Feel the fear Forget your morals and enjoy the fight: the evil genius of big-time boxing

I bought the fight. Obviously. It cost £24.95, money that was previously sitting in my "ethical" bank account until I decided to exchange it for watching two men hit each other in the face live from Saudi Arabia.

- Jonathan Liew

I tell you this so you can be assured that what follows comes from no place of sanctimony or moral purity or even intellectual coherence.

Cuff me. Haul me in. What is the charge? Enjoying a fight? A succulent heavyweight boxing fight? This is the evil genius of big-time boxing: it speaks to the darkest recesses of your soul, strips away the layers of equivocation and apologia, forces you to stare at the ugly thing until you can lie to yourself no longer.

As Mike Tyson almost said, everyone has a principle until they want to watch someone get punched in the face.

Terrible men throughout history have known this as fact, and perhaps the nicest thing we can say about the rulers of Saudi Arabia is that they are at least following a time-honoured tradition.

In a way you had to feel for Anthony Joshua last week, although not for the reasons you might think.

Back in 2019, his world title rematch against Andy Ruiz in Riyadh exposed him to an inferno of criticism, questions on human rights and geopolitics that he was patently ill-equipped to answer.

"Maybe I could be a spokesman," he suggested at one point. "Rather than just accusing, pointing fingers and shouting from Great Britain. In order to ask questions of people that may want to make change, you have to go and get involved."