When the death of a boxer occurs, the most prominent recent case being Northern Ireland’s 28-year-old John Cooney, the sport generates significant attention in the widespread media. Not when there is exhilarating action followed by an astonishing victory that turns a life around – but when a life is lost.
That, of course, speaks to the media’s fascination with sensationalizing the bad and the ugly at the expense of the good. But there does seem to be an urgency to jump on a tragic accident in a boxing ring, raise the alarm that this is a dangerous sport and then conclude that if that danger can’t be remedied, the best course of action is to ban it.
Those who have worked in the sport for any length of time will understand the work that goes on behind the scenes from the leading athletic commissions to reduce risk while retaining boxing’s core appeal. But, bottom line, boxing will always be a sport that can kill. Which, in turn, can make it hard to justify when faced with those hell-bent on highlighting only those exceptionally rare cases when the worst possible outcome occurs.
The phone of Robert Smith, general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, now rings regularly with those people, armed with those questions and triggering that excruciating guilt, frequenting the other end of the line. Not that what happened to Cooney – a brain bleed during his fight with Nathan Howells on February 1 in Belfast – was Smith’s fault; nor, we for now presume, the consequence of any procedural failings.
When talking to BoxingScene about the matter, Smith had just finished a live on-air interview with TalkSport, an incredibly popular sports radio station in the UK. The usual questions came his way. Can you make the sport safe? What more can be done? The insinuation that any death that occurs in a British ring is the responsibility of Smith is always obvious.
“It’s difficult, talking about these things,” Smith told me afterwards. He’s told me many times that the death of a boxer is by far the hardest part of his job. That deaths seldom occur in British rings – there have been five in the past 17 years, during which time tens of thousands of contests have occurred – is evidenced by Smith still holding that job. “All that really matters at the moment is the family of John Cooney.”
Yet it is the memory of Cooney, which his family now agonizes over, that demands Smith is there to answer these questions in his role as the head of British boxing. In turn, by answering them, or trying to, and by understanding the motive for asking them, or trying to, his crusade to make the sport as safe as possible will continue. In the UK, procedures are constantly tweaked, at a cost, to ensure those inside the ring always have the best possible chance of avoiding serious injury. What Smith can’t do, and what nobody can do, however, is make boxing safe, full stop.
“If you want it to be 100 per cent safe, if that is what we’re aiming for, then the only option is to ban it,” Smith admitted. “But do that and then see what happens. The sport, or whatever it becomes, will go underground, where there are no real rules or regulations in place; where there are no doctors at ringside; where there are no ambulances on standby; where the gloves are not checked; where no medicals or brain scans have occurred; where the referee is not trained to act on signs of distress. Boxing in an ungoverned state does not bear thinking about.”
Cooney and his opponent were both subjected to strict medicals in the lead-up to their scheduled 10-rounder and, with a Celtic title being on the line, check weights at regular intervals during their training camps to ensure they were making the junior lightweight limit safely.
“He wouldn’t have been in the ring if everything wasn’t in order,” Smith stressed. “And everything was in order, his check weights, his medicals. The [brain] scans are there to highlight any problems in the future, and it should go without saying there was nothing on them. It was an acute injury; you can do as many checks as you like prior to a bout, but they’re not going to forewarn of an acute injury.
“There will be an inquiry; we are waiting for the results of the postmortem and there will be a coroner’s inquest,” Smith said. “Once that happens and we have a better understanding, we will then consider any recommendations.”
There is no question that recommendations made by Smith, once a 16-5 boxer who retired in 1989, and his team have made boxing in Britain safer than it ever has been before. “I wish I was boxing now, compared to what it used to be like,” he said. “It’s a completely different beast with the scans, the neurology reports. Medicals are exceptionally stringent – sometimes I even question why they’re so stringent – but the doctors tell us what we have to do, and we do it.”
Six days after Cooney’s accident, as he still vainly fought for his life, the BBBoC governed a show in Sheffield, England, due to be topped by Shakan Pitters in a 12-round light heavyweight title fight. Pitters’ opponent, Daniel Blenda Dos Santos, was withdrawn from the contest after concerns were raised over his brain scan mere days before. Lee Ingelrest, in training for another bout, was then approved by the European Boxing Union as a worthwhile replacement and challenger for its vacant 175lb title. That fight for the European championship, as the main event that punters were coming to see, was the chief driver of revenue for both the promoter and the commission. As frequently occurs, however, it was too late to carry out the required medicals and the mandated check weights for a championship bout. Smith did not think twice about cancelling the contest. Nor did anyone think to report it.
Matt Christie, a lifelong fight fan, has worked in boxing for more than 20 years. He left Boxing News in 2024 after 14 years, nine of which were spent as editor-in-chief. Before that, he was the producer of weekly boxing show “KOTV.” Now the co-host of ”The Opening Bell” podcast and regularly used by Sky Sports in the UK as a pundit, Matt was named as the Specialist Correspondent of the Year at the prestigious Sports Journalism Awards in 2021, which was the seventh SJA Award he accepted during his stint in the hot seat at Boxing News. The following year, he was inducted into the British Boxing Hall of Fame. He is a member of the BWAA and has been honored several times in their annual writing awards.
Read the full article here
