Trash boxing. That’s the phrase Thomas Hauser uses.
He sees far too much of it in the sport now. From YouTubers stepping into the ring to the circus that surrounded Conor McGregor taking on Floyd Mayweather.
“Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather was a circus, but you also could sell Mike Tyson and Roy Jones in an exhibition,’’ he said.
“Boxing has always had sideshows but they were just that — not the main events.
“And now what’s happening in the United States with Logan Paul and Jake Paul ...I call this trash boxing. That’s becoming the main event.
“McGregor/Mayweather didn’t do anything to advance the sport of boxing. It made a lot of money for some people.
“I’m not criticising them for doing it but I’d be very critical of Showtime taking racist, homophobic, misogynistic language by those fighters and turning it into a marketing tool.
“Showtime should be ashamed.”
As Ali’s Boswell, what did Hauser make of McGregor being compared to the Greatest?
“Well, there are people who compared Donald Trump to Abraham Lincoln, people who compared Boris Johnson to Winston Churchill ...
“LeBron James is an incredible athlete, just extraordinary. He’s a better athlete than Tyson Fury or Anthony Joshua or Deontay Wilder.
“If he got into a ring with any of those three, he’d get knocked out in the first round.
“They’ve lost the sense of what’s real and what isn’t in politics, and they lost the sense of what’s real and what isn’t in boxing.”
