to take this decision,” Bach said at a press conference. “I’m very confident the [IOC] session will approve it, so that all boxers then have certainty that they can participate in the Olympic Games in LA2028 if their national federation is recognised by World Boxing.”
Continue reading...Olympic boxing gender row a result of Russian fake news, says IOC chief
- Thomas Bach criticises ‘fake news campaign from Russia’
- Two boxers under scrutiny won gold in Paris
A gender row involving two female boxers at the Paris 2024 Olympics was the result of a Russian fake news campaign and had little to do with reality, the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, said on Saturday.
Bach, who is stepping down in June after 12 years in the biggest job in world sports, said the IOC had needed to fight off many similar campaigns before and after the Paris Games.
The boxing competition in the Paris was run by the IOC after it stripped the International Boxing Association (IBA) of recognition last year over its failure to implement reforms on governance and finance. But the IBA, run by the Russian businessman Umar Kremlev with close links to the Kremlin, accused the IOC during the Games of allowing two female athletes, who had been banned by the IBA after a chromosome test a year earlier, to compete.
A war of words ensued between the two organisations and dominated the headlines during the Games. “I would not consider this [Paris Games gender controversy] a real crisis because all this discussion is based on a fake news campaign coming from Russia,” Bach said at the southern Greek seaside resort where his successor will be elected on Thursday. “This was part of the many, many fake news campaigns we had to face from Russia before Paris and after Paris.”
Several such campaigns happened before Paris, including what the IOC said at the time were repeated hacking attempts. Bach said the dispute over the boxers would have been a non-issue were it not for the IBA, given the two boxers had competed for years, including at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, with no problems.
“It [the dispute] has nothing to do with the reality. These two female focuses were born as women, they were raised as women, they have been competing as women, they have been winning and losing as every other person.” The two boxers, Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, won gold medals in their weight classes.
The IOC does not have a universal rule on the participation of transgender athletes or athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD), with each federation drawing up its own regulations. Russian athletes competed as neutrals in Paris after the Russian Olympic Committee was suspended for conducting Olympic elections in Ukrainian territories occupied after the Russian invasion in 2022.
Oleksandr Usyk ordered to fight Joseph Parker by WBO in blow to Daniel Dubois
- Usyk has 30 days to agree heavyweight title defence
- Britain’s Dubois had hoped for rematch with Ukrainian
Oleksandr Usyk has been ordered to start negotiations to defend his WBO heavyweight title against Joseph Parker, potentially scuppering Daniel Dubois’ hopes of a rematch with the Ukrainian.
The WBO has announced Usyk, who also holds the WBC and WBA crowns, has 30 days to “reach terms” for a mandatory title defence against New Zealand’s Parker or the sanctioning body will call for purse bids.
Continue reading...Dick McTaggart obituary
Scottish amateur boxer who won an Olympic gold medal but dismissed fighting professionally as being ‘all work and wages’
When the Scottish boxer Dick McTaggart flew back from the 1956 Olympic Games in Australia, where he had won the gold medal in the lightweight division, nothing could have prepared him for the hero’s welcome he was given after travelling by train back to his home in Dundee. He was lifted on to the platform by two fellow boxers and carried out of the station, where he was besieged by hordes of well-wishers before being borne in an open-topped vehicle to his tenement home in the tough Dens Road area of the city, with fans lining the two-mile route.
McTaggart, who has died aged 89, remembered it all clearly in old age, even after dementia had begun to dim his recall of more recent events. “It was fantastic. Tears were running down my face,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. Peter Cain and John McVicar hoisted me on to their shoulders, then carried me up the stairs and out of the station. People were on the street all the way back to my home.”
Continue reading...Lauren Price beats Natasha Jonas in women’s welterweight unification bout – as it happened
- Price wins on points to unify WBC, IBF and WBA titles
- Dubois retains WBC 135lb on points in co-feature bout
Caroline Dubois has made her way to the ring for tonight’s chief support bout. Our ringside correspondent checks in:
The extremely shallow pool of premium talent in women’s boxing is hard to ignore but such nights can only help attract prospective new fighters. As the Albert Hall fills to around 80% of its capacity it feels important to remember that women’s boxing was still banned in Britain in 1998.
I also think British boxing has a clear future star. Caroline Dubois is the most gifted young female fighter in this country and the atmosphere is really starting to build as she prepares to showcase her vast potential against Bo Mi Re Shen, the supposedly tough and resilient South Korean.
Continue reading...Sports quiz of the week: races, records, finals, fights, a brawl and a new law
Have you been following the big stories in football, rugby, golf, athletics, boxing, cricket and horse racing?
Continue reading...‘Trailblazers led us to this’: women’s boxing fights way to Royal Albert Hall
Lauren Price, Natasha Jonas and Cindy Ngamba believe groundbreaking all-female bill offers the sport the chance to set aside its problems and show pride in its progress
“It’s maddening and sad to think that, not so long ago, women were banned from being fighters,” says Lauren Price as she prepares to face Natasha Jonas in a fascinating world welterweight title unification bout that headlines Friday’s all-female bill at the Royal Albert Hall. But, first, the Olympic gold medallist and world champion pauses to remember those who preceded her.
In August 1998, the British Boxing Board of Control were taken to court by Jane Couch, a professional fighter who had been forced abroad because women’s boxing was banned in her country. Bernard Buckley, the board’s solicitor, told the judge that “many women suffer from premenstrual tension which makes them more emotional, labile and accident-prone. They are too fragile to box and bruise easily.”
Continue reading...Cindy Ngamba: ‘I don’t want to go to Saudi until I hear from women that laws have changed’
The LGBTQ+ Olympic medallist makes her pro debut on an all-female card at the Royal Albert Hall but says she is disappointed by the Saudi stranglehold on her sport
“I’m still deciding my nickname,” Cindy Ngamba says with a languid grin as she prepares for her debut as a professional fighter at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday night. Ngamba, who won the first Olympic medal in history for the Refugee Team at the Paris Games last year, is a sparkling personality and a boxer of vast potential, so it does not take her long to reveal her current favourite.
“On my gumshield it says ‘One in 100 Million’ so that’s a nickname I like,” Ngamba says. “It’s linked to the Refugee Team because I am just one in a 100 million refugees from around the world.”
Continue reading...‘Pride and dread churn through me’: what it’s like to take sides at the sharp end of boxing
In an extract from his new book, our correspondent relives in vivid detail being inside Isaac Chamberlain’s camp for a European title fight
Donald McRae has met hundreds of fighters over 50 years watching and writing about boxing. Sometimes interviews have turned into friendships. In his new book McRae relives his time inside the camp of one of his favourite boxers, Isaac Chamberlain, as Chamberlain fought Chris Billam-Smith for European and Commonwealth cruiserweight titles.
Bournemouth International Centre, Bournemouth, Saturday 30 July 2022
Continue reading...I’ve written my last book on boxing. The ring is darker than it has ever been | Donald McRae
For more than 50 years I’ve revelled in the epic courage of boxing. But deaths, gangsterism and sportswashing have made it much harder to love
When I was a boy, living in South Africa, I fell for Muhammad Ali. As graceful as he was provocative, Ali amazed me with his uncanny ability, despite apartheid, to entrance black and white South Africans. He made us laugh and dazzled us with his outrageous skill and courage. I have followed boxing ever since, often obsessively, for more than 50 years.
In 1996, after I spent five years tracking Mike Tyson, James Toney, Roy Jones Jr, Chris Eubank Sr and Naseem Hamed, my book Dark Trade allowed me to become a full-time writer. I owe this gift to boxing but our relationship is not easy. Boxing is as crooked and destructive as it is magnificent and transformative.
Continue reading...Ryan Garcia to headline Saudi-backed boxing card in New York’s Times Square
- Saudi-backed card in Times Square to be held on 2 May
- Garcia to return from suspension against Rolly Romero
- Devin Haney and Teofimo Lopez will also fight on card
Saudi Arabia’s extension of its soft power through boxing has reached across the ocean into the heart of New York City. On Friday, Turki al-Sheikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, which regulates the kingdom’s entertainment industry, announced a blockbuster fight card to be staged in Times Square on 2 May.
The main event will feature Ryan Garcia (24-1-1 NC, 20 KO) against Rolando Romero (16-2, 13 KO). Garcia has not fought since his controversial bout with Devin Haney last May in New York, a fight he initially won via unanimous decision but was later overturned following a failed drug test. Now back in the ring after a year-long suspension, Garcia is aiming to rebuild his reputation and set up a potential rematch with Haney later this year.
Continue reading...Conor Benn ‘deserved embarrassment’ of egg hit, says Chris Eubank Jr
- ‘If I had an opportunity to do it again then I would’
- Egg hit during Tuesday press conference sparked brawl
Chris Eubank Jr said Conor Benn “deserved the embarrassment” of being hit with an egg during Tuesday’s Manchester press conference after his two failed drug tests in 2022.
The World Boxing Council stated a “highly elevated consumption of eggs” was behind Benn’s failed tests which led to his original fight against Eubank being cancelled at short notice – an offence the Essex fighter has since been cleared of. The rivals are now preparing to meet each other in a highly anticipated middleweight clash on 26 April and, during their on-stage face-off in Manchester this week, the IBO champion Eubank smuggled an egg inside his jacket and hit Benn on the side of the head with it, sparking a brawl.
Continue reading...