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The poor old game
Professional boxing in Britain has been going through a golden era during the last decade - numerous world champions, record attendances, sold-out outdoor stadia and the continued growth of PPV as a vehicle for reaching home audiences.
Some British fighters – Anthony Joshua, David Haye, Tony Bellew, Carl Froch and Carl Frampton amongst others – have regularly fought for multi-million pound purses during that period and nobody would begrudge them that level of compensation for reaching the pinnacle of probably the toughest, most competitive game of all.
But behind that is a sport that’s struggling to survive at grass-roots level where virtually all future champions are created and brought to the edge of a potentially multi-million pound career. The people who get them to that stage get little or nothing when professional promoters wave their cheque books at Olympic or World medalists.