‘The Gloves Are Off’: A table, two fighters and a whiff of desperation

There was a time when “The Gloves Are Off,” or any instance in which boxers sat across a table from one another, was as close to insight as a fan could hope to receive ahead of a big fight. In a darkened room, with only a table and a host for company, there was, for the two boxers involved, no place to hide, no promoter waiting to interrupt, and no chance to correct anything in the edit. 

Raw and unscripted, the experience played out in a silence most people associate with an introspection they would rather avoid. This silence gave the idea not only its selling point, but enticed from fighters the kind of energy you would rarely see from them when sitting at the top table in a press conference, or when delivering interviews to members of the media separately. It brought them close, dangerously so, and removed from the occasion all the things that maintain a semblance of control on fight night: a ring, a referee, gloves, rules. It felt risky, but also important, for it was saved only for the fights that mattered and for the fighters who would be best equipped to make something of its simple but effective format. 

Ten years ago, for example, Carl Froch and George Groves delivered an episode of “The Gloves Are Off” impossible to forget and every bit as hard to replicate. By that stage, in 2014, we knew the dynamic at play between the two super middleweights, yet nobody, for all the tension between them, could have predicted how the meeting of Froch and Groves in a Sky studio in Isleworth would have transpired and concluded. 

The moment – that is to say, the final handshake – was the result of not just a deep-rooted rivalry but also exhaustion, with both fighters having already that day filmed an episode of “Ringside,” as well as various other bits for Sky Sports. Froch, the champion, had travelled all the way down from Nottingham, whereas Groves, who lived not far from Isleworth, had been close enough to walk there. “That’s another win for me,” he said that morning. “He’ll be annoyed that I only have to walk around the corner.”

However, any irritation on Froch’s part was soothed somewhat by an offer to be flown in via helicopter, which he accepted, while any convenience on Groves’ part was balanced by the fact that he woke up that day with a stinking head cold. He had also struggled to sleep on account of both this cold and the many ideas he had running through his head; things he wanted to say, points he wanted to make. “I’ve been reading recent articles just to remind myself what Froch is going to be coming with,” he said in his kitchen, eyes fixed on his laptop screen. “Froch mentions me getting knocked out in sparring a few times. But why is he mentioning that? He’s hanging his hat on the idea that he underperformed last time and took me lightly, so he can only improve this time round. Everybody else is going along with it because they don’t know any better. None of them actually think about what they’re saying, though. It just sounds good.”

The next 10 minutes counted as research and preparation and Groves, a thorough student, was determined not to leave any stone unturned. He fished out every article written about Froch in the past month and studied any quotes with a diligence hampered only by illness and a wavering focus. When not studying articles, or wiping his nose with a tissue, he could be seen leaning over a saucer, which he earlier filled with steaming hot water, and draping a damp tea towel around his neck. “I’m just going to keep asking him questions,” he said through a blocked nose. “Simple questions, but over and over again. Get him talking. They’ll be questions he can’t really answer. For starters, ‘What are you going to do differently?’

“Preparing to fight me again is torture for him. Money is all well and good but it feels a long way away when you’re preparing for a fight. You’ve got to go through all this shit first. He doesn’t want any of this. He doesn’t want to be around me or have people ask him questions about me.” 

Convinced of this, Groves snatched a tissue from a box and blew his nose. “I know what I need to do,” he then said, thinking for once not of his opponent. “I can’t really use Vix today, as that won’t look good, but once I get some adrenaline going it should hopefully clear out.” He emptied a nasal spray into the saucer as he whispered, “But there’s no guarantee,” and zoned out. “Actually, I think I’ll drive,” he said, peering out the window at the pouring rain. 

Driving there took Groves all of eight minutes. Froch, meanwhile, landed via helicopter two hours later. 

***

While filming “Ringside,” Froch, during the many ad breaks, would center himself by engaging in small talk with Eddie Hearn, his promoter, and by singing along to the music that accompanied the highlight packages playing on a monitor. “And you can tell everybody, I’m the man, I’m the man, I’m the man,” he sang as Aloe Blacc’s hit “The Man” soundtracked an amateur boxing montage. “Hold it together, Carl,” Groves, sitting the other side of Hearn, whispered. “Hold it together now. Don’t break down.”

Froch, though, never did. Nor for that matter did he bite. In fact, to the shock of his opponent and everyone watching in the room, he continued to project the image of someone completely at ease, then agreed to shake hands at the end of it all. “I wish I did one of those freaky strong handshakes like in ‘Ocean’s Eleven’,” Groves later said in his green room, tucking into a pot of chicken teriyaki ramen fetched from the Sky canteen. “That would have really spooked him.” 

The next half an hour Groves spent eating his food and signing bits of paraphernalia brought into the room by various Sky runners, as well as recalling what had just happened. “Was I too aggressive?” he asked at one stage. “Did it look like I was bullying him? I didn’t want that.’ 

Though yet to watch it back, he sensed he had been forced to act more aggressively than he would have liked simply because Froch had been so reticent, so passive, so unusual. He had expected Froch to at some point revert to type, get angry or defend himself, only he never did. Instead, Groves found the champion perfectly agreeable. They had even shaken hands. 

When the pair then shook hands for a second time, the first occasion was soon forgotten. Second time around Groves, having waited five hours for it, finally met Froch for “The Gloves Are Off” with only Johnny Nelson as adjudicator. This time, after an hour and 15 minutes of recording, Groves employed the “freaky strong handshake” he had previously mentioned and yanked Froch closer to him as they both stood up. In return, Froch, suddenly irked, did similar, pulling Groves back the other way. “We can all pull about a bit,” he warned Groves. “Have a little pull and a push.” 

In an instant the mood had changed and it was obvious why to all who had seen them go at it for over an hour. It was instigated by Groves, this flashpoint, and it was motivated largely by tiredness, which both experienced, and illness, exclusively his. But more than anything it was triggered by both a lack of ideas and his frustration at being unable to rattle his nemesis the way he had grown accustomed to doing by now. 

Froch, just like on “Ringside,” had given absolutely nothing away at the table. He had sat dormant, he had offered Groves praise, and he revealed only the name of his psychologist. Other than that, he was a total blank canvas, and the more Groves tried to poke and prod and tear at this canvas, the more he ended up tying himself in knots and stumbling into the same territory he once accused Froch of inhabiting; that of contradictions, wild proclamations, and fibs. In the end he viewed their second handshake as his final chance to smoke Froch out. 

“I was disappointed with that,” Groves said on the way back to his car, kicking a shallow puddle. “You know when you’re not thinking because you’re tired and fed up? That’s how I felt. He was saying stuff and it wasn’t really sticking with me. I’m not happy at all with that one. Oh well. Fuck it.”

***

Neither boxer would have known back then just how iconic that moment – specifically, that handshake – would go on to become, nor did any of us know how important the image was in terms of both selling the rematch and inspiring Sky Sports, and others, to try repeating it in the future. 

Yet that, for the next 10 years, is precisely what happened. Such was its power, the pursuit of a repeat performance became the catalyst for a constant stream of over-the-table face-offs, only a small number of which warranted being hosted in the first place. The same questions were always asked, the same plot beats were always hit, and even the boxers themselves seemed eventually bored of both the format and the inquisition itself. 

Only some understood and fully embraced its purpose. Someone like Charles Martin, for instance, was a complete unknown before sitting across a table from Anthony Joshua in 2016 and telling the world, “I walk this earth like a god.” Better yet, Tyson Fury’s famous sauna anecdote prior to fighting Wladimir Klitschko acted as a priceless insight into his mindset and provided the fight with an angle and storyline hitherto unknown. 

These moments could only be created by the intimacy and danger of a show like “The Gloves Are Off,” where pride is at stake and where the aim is one-upmanship. Yet what is also important to note is the fact that many of these classic moments were created between boxers involved in fights that mattered, or fights relevant to more than just the hardcore boxing crowd. 

Without this weight of relevance, there is less of an impetus to try, or even understand what is going on. Some of the boxers roped into it doing it these days, for example, sit there like naughty school kids who have been asked to stay behind after class, whereas others are simply incapable of expressing themselves in the manner required. That is no fault of theirs, by the way. It is instead more a reflection of how broadcasters and promoters have become so reliant on this format – now a trite one – to sell fights and manufacture rivalries between boxers who are often not that way inclined and should, ideally, be left to do what they do best. 

By having every half-decent fight sold in this way, there is forever the danger of devaluing the ones that actually matter and creating burnout, with fans feeling that if they have seen one, they have seen them all. Previously there was always a sense of anticipation with this particular media obligation and it was deemed the highlight of the whole pre-fight build-up. If the right fighters were involved, and the fight meant something, this was as good as we could expect in terms of seeing the key protagonists within punching range of one another but unable to strike. It asked them to do something else, that is, show something else, and the sight of them trying was typically fascinating, if purely on the basis of seeing boxers find new ways to converse at a time when all they wanted to do was speak in their native tongue. 

Nowadays, perhaps because it has been done to death, the format doesn’t create quite the same anticipation. Now almost a parody of itself, it invites a boxer to play a part and say what they think they should be saying, rather than speak naturally, openly, and honestly. Now you have two boxers viewing it as an opportunity to go viral instead of as strategy; a chance to probe and get inside the head of an opponent before they fight. 

The staleness of it all is then compounded by a belief that we have already heard everything we could possibly want to hear from the two boxers involved. This stems from a lack of mystery, which is true of most things these days. After all, if something hasn’t already been said at a press conference, or in an interview, it will have likely been posted on social media, which in turn leaves not a lot left when the two boxers meet on opposite sides of a table. At that stage only the personalities and the magnitude of the fight can hold the interest of those suffering big-fight fatigue; all pining for the days when we knew a little less and had a greater reason to watch and pay attention. 

There can be new spins on stale formats, that much is true, but maybe the big, irreversible shift happened back when everything pre-fight went from being considered strategy to content in the eyes of both the paymasters and the participants themselves. It was then we kissed goodbye to anything of value or prestige and made do with stuff; stuff to pass the time, stuff to fill timelines, and stuff to be regurgitated by websites and social media accounts happy for coverage to be quick, constant, and convenient.

Ten years on, in fact, the Froch-Groves handshake now functions as almost a microcosm of the format itself. We turn up tired and clearly ill, we are forced to wait around, and we are pulled when we want to be pushed, and pushed when we want to be pulled. We then head home more than a little disappointed, both with ourselves and the game we volunteer to play.