PROFESSIONAL heavyweight boxing has entered a spiral of decline and is fast becoming a parody of itself. None of its main protagonists are signing to fight one another for various reasons –mostly to do with disagreements over purse and PPV splits, with the result that social media rather than the ring is currently where the division resides.

Since his last underwhelming outing against a ring-weary Derek Chisora last December, WBC champion Tyson Fury has been inactive while continuously announcing upcoming fights against everyone from Anthony Joshua to Andy Ruiz Jr to Oleksandr Usyk, and even at points against the UFC’s former heavyweight champion, Francis Ngannou, and also current UFC heavyweight champ Jon Jones. 

All of it has come to naught over disagreements about venues, money and purse splits, leading to the extraordinary situation that there is no top heavyweight fight scheduled to take place this summer. Things are so bad where Fury is concerned that his most recent appearance in the news was over how he took his dad to a luxury car dealership to try and buy him a Rolls Royce which his father turned down.

As for Joshua, he is muted to face Deontay Wilder in December, but as yet nothing has been signed. The former Olympian was also in talks for a rematch against his old nemesis Dillian Whyte this summer, before said talks broke down.

Wilder, who himself hasn’t been in the ring since coming back out of retirement against Robert Helenius last October, has just broken off talks to face Andy Ruiz Jr in July, citing Ruiz’s unreasonable financial demands in demanding a 50-50 split.

All in all, the heavyweight landscape is currently tantamount to a cornucopia of chaos with no discernible structure, organisation, and with no rationale other than greed driving things. In this regard all roads lead to Saudi Arabia, which has managed to corrupt the sport with even more greed than was previously the case.

Saudi’s Prince Khalid, the country’s defence minister, has made it his mission to make the kingdom a prime location in which to host major fights and was key in the signing of Ukraine’s current unified heavyweight world champion, Oleksandr Usyk, to a four-fight deal there.

Commonly referred to as the blue riband weight division in the sport, the funny thing about it is that the current crop of top heavyweights would all struggle to make the top 10 of the Ali, Holmes, and Lewis eras ability-wise.

When it comes to a young and ferocious Mike Tyson, we’re almost talking about a different sport altogether, he was so fast and explosive. The public fascination with him back then was almost macabre, given his propensity for violence not just in the ring but also in the street. A convicted rapist, Tyson is back front and centre at major boxing events as a much-in-demand elder statesman. 

Watching old footage of him fighting and training today, you are reminded that his legendary trainer Cus D’Amato didn’t just mould a fighter, he built a pure fighting machine, developing a style that turned his height and range disadvantage into an advantage.

Tyson in his prime was the living symbol of boxing as a sport that is impervious to the tropes of conventional society. The fascination with him still today runs deeper than mere boxing. He gave lie to the idea that good will always out in the end. The bad ass of all bad asses, when young and hungry he spouted profanities against all and sundry, and made no bones about the fact that he didn’t just intend to defeat his opponents, he intended to hurt them badly. 

The fascination with heavyweight boxing overall is that of the prospect of two giants clashing in a dance of violence. Thunderous punches thrown by human monsters at one another salivate long suppressed violent instincts of a species whose organised violence against each other and the world in total challenges the very meaning of the term “human progress.”

Theodor Adorno it was who pointed out that “no universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the atom bomb.”

Boxing is legalised brutality, and heavyweight boxing is legalised thuggery. When you think of the division’s baddest exemplars — the likes of Sonny Liston, George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Deontay Wilder — you think of raw violence, undistilled and pure. 

With this in mind, if the heavyweight division can be considered the bellwether of the sport’s overall health, boxing needs a doctor. The wrangling over purse and PPV splits that has become endemic is ruining what little integrity it still possesses. 

First principles dictate that the split for a world title fight should be a mandatory straight 50-50. Then, assuming the fight contract includes a rematch clause, the rematch purse split should be 60-40 in favour of the champion. What could be simpler or fairer given the inherent dangers involved in the ring for both fighters?

Contemporary boxing doesn’t do simple or fair, alas, which is why the sport has never been more prosperous and at the same time in more of a mess. Riches without wisdom is a terrible combination in any aspect of life. When it comes to heavyweight boxing it has proved all but ruinous.

All it has done is feed the growth in nostalgia for the division’s golden age, when legends such as Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Norton, Quarry, Bonavena — the list goes on — were not just happy to fight one another, they were eager to. An era in which money belonged on the same level as pride and legacy, not above.