James Collett, Gloucestershire Socialist Party
Did anyone watch the fight on Saturday 20 August? No, me neither. I can’t afford a Sky subscription and I couldn’t afford the ridiculous £30 pay-per-view price. And Sky were obviously busy taking down all the free streams, the bastards.
I’ve been in love with boxing since I was ten years old, when I was allowed to stay up late with my grandfather to watch Nigel Benn fight on ITV. Not only were world title fights shown free on terrestrial television in those days, but the undercards were always good and you could tell from the broadcasts that there was a great atmosphere in the venue.
From what little I saw of the Usyk-Joshua fight, there was no atmosphere at all in the venue, and no wonder: the fight took place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and it would’ve cost upwards of £4,000 to attend. Working-class boxing fans didn’t get a look-in. The crowd was made up of rich Westerners bumping fists with rich Saudis.
The commentary team made a big deal over Ramla Ali, a female boxer, fighting on the undercard: what a ‘great step forward’ for Saudi society! Meanwhile, women in Saudi Arabia remain the property of their husbands, and women and children are bombed and starved at the hands of the Saudi regime in Yemen.
Like everything else under capitalism, boxing is steeped in the rancid hypocrisy of rich, arrogant ‘wideboys’, who shove their fake morality down your throat while they’re fleecing you, and telling you how lucky you are to be living in a ‘golden age of boxing’. It might be golden for the big promoters and broadcasters, but for the rest of us it’s a non-stop piss-take.
The fights we want to see rarely get made; when they do they’re unaffordable, the undercards are thin, the commentary’s moronic, the scorecards are a disgrace and the broadcasts are filled with adverts for gambling companies. The Roman Caesars gave the people bread and circuses. Today’s ruling class take the bread from our mouths and keep the circuses for their own pleasure.
Not only the fans but the majority of boxers are ripped off. Most boxers don’t get the sponsorship deals and red carpets rolled out for Anthony Joshua. Instead, they’re employed as ‘journeymen’, usually working full-time jobs and somehow finding time to train after work. They have no rights, no pensions, and can expect no fairness from the judges. Retired journeyman Tyan Booth said: “I don’t feel sorry for Tyson Fury getting robbed on the cards versus Deontay Wilder. He got paid millions. I’ve been robbed in fights I was paid 600 quid for, and there were no cameras there to show that I was robbed.”
We know how you feel, Tyan; we’re all being robbed, and we’re sick of it.
