Boxing owes it to its fighters to stop letting them fight

Taking punches to the face and body from rigorously trained athletes seems, in theory, like a profession with a very high rate of alienating its participants. Instead it seems to have an addictive effect. Fighters retire too late at a nearly perfect rate, no matter their skill level; if Muhammad Ali’s desire to box can outlast his greatness, so can anyone’s. You’d think more boxers would end up like Sunny Edwards, admitting that the sport has beaten the fight out of them at the tender age of 28. 

Yet many fighters always feel a pull to the sport. In 2004, Lennox Lewis spoke sagely about leaving boxing behind: “Should I go back in and have one more fight?”…“But I realized this is the drug of the sport. There is always one more fight and somebody to fight.” Indeed, he still gets flak for not rematching Vitali Klitschko. 

Then there’s Lewis in 2024, as a 58-year-old, telling Donald McRae of The Guardian, “I’d 100% consider [fighting again].” The drug does not spare even those aware of its tricks. 

When it comes to retirement, boxers often do not heed the advice of their trainers. Tyson Fury, who remains active at the elite level after at least a full career of hard fights, did not listen to his wife, Paris, or himself. 

Boxing has a clear exit ramp – stop boxing – but too many ways back onto the treacherous highway. The money gleams. The feeling of walking to the ring for a big fight is like being at the center of the universe. An old identity, maybe the fighter’s only identity is always right there, waiting to be slipped into exactly like a well-worn boxing glove. 

As we know, boxing poses a grave physical risk. It is too dangerous for fighters to be left to their own devices after retirement; they might come back. Let Mike Tyson be the latest cautionary tale: there is always a commission willing to prey on a fighter rather than protect them. Parody becomes reality if you let it.

Planning for retirement during a boxing career may be incongruous with focusing intently on each and every fight, but the fact remains that so many boxers find themselves unprepared for the end of their careers. Even those who walk away at an appropriate time, like Andre Ward – and boxers like him are so rare that his timing feels more remarkable than ideal – speak about how challenging it was to keep the fight game at arm’s length. Ward, now 40, recently floated a return fight with Jake Paul to Stephen A. Smith. 

There are organizations that look out for retired boxers, but they leave something to be desired. The California Professional Boxer Pension Fund offers financial aid to boxers over 50. The Fund has assisted a number of retired boxers, but has failed to adequately inform many of them, too. The IBF started the Special Assistance to Retired Boxers Fund in 1993 with the aim of supporting retired fighters. And the WBC boasts the Jose Sulaiman Boxers Fund, for which the WBC website indicates a core value of “[striving] to provide holistic support, addressing the diverse needs of boxers. This includes mental health resources, educational opportunities, and mentorship programs to empower them beyond their careers in the ring.”

This latter point, giving fighters mental assistance, is what seems to be missing on the larger scale. If boxing is a drug, money is not enough to protect former fighters from it. Fighters need to be prepared for retirement if it is to stick comfortably or at all. They must know what they will do to replace the enormity of boxing in their lives, they must have support systems, and they must not be allowed to box past a certain point. We can debate when exactly that point is; I think we can all agree Mike Tyson was past it. 

Boxing is far too liable to take everything a fighter has to give, only to abandon them shortly after. Images of a retired Matthew Saad Muhammad only getting into the Hopkins-Trinidad fight through the helping hand of BoxingScene editor-in-chief Tris Dixon and not through his boxing royalty come to mind. The once-proud Evander Holyfield getting battered by a boxing novice. His former foe, Tyson, stumbling during his walk to the ring to fight Jake Paul. 

Boxers need more help. Top-flight fighters will always have an incentive to come back for a huge payday; lesser fighters will come back for smaller purses. They need a reason not to come back. That means regular therapy or other psychological assistance to ensure they can resist boxing’s addictive nature. That means help assimilating into a non-boxing job. That means commissions that unequivocally refuse to sanction fighters who should not be in the ring. And that means financial security. Boxing must provide those services. 

Until the sport and its organizations do so, retirement will continue to be temporary for far too many of its participants.