September, wow!
Last month was a truly unforgettable one and when Tyson Fury announced that he was walking away from boxing, cursing the sport that made him a millionaire and retired three days into October, it only added to an extraordinary time. However, three hours later he said that he was only joking.
Fury's false retirement came less than two weeks after he tested positive for cocaine during a routine drug test and then withdrew from his rematch with Wladimir Klitschko, which was scheduled for Oct. 29 in Manchester. It was not even the most disturbing piece of news in September, just part of a long, long month in the British boxing business.
It is too easy to forget Fury is just 28 and unbeaten in 25 fights. He could still be stripped of both his WBA and WBO heavyweight title belts, and face a ban from the British Boxing Board of Control, but it had looked as though he would leave the sport on his own selfish terms -- and it was disappointing for an hour or two. However, it's hard to understand how anybody in the boxing business could applaud his departure and there was some celebrating and a lot of "I told you so" going on.
The proper news arrived just before midnight last Friday when it was confirmed that Iron Mike Towell had died after losing -- his first loss in 13 fights -- in an eliminator for the British welterweight title. Towell was stopped in five rounds by Dale Evans on Thursday night in a fight at a hotel in Glasgow. He was 25 and the first boxer to die in a Scottish ring since October 1995. He was the first boxer to die in a British ring since 2013 and only the fifth to die in a British ring since 1986. However, there are no statistics that reduce the pain his loved ones are facing.
The Towell death and the Fury anarchy did their best to steal the headlines from three relentless September weekends of world title fights when just under 80,000 people paid to watch British boxers battle against the odds. During June and July, when the trio of fights were first announced, it all seemed a little whimsical and I was convinced that one or more would collapse. I was, thankfully, wrong.
It started with Gennady Golovkin defending his title in front of 19,000 at the O2 in London against Kell Brook. It was a brutal fight, an unexpected slugfest that ended in round five when Dominic Ingle, in Brook's corner, rescued his fighter. Brook had gained too much weight and will return, so he claims, to welterweight, a full 13-pounds lighter. Brook suffered an injury to his orbital bone and had surgery two weeks later when the swelling had gone down. "Kell's surgeon went up through his gum, his front teeth, moved an eye to one side and then sorted out the fracture," said Ingle. Brook, amazingly, was back in the gym before the month had ended.
The following week 51,400 watched Liam Smith lose his WBO light-middleweight title in round nine to Saul Canelo Alvarez in Texas. Smith was down three times and still fighting at the end. He is angry that he got caught with the final sickening left hook, which landed with finality under his right elbow and sent him down for the full count in round nine. "The fight was going how I wanted it to go," he said.
To complete the trio of nearly nights, the Manchester Arena did all that it could to help Anthony Crolla retain his WBA lightweight title against the Venezuelan fighting magician Jorge Linares. It was not enough and after 12 fantastic rounds Linares was the new champion and at a third weight. Crolla was exhausted, close to the limits of collapse when it was over.
October will be busy, but there was something different about September 2016. The three defeated headliners will be back. And so, I suspect at some point, will be Fury, who in many ways was the month's biggest loser.