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Beasts of the east
- Updated: September 13, 2016
Does the biggest threat to the supremacy of British boxing come not from the United States, but from Russia and the Ukraine? Isaac Robinson takes a look…
In the wake of glorious coronations for Ricky Burns and Tony Bellew over the May bank holiday weekend, the UK now boasts no fewer than 13 world champions; four more than the sport’s traditional rulers across the Atlantic Ocean.
There’s no doubt that the US is still littered with some special yet underrated fighters. Terence Crawford and Gary Russell Jr are just two of the less glitzy names who deserve mentions in any discussion about the world’s pound-for-pound best. If you go beyond world champions, Errol Spence Jr could be the best welterweight in the world for all we know.
But what about Vasyl Lomachenko? What about Artur Beterbiev? Oleksandr Usyk? Murat Gassiev, Oleksandr Gvozdyk and Ievgen Khytrov? Have they really had the exposure their skills deserve, and will they ever? Does the English language and its importance to the ‘showbiz’ aspect of boxing mean that Eastern European fighters will forever struggle to enter Western markets?
It’s not to be taken for granted whether they actually need to, of course. Russia’s Andrey Ryabinsky is a man with a pound note or two – in 2013 he won the auction to stage Wladimir Klitschko v Alexander Povetkin with a bid in excess of $23m. Michael Buffer was the ring announcer. It’s not like there’s no showbiz in Moscow.
What would be disappointing about any stand-off between British and American promoters and those from Russia is that fans would be denied the chance to see the best facing the best.
Blame culture is by its very nature unproductive but given the drug testing sagas surrounding Ruslan Chagaev v Lucas Browne and Deontay Wilder v Alexander Povetkin, you can hardly blame Bellew for immediately stipulating that any cruiserweight unification clash with Denis Lebedev would not be taking place in Russia.
The system in Russia and the Ukraine makes for intriguing …
