The Beltline: Ben Whittaker and the futility of trying to assess a boxer’s pain

In keeping with the style of today, there was a suggestion on October 12 that Ben Whittaker had SWALLOWED his light-heavyweight fight against Liam Cameron and that his DECISION not to continue after a CRAZY tumble out of the ring left his opponent and many others OUTRAGED!

Now it goes without saying, whether using big letters or small, that for Whittaker to fall out of the ring and suffer injury was not an ideal way for an intriguing 10-rounder to end. It did, however, serve as catnip for media outlets with an affection for capitalising all the words they wouldn’t want us to miss. For them, a finish like the one on Saturday was precisely what they were after, the bizarre nature of it giving rise to myriad opinions and theories, each and every one delivered from a position of ignorance. 

After all, in the final analysis there is only one man who really knows whether the impact of that fall in round five was enough to warrant the fight ending. That man does not host a podcast, or a radio show, or tweet his unsolicited opinions about boxing scorecards in his underpants. He is instead the man whose ankle was apparently sprained; the ones whose heart was subsequently then called into question. His name is Ben Whittaker. 

His opponent, meanwhile, Liam Cameron, is the only other man whose opinion on the matter is even worth hearing. He wouldn’t have felt the extent of Whittaker’s pain, no, but in sharing the ring with him for five rounds, and being privy to elements of a fight the rest of us are not, would have a far better idea of Whittaker’s mental state than anyone else. 

“He was spent,” said Cameron afterwards. “The public know, when they watched that fight, he was absolutely gone. He was tired from round two. I was saying to him (in round five), ‘There’s still five rounds left.’ I was sticking my tongue out at him. I broke his heart. That’s experience. He was constantly holding me to get a break. I could hear his trainer saying, ‘Hold him! Hold him!’ He then did a backflip on the ropes. It’s like (Artur) Beterbiev says: ‘They’ll see.’”

In reality, no amount of re-watching the fight, or even that particular incident, brings a person any closer to deciphering (a) what happened or (b) whether Whittaker’s pain was enough to lead to the fight being called off. All we really know is that it was unfortunate and that Whittaker himself deemed the pain he was experiencing sufficient to travel from the ring back to his changing room in a wheelchair. 

That image, in isolation, certainly gave the impression of him being hurt, incapacitated. Yet Cameron of course would likely argue that that was the whole point and that Whittaker’s response to the incident, much like his career, was carefully thought out and to some degree manufactured. He would suggest that the only way a fighter could leave a fight like that following an incident like that is to pretend the damage done was so severe they could not even stand, much less walk.

In that respect, Whittaker, by choosing to take a seat and have someone wheel him back to the changing room, became a man above questioning. Who, after all, would see a man in a wheelchair and expect them to box? 

And yet the wheelchair only fixed the immediate problem. Beyond that Whittaker will have known to expect a backlash and a backlash he received, too, with many people convinced that he had not only BOTTLED the fight against Cameron because he was RATTLED and SHATTERED but also that he had, in taking the so-called EASY WAY OUT, demonstrated a MENTAL WEAKNESS from which there is no coming back. This, again, might seem a little presumptuous, and maybe unfair, but it became the post-fight narrative nevertheless. Cameron pushed it, the fans helped, and soon it was difficult to find anyone with a viewpoint to counter this. 

Yet how strange it is to be so certain of something about which we know so little. We all know pain, yes, or some strand of it, but nobody knows how it feels to fall the way Whittaker did on Saturday, nor does anybody know how he felt when writhing around on the canvas. That is not to say he didn’t milk the moment, or even look at what happened with the bigger picture in mind, but there are surely some events that are beyond us as outsiders and therefore best left alone. 

Contentious scorecards are one thing. We can each pretend we know what we are talking about when it comes to scoring fights and keeping count. However, the pain threshold of a professional fighter – which, by the way, differs from one man, or woman, to the next – is something we cannot comprehend, particularly if having never boxed or experienced what these athletes feel in the heat of battle. 

Some, of course, fight on, always. They fight on with dislocated shoulders, lacerations, fractured jaws, and snapped tendons. Some even look back at these injuries having turned a fight on its head with pride, relieved that they didn’t give up or surrender to common sense. 

For most, though, that is not the case. Most fighters who persevere with an injury do so only for fear of facing the kind of criticism Whittaker has encountered and often come to rue the decision when the pain of defeat is compounded and the rehabilitation time is extended. These men, as brave as they appear, can do nothing with the faint praise they receive on the way to the hospital. 

Perhaps putting Whittaker in the same bracket as other injured boxers forced to leave the ring prematurely is foolish. Perhaps it gives him too much leeway and too much benefit of the doubt. There have, it’s true, been far worse accidents, and indeed far worse injuries, and one could argue that in that sort of company Whittaker does not belong. Yet it is true all the same that only the boxer himself knows the pain of Saturday night and it is true, also, that only Whittaker knows whether the fight finishing the way it did was planned – that is, an option he elected to take – or instead the only conceivable option in light of his pain. 

His injury, like any other, will in time heal, get better. But what Ben Whittaker knows of that night will, for better or worse, forever stay with him. It won’t be written in capital letters, or tweeted at him, but will instead be delivered in lower case, almost a whisper. It will be that voice you can’t escape. The one you hear at night just before sleep comes along and rescues you from yourself.