As 2023 draws to a close Boxing News columnist Joe Hughes shares his boxing highs and lows from the year. The former European super-lightweight champion also gives his opinion on Saturday’s ‘Day of Reckoning’ card in Saudi Arabia and asks if there is any point to Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder fighting Otto Wallin and Joseph Parker.
MY personal high has been my involvement in our amateur club (Paddy Johns ABC). We must have had close to 100 bouts this calendar year. It’s been quite rewarding. Most of them have done pretty well. We had a show last weekend that didn’t go very well. Apart from that it’s been pretty good. I really enjoy the work and especially working with the younger lot; trying to improve them and helping them out; obviously in boxing, but with stuff outside of it as well.
We had lads at the beginning of the year who were extremely nervous or weren’t performing well at all, and come through to the tail-end of the year and they’re doing really well. We had three lads win national titles this year so that was really good. To be a part of it has probably been the highlight of the year for me.
I’ve been more involved this year than ever. I do the majority of the matchmaking for our shows. Out of those 100 bouts I’ve probably done 75-80 of the corners. It’s been really good. Obviously we don’t earn money out of it, but I do the odd one-to-one with some of the lads where their parents might pay me to do an hour on the weekend.
It’s grassroots of boxing, it’s the lifeblood of the sport. Without all of that you don’t get the pay-per-view events. They don’t happen if no-one starts. There’s hundreds of coaches over the country doing the same thing. In general society I think amateur boxing is under-appreciated. I think it’s got a bigger place in day-to-day communities and could be a lot more helpful to people. Where I live there are loads of gangs of kids who go round with their faces masked up all the time. Boxing clubs are the sort of place that can get people out of that lifestyle and make a positive impact on the community and people in general.
In the pros I was really impressed by Jesse Rodriguez last weekend against Sunny Edwards. That was a moment of the year. Edwards is world-class and Rodriguez made it look easy. That was a standout performance.
Obviously, Terence Crawford against Errol Spence was a fight we’d been waiting years for. The fight itself was a bit of anti-climax in terms of the competitiveness. It was a 50-50 going into it but Crawford showed himself to be one of the leading pound-for-pound fighters in the world by winning so convincingly. That was pretty incredible. It was the performance of the year worldwide for me.
One of this year’s lows has been the ongoing Conor Benn situation. It’s been a farce really.
Another low is transparency from the British Boxing Board of Control, which hasn’t really changed. You don’t often get their side of things or an explanation over situations which have emerged from fights. They do it behind closed doors and you don’t hear anything about of it.
Bad scorecards are one of the big ones. I feel there should be explanations when you get controversial scorecards, and you never ever get it. It rankles me because of my own personal experiences, but as a fan you watch it thinking, What on earth is going on? It’d be nice to have regular transparency. We do get statements on certain subjects, but they are few and far between. That’s not a low of this year – just a low of boxing.
Another one is the alphabet belts. It’s deteriorating more and more every year. There are more and more calls by everyone – media, fans and even fighters – to clear it up a bit.
New belts keep being created and the promoters play on that. Fights are easier to sell if there’s a title or a belt that looks similar to a world title. It means nowhere near the same thing. That’s a real low in the sport. It devalues all of it. There are so many belts. It becomes meaningless.
I’ll be watching Saturday’s card from Saudi Arabia because I’m a boxing fan but there isn’t a fight on the show which I’m super excited for.
They’re selling it as, “Look at all these big fights we’ve got on one card.” And I’m sure the money going into this one card is quite ridiculous.
What’s the point of having Joshua and Wilder on the same card if they’re not boxing each other? The fight does not need any more build-up; it’s ridiculous. What is the point to either of those fights against Otto Wallin and Joseph Parker? I think they’re relatively straightforward fights for both Joshua and Wilder.
Down the card you’ve got some brilliant fighters on there but they’re not fighting the opposition we’d all like to see them fight.
I hope Lyndon Arthur wins against Dmitry Bivol, but I can’t see it. I was really impressed by Jai Opetaia last time, but I’m not really interested in his fight against Ellis Zorro. There’s many others fights out there for him that I’d be far more interested in. And I’m not really interested in watching Bivol unless it’s against Artur Beterbiev or Callum Smith.
