Your Flight Is Booked: Canelo Alvarez Dominates Callum Smith
It’s a little-known law of nature: Because crusty, bloated sportswriters are biologically predisposed to pearl-clutching, the survival of the species depends on the periodic rant about The Sanctity of the Game. In boxing, that means screeds about sanctioning bodies, state commissions, promoters, managers, yahoo judges, YouTubers, referees, Saved By the Bell refugees, various and sundry unspecified sources of incompetence and corruption, and — the
pièce de résistance — PEDs. This mountain of sustenance, incidentally, is why fight bloggers and cockroaches will rule a post-apocalypse world.
It also explains a recent news cycle within the sport, in which the International Boxing Hall of Fame announced its 2021 inductees and HOF voters took to the internet to chitter over the details like the world’s worst-dressed knitting circle. The juiciest bit: James Toney, a two-time Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year, multi-division wrecking ball and transcendent defensive fighter — a man who bested Michael Nunn, Mike McCallum and Evander Holyfield — was deliberately ignored on the ballots of some HOF voters because he tested positive for steroids.