In The News #5

A Story

Who was the first woman to referee a professional boxing match in Britain? Many websites, including a recent BBC article, will tell you that it's Amy Yu-Fei Pu, the Taiwanese-born British boxing referee. I've seen her referee undercard bouts and to the best of my recollection she does a fine job. I can't see any reason why she shouldn't one day have the privilege of donning a black bowtie to referee a world championship bout in Britain or elsewhere. Nevertheless! (and I'm only being this guy for reasons I'll hopefully be able to adequately explain,) I'm not sure she was the first woman to referee a professional boxing match in Britain.

After briefly digging in the archives, I discovered this article on the front page of the Daily Mirror.

Yup! On August 26th, nineteen-hundred-and-thirty-four, Cassie Watson ('Cissie' in some sources), a hairdresser from Blackpool, refereed three boxing matches at Mr. S. Cowan's Ardwick Boxing Stadium in Manchester. As was common back then (and remains common in European small hall shows), the referee was also the sole judge. The fights she featured in were:

• Young Gallagher (of Rochdale) vs. P. Calligan/Pat Gallagan/Calagan (of Ancoats)
• Mick Kirk vs. W. Palmer
• Billy Tansey vs. Dixie Kid

You may notice that these fights do not appear on Boxrec because, as I've pointed out before, Boxrec is not a reliable website. You may also notice that the Mirror said she refereed two fights but, you might wanna sit down for this, tabloids get things wrong too sometimes (accidentally or otherwise). The most interesting bout was the third one Watson was involved in. According to other newspaper reports which did cover the third fight, there was an almighty uproar when Dixie Kid (a Welsh fighter adopting the name of the original Dixie Kid) allegedly landed a lowblow on Tansey, and Watson counted the downed Tansey out. As a result of all the commotion and several minutes of loud protests, she lost her nerve and changed her mind, instead disqualifying Dixie Kid - a decision supported by Mr. (Samuel?) Cowan. Asked about the furore the next day by a reporter, Watson was quoted as saying:

"A referee is no good until he 'gets the bird.' I nearly got it on Sunday. So there is hope for me. The promoter is a friend of my family and it was at his gymnasium that I learned to love the art of boxing.
I was taught to box, but I was not strong enough, but being fond of it, I soon learned the rules and the method of scoring. I have refereed fights at the gymnasium and evidently gave such satisfaction that it was suggested I should referee real contests.
I feel a bit shaken after my experience, but I am going to have another try. After all it was my first show in public. I had done two fights successfully and in the third one of the fighters was evidently a favourite with the crowd.
I was a bit excited and admit I got a little mixed up. I am sorry things happened as they did. I am going to try again next Sunday in Manchester however. It is also possible that in three weeks time I shall appear in a London ring."

The news spread worldwide via the wire but was quickly forgotten, with the few references to or comments on the matter being mostly dismissive or outright negative.

The British Boxing Board of Control said they were unaware she was refereeing, with one board official quoted as saying "No licence has been issued to Miss Watson, and the question of a woman refereeing has never been raised. If she did make an application it would be a matter for the stewards, we knew nothing about it until to-day." There was talk of her refereeing more fights but this never came to pass.

I'm not resurrecting Cassie Watson's name to diminish Amy Pu's admirable achievements, but because we should care about things like history and truth, otherwise we risk Amy Pu's achievements being similarly discarded without a care one day. She probably will be the first woman to ever referee a world title bout and when the day comes we should do the same thing we do for any other referee, hope that we scarcely notice they were there the whole time. There's no greater compliment for a referee than that.

Your Goat Is Washed

The heavyweight champion of the world has unexpectedly vacated all of his belts though did not retire. Oleksandr Usyk, who only last year declared that '38 is young', has decided that 39 is too old to pick off guys like Agit Kabayel and Moses Itauma. Why? For money? To remain undefeated by taking an easier fight against a 40 year old Deontay Wilder? Whatever his thinking, it's not a good look to make this move after needing 11 rounds to crack Rico Verhoeven, on top of a ludicrous stoppage where the referee waves it off after the bell, and in addition to crooked scorecards. It's embarrassing. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there's no such thing as a great undefeated fighter. Yes, if Usyk retires having never lost, having had fewer pro fights on his record than Andre Ward, and not having fought everyone he could have reasonably faced, then that can be held against him.

What will he do now? Possibly join Zuffa as their inaugural heavyweight champion (much like Larry Holmes lending immediate legitimacy to the IBF over 40 years ago)? Dana White and Turki Alalshikh would then own the lineal heavyweight championship of the world, a lineage that only goes as far back as Klitschko, Fury, and Usyk. They'd be better off paying a 60 year old Lennox Lewis to get knocked out by Moses Itauma and reviving the line that goes all the way back to Floyd Patterson.

And the belts? Murrat Gassiev and Agit Kabayel became e-mail champions (formerly 'paper champeens') of the WBA and WBC in the past couple of the days. Card-carrying members of the fight mob tend to stick to the same logic these sanctioning bodies used to apply, you're not the champ unless you win it in the ring á la the wonderfully entertaining Daniel Dubois. This is also the rule at the IBF (the least corrupt/incompetent of the four major sanctioning bodies), who have ordered Itauma to face Sanchez for the vacant belt (assuming he beats Hrgovic). The IBF did order Sanchez-Itauma as an eliminator to determine their #1 contender for the heavyweight championship last year, however Itauma turned it down to face Dillian Whyte, and Sanchez was one of several fighters to make a mockery of Ring Magazine's rankings in Egypt when he knocked out Ricardo Torrez (#8 according to The Ring) in the second round instead.

Long story short: Rico Verhoeven beat Oleksandr Usyk so badly that he hastened his retirement plans, the heavyweight crown likely won't be reunified until 2028 at the absolute earliest, and open scoring was a mistake.

Philly Different

Boots has still got it, man! Xander Zayas was the underdog going into the fight despite being the reigning unified champion but it was always going to be struggle for him and that was before it descended into a slugfest. These are the sort of the exciting contests which happen when two top competitors face each other in their 20s. It looked like fight of the year on paper and they delivered a high bar for fight of the year in the ring.

In a ringside interview pre-fight, O'Shaquie Foster correctly identified that Zayas's best chance of winning would be making it a boring fight because you don't slug with a slugger. But Zayas tried and ended up getting dropped and beat up in the first two rounds, yet he rallied back in the third round and seemingly hurt Jaron 'Boots' Ennis. I say seemingly because Boots gets tagged every fight and keeps it moving. No holding on for dear life, no running away, he will stay in the pocket and continue to look for counterpunching opportunities even when you think he's dazed.

Credit to Zayas for taking such a big fight at only 23 years old. And even more credit to him for making it so entertaining. Nobody can deny the cajones it takes to not shy away and retreat in the face of such an onslaught. This was a helluva fight! Both dared to be great, both dared to do it the hard way, and both inevitably came away with everyone's respect. These are the fights that boxing fans want and that the culture needs. More please!

Your Goat Is Washe- Wait, I already used that? Um... 'Tu Cabra Está Lavada'

Saúl "Canelo" Alvarez was, for a good few years, the face of boxing. Whisper it under your breath, has that time passed? The Mexican superstar turned 36 this month and skipped fighting on Cinco De Mayo this year, he will be missing Mexican Independence day weekend for as-yet unspecified reasons and his one fight in 2026 is now rescheduled for October 31st. You would hope that everything being under the thumb of the Saudi operation means that it's harder for the fighters to hide shenanigans, yet we're left no choice but to assume that the shenanigans behind Canelo-Mbilli being delayed are bad enough for the current regime to keep it under wraps too, because if not the Saudi-owned Ring Magazine would've put out a line or two about it being for personal reasons.

After weeks of silence, Canelo appeared on Ariel Helwani's podcast to offer the following explanations: "some problem with my family so I need to fix", "I wasn't ready to be in training camp that's why I postponed the fight because I need to attend first to [my] family" and "I wasn't ready to get in the training camp because, you know, when it's family you need to attend [to] the family."
Is it too much to expect someone to ask a follow-up question in this scenario? I can understand and wholeheartedly agree that people are entitled to privacy and media shouldn't pry. But I don't see any issue with saying 'if you don't mind my asking, what happened?' If they want to answer, great! If they do mind, respectfully move on. What's the point of an interview if you're not going to ask questions?

Joshua-Fury: An Epilogue

I've said for a while now I don't think the fight is worth making anymore, and the two tune-up exhibitions did little to dissuade me from that view. Anthony Joshua decided to make his comeback against Albania's second-best heavyweight, who almost knocked him out in the first round. This is precisely why they chose such a complete bum as an opponent. Anyone even slightly better than a fighter as lowly as Prenga would've won. Fury had a less disastrous but equally pathetic exhibition in Thailand against Mariusz Wach.

Look at it this way: before Wach was announced as the opponent, if you had to guess 100 potential names for Fury to face in 2026, would you have ever come up with Mariusz Wach? I'm one of the handful of people in the world to know the name and it never crossed my mind, I thought he'd retired years ago. Given that Fury was talking about fighting Nelson Hysa (Albania's best heavyweight), we can only assume he was too scared of fighting anyone even slightly better than Mariusz Wach. And even then, Wach, a who has had no decent wins in over a decade and gallery of losses that looked like he was trying to feature in a solo stumblebum-of-the-month calendar, managed to stay on his feet every round with Fury. The heavybag with legs somehow even landed a shot or two. If you think I'm wrong to say that the Fury fight was equally pathetic, remember that at least Joshua won his fight by knockout.

In true Fury fashion, he chose to fight one day before Joshua's match and then spent much of fight week saying he doesn't care about Joshua. Of course, none of this helps the stale fight and it's hard to even argue that it hurts it. People who have decided they care and want to see it are the people who will want to see it no matter what; people who mocked or couldn't even be bothered to mock the two performances are the ones who lost interest years ago.

Who is more shot? It looks like Joshua has lost his punch resistance. Have you ever kept a broken umbrella? It's functionally and literally an umbrella, it'll work when there's a light drizzle, but you just know it'll collapse or fall apart on a windy day. Joshua is functionally and literally a boxer. I don't know if he can weather any more storms if he's getting knocked over by someone of that caliber. At a certain point, you retire the umbrella. What should be made of the well-publicised months spent training with Usyk and his team if this is the end result? Change teams again or roll the dice? Joshua will be turning 137 years old this October and somehow it still feels like every other fight is an experiment. His fights are entertaining and it's very welcome that he clearly loves boxing, so did many fighters before him and many of them also should've stopped sooner really.

Fury is trying to pivot into being a celebrity, which is an uphill battle for him because he's a very boring person. A real celebrity holds your attention and imagination by being impressive or intriguing in some way, what's impressive or intriguing about Tyson Fury in the past couple of years? Why keep up with the Fury's on Netflix when they don't have anything new to say? He'd have better luck going the Adrien Broner route and becoming an influencer by playing the fool or provocateur. Maybe he knocks Anthony Joshua out in one round and gets to spend the 40 or 50 years claiming he's Britain's best ever heavyweight. Or maybe he gets knocked out in one round and spends the next 40 or 50 years saying he would've won if they'd have fought in their primes and Mercury wasn't in retrograde. He keeps unannouncing retirements and saying silly things because he wants the spotlight, but if he wanted to be taken seriously he would've fought a Kabayel or a Dubois for a title. Tyson Fury is a broken record.

I was a young teenager when I first got hooked on boxing. Half a lifetime ago, I remember reading about the 2011 amateur world championships and the upcoming 2012 Olympics. I remember when David Haye was supposed to dethrone (and behead) the Klitschko brothers, when Tyson Fury had a head full of hair. I remember when Mariusz Wach was a contender. All of these are very old memories, and a fight between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua should've already been an old memory by this point. Yet nobody will reflect fondly on any of this. Regardless of what either man does for money in the next few years or decades, I believe it's time to let go of the past, I'm ready to forget ever caring about this fight.

Why are we still here? Just to Zuffa?

Richardson Hitchins established himself as one to watch after his knockout win over George Kambosos last year and he totally won me over by triggering Eddie Hearn's fragile ego. That's why it was disappointing for him to jump into bed with Dana White's Saudi-funded/Ellison-funded efforts to establish a foothold in boxing. And it is only a foothold since the takeover is looking less likely by the day. Notice that the destructive changes to the Ali Act have stalled in the United States Congress like so many bills before it (generally, less than 8% of bills make it to become laws). It probably won't make his obituaries, which will no doubt be scathing and deservingly so, but credit where it's due if this bill fails then we'll all owe thanks to Senator Ted Cruz. As far as I'm aware he's not a boxing fan like the late Senator John McCain; a broken clock can still be right twice a day even if it has ulterior motives and no spine. My optimism was slightly tempered by a Boxing Insider article although for now I'm still on Team 'Maybe Something Nice Will Happen?'

Back to Zuffa though, it was disappointing to hear they got Hitchins and annoying to hear them linked to Usyk-Wilder, but my heart sank when I heard Shakur Stevenson decided to throw his future away for money. Yes, he's obnoxious. Yes, he's ignorant. But damn it, he's a great boxer and I wanted to see him do big things in big fights. It's different to the frustration I felt when Floyd Mayweather was avoiding tough opponents because no matter how much he said he was only in it for the money, you could see on his face how much some of those wins and belts meant to him. Floyd Mayweather was a coward (in his own words) but he knew that there was such a thing as legacy. I fully believe Shakur Stevenson is only in it for the money, which is his right, but the other side of that agreement is that you shouldn't get mad when people say they don't respect you, your accomplishments, or your legacy. It's sad to see him to be out here arguing with oldheads like Shannon 'Shay Shay' Sharpe or other podcasters who aren't knowledgeable enough about boxing to critically praise or accurately criticize him (like Rugged Man once did to Floyd Mayweather).

The Zuffa move is presumably a big bag but there isn't anyone who believes it makes the Tank fight or any other long-awaited match more likely. I'd even take Stevenson-Foster at this point. Zuffa, like the UFC, is probably going to be in-house shows, with in-house bums being set up like in-house Zuffa-branded bowling pins twice a year. All while Max Kellerman puts on his company-man hat and company-man tie to tell you Shakur Stevenson should be called 'Sugar Shakur Stevenson'. Maybe he might've been if he fought the best?

This is where I think Stevenson's a lot like Floyd Mayweather. For the record, in 2009-2012, at the height of interest in the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight, as much as I wanted Manny Pacquiao to win I felt like Floyd Mayweather was the better boxer and probably would've won a hard-fought decision. But Floyd Mayweather was happy to insist the fight didn't need to happen because, he would claim, he didn't have to prove anything. So the fight never happened and the only thing it proved was that Floyd Mayweather didn't think he would win. If Shakur Stevenson had any confidence or self-belief, he would be fighting in the ring instead of fighting interviewers. I think he probably would beat most, possibly all, of his contemporaries - he's genuinely that good - but his actions are telling me I'm wrong to believe that, just like Mayweather's cowardly signals about prime Pacquiao et al. And if Turki Alalshikh or Dana White want to make the big fights happen, they shouldn't be paying top fighters top dollars to beat up nobodies.

In Other News

Why did I start this website? I'm sure I gave some reason some place about wanting to share my opinion, document what I thought might've been another golden age, and just for funsies - all of which remain true. But one reason I've not publicly stated yet, for fear of people holding him responsible for my hot takes, is Craig Scott - writer behind '(Contaminated) Food For Thought' (CFFT). It was his old site, boxingzombie.uk, which gave voice to a lot of things I wished someone would express (like spelling out Conor Benn's nonsense clearly) and sharing esoteric amusing things (like the DAZN social media team 'claiming Anthony Joshua was “no stranger to ducking smoke.”')

I've never interacted with Scott and he didn't know who was reading his site or that I enjoy his writing. As much as I'd like to say that it was reading the greats like Heywood Broun, Jim Murray, and Dick Young that inspired me to write, they didn't. They're fun to read, but the world they inhabited hasn't existed for a long time. It was seeing somebody react to the world as it is today, as I know it and experience it, that sparked the thought 'I could do the same thing'. And it was him stopping his site that made me take the step towards 'I should do something'. Well, the boxing world as it is today is making me want to give up on the sport. But knowing you're never alone in that feeling engenders camaraderie and makes it easier to collectively believe, as the old-timers did, that it'll be better one day.

Being reminded of Conor Benn got me thinking... it's been a while since I've made a prediction, hasn't it? Ok, here we go, time to get the ol' neurons and synapses firing.

Prediction: Conor Benn beats Ryan Garcia by KO/TKO, rounds 7-9