British Boxing Will Not Stay Down

By Boxing News - 06/26/2011 - Comments

By Darren Munsey: Being a British boxing fan I am sure I do what most fellow boxing fans do and sometimes assess the current state of the sport in our respective country. British media is no different to any other.

When things go well we are world beaters but when things go wrong in even the smallest or most predictable way it is usually a case of we are the victims of a controversial decision, bad conditions or bad management from a coach or organization that will cause the sport to slip into a state of ‘’crisis’’. Very rarely do you hear that the sports players are just ‘’not very good’’. This media approach definitely applies to the English soccer team. Boxing gets a lot less media attention in the UK, obviously soccer is our most popular national sport but I think boxing gets a lot less media attention simply because for the past decade we have had hardly anything to shout about other than Ricky Hatton but I believe boxing in the UK is definitely on the comeback trail.

Firstly the obvious reasons for this is are Khan (25-1), Froch (28-1) and Haye (25-1). Despite having their doubters it is difficult to argue that they do not have talent and are paper champions. All 3 have upcoming fights to unify their respective divisions, you are not involved in unification fights like these if you are talentless. The forth and fifth current world champions are Ricky Burns (31-2), Ricky beat arguably the best Super Featherweight in world in Roman Martinez who was unbeaten at the time. Finally there is Nathan Cleverly (21-0) who won the title by default so still has a lot to prove but at 24 who knows how far he can go? Currently Britain has 5 full world champions which are the most we have had at 1 time since the mid 90’s. In the mid 90’s we had world champions such as Silky Jones, Regan and Bruno who never managed to defend their titles once between them. The same cannot be said for Froch, Khan, Haye, Burns and Cleverly.

Another reason British boxing is making a return is because other than our 5 world champions there are several other boxers who are in an around world class level. In the past year Mitchell, Munroe, Booth, Harrison, Rhodes, Matthew Hatton, McCloskey and Macklin have all failed in world title attempts. Not forgetting Chisora’s world title fight with Wlad ever materialized either. Some of these got their world title shots by expert promoting rather than talent such as Harrison but some earned their shots the hard way i.e. Rhodes and Munroe. Then there are the prospects on the up with the likes of DeGale, Groves, John Murray, Martin Murray, Barker, McDonnell and most notably Kell Brook (24-0) who will be all looking to get world title shots in the next 12-24 months.

British boxing is definitely not the strongest it has ever been but compared to 10 years ago it is most certainly on the up again after a dire few years.

Thank you for reading



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