Many years ago, the retired prizefighter Thomas ‘The Hitman’ Hearns did a tour of the UK, meeting with and posing for photographs with his adoring fans. I saw an interview with him on television and was horrified to hear him speak, or rather mumble. His speech, what there was of it, was terribly slurred, surely as a result of brain injuries suffered during his long and brutal career. But boxing fans, at least some of them, pooh-poohed the very suggestion that Hearns’ condition had anything to do with boxing. Now, at 67, Hearns has been diagnosed with dementia, probably dementia pugilistica, and his son Ronald has been appointed to manage his care and finances. Surely, no one is in any doubt why the ‘Hit Man’ is suffering from cognitive impairment and memory issues?
I would not call myself a boxing fan, per se, but this most brutal of sports can hold a magnetic appeal to other humans. We know, beyond all reasonable doubt, that boxing causes irreversible brain damage and yet people like me tune into BBC Radio Five Live to listen to live commentary of a Big Fight because we can’t help ourselves.
Last night, I listened to the WBO World Heavyweight match between the champion Fabio Wardley and the challenger Daniel Dubois and it was, in turn, heroic and gruesome. The Guardian’s brilliant boxing writer Donald McRae in his report used terms like “bloody epic“, “blood-soaked“, “brutal efficiency” and “grotesque wound” and that was what it sounded like, as Dubois won by way of a late stoppage. “Howard Foster,” continued McRae, “whose pale blue shirt had turned crimson as if he worked in an abattoir rather than in a boxing ring as a referee.” The ring doctor had apparently examined a battle-worn, blood-soaked Wardley to carry on fighting with a broken nose until the mass of blood all over his contorted face finally saw the referee stop the fight.
After the fight, and this morning, all the talk is about this epic prize fight, brief references to Wardley’s injuries, but all that matters, to the media and the sports-loving public is the sport. What happens to the brave fighters in the long term is anyone’s guess, but the story of Thomas Hearns and many other boxers suggests it won’t be good.
Ricky Hatton, a huge favourite among boxing fans and holder of a version of the world championship, was found dead last year. He had his issues, particularly with alcohol and drugs, and also with poor mental health. His postmortem revealed he was suffering from suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma, at the time of his death in September 2025. We may never know what caused his death – the coroner’s verdict was death by hanging although she said could not conclude suicide – so speculation is worthless, but Hatton had suffered brain damage, likely as a direct result of his chosen career.
Let us be clear about the purpose of boxing. It is to land more punches on an opponent than they land on you, it is to bring about a situation whereby the referee stops the contest in order to prevent a fighter taking further punishment and, put bluntly, to render one’s opponent unconscious. Either we accept that what we are watching is likely to have serious long term effects to a fighter’s brain, which may not come to light until relative old age, or we just kid ourselves that boxing is essentially safe and it’s just the odd fighter who gets unlucky. Maybe even a combination of the two? So why the hell did I listen in last night?
Given my concerns about what we know about the consequences of being punched in the head, what possesses people like me to listen and watch this most cruel sport? I think because it brings out the primeval urges that lie deep within us, the ultimate fight between two competing men, or women, the desire to see who is strongest, the best. I have no desire to prove that to myself – I would be hopeless in any kind of fight, I always have been – but there is something disturbingly hypnotic when others engage in one-on-one combat.
It’s not quite that no one here gets out alive, but no one here gets out undamaged because to whatever level a punch to the head causes permanent brain damage. The longer you fight, the worse the damage, as legions of former fighters continue to confirm.
I am glad I did not fork out the £25 demanded by DAZN to watch the fight, but I can’t pretend I didn’t feel a little bit dirty for listening at all. This morning, I saw photographs of Wardley’s badly damaged face and it was horrible. Doubtless, he will go on fighting in a bid to win back his world title or more likely just carry on until Old Father Time really catches up with him and he takes a severe beating that forces him to end it all. Boxers, after all, are always the last to know when the right time to retire is. And maybe I, as a casual observer, should walk away from listening and watching? But there’s always one more Big Fight, isn’t there? I just hope it’s not one too many, like Thomas Hearns. They call boxing “the sweet science“. For the life of me, I can’t see why.
