Although it played like a snuff film, those in the room stood back and let it happen, with only one or two thinking, “No, no, surely not.” They had, it seemed, all been waiting for this moment: the chance to see the two big heavyweights together in a dark room, well within punching range. As a result, they thought only of the numbers it might generate and neither the optics nor ethics of it all. They could see nothing wrong with it. Maybe the truth is that they knew no better.
In fact, until they were told to stop, the idea of having Joseph Parker and Daniel Dubois sit just inches from each other and answer the kind of questions aimed at school children was presumably what they wanted from a couple of heavyweights days away from fighting. As if to make it okay, or at least relatively painless, they even stressed to them both that the questions would be easy to answer. They would be true-or-false questions; then a bit of “this or that”. It was media day, after all. What did you expect? Like most trash on boxing’s street, it all fell under the umbrella of “content”.
Only Andy Lee, Parker’s trainer and a former pro boxer, saw what was happening through different eyes. “These guys are going to be fighting in a few days,” said Lee to those arranging the fun. “It’s not very nice them talking about each other like this. They are going to fight each other in a few days and here they are sitting beside each other. It’s not going to be good for each other.”
More than just the lone voice of sanity and reason, Lee’s was also the voice of experience and know-how. For he, like anyone who has boxed or even hung around fighters for longer than an allotted time slot, is aware that the last thing a fighter wants to be doing on fight week is (a) sitting close to their opponent and (b) being asked to name their favourite colour.
The worry, in this instance, had less to do with Dubois and Parker kicking off and potentially jeopardising their fight – although it’s true, that was possible – and more to do with the fighters’ overall wellbeing and the natural stresses of fight week. Media obligations, you see, are one thing – a necessary evil, if you will – but to push what is expected of a fighter on fight weeks seems, at best, ignorant and, at worst, just cruel.
To watch the aforementioned scene unfold, which I did thanks to Parker’s fight-week vlog, was to watch a pair of heavyweights too polite to say “no” while various others were too inexperienced to question what it was they were asking of these two men. Anybody who has spent time around fighters, however, will have known to not even try it. They would have known the importance of space and understanding at a time like that.
“I keep them out of the gym now,” another trainer said to me a few weeks ago, speaking of videographers and YouTubers. “They come in just looking for a quick sound bite or a bit of gossip and don’t know how to conduct themselves properly. That’s an education in itself, knowing how to behave around fighters.”
Unfortunately, in a world of quick-quick-quick and more-more-more, there is no time to pause for thought these days. A typical fight week, in fact, is often now packed with various events which serve only to promote things other than the boxers, and these events the boxers must attend and pretend to enjoy. Each time they do so they are brought within spitting distance of their opponent and they are also brought closer to the people who have shown up to ask them questions behind a camera.
Scarier still, and this was again evident in Parker’s vlog, the constant demands on fighters during fight week, particularly in Saudi Arabia, brings them into contact with all the fans who either live in Riyadh or have travelled from overseas. This, as you can imagine, only increases the likelihood of an accident or, yes, an illness. Just think for one second of all the handshakes. Think of the many selfies and the hugs.
Indeed, there were plenty of hugs in Riyadh during fight week, as well as a few bugs, one of which saw Floyd Schofield, Shakur Stevenson’s original opponent, end up in hospital. Another, meanwhile, got to Dubois, ensuring there would, for all that publicity during fight week, be no fight against Parker after all.
A “viral infection” was the official line from the Dubois camp and it hardly came as a surprise given all we had seen Dubois and the other fighters on the “Last Crescendo” card have to endure just to get to the ring and make their money. The only surprise, in truth, is that these fight-week illnesses are not more prevalent and do not scupper more fights. One wonders, too, to what extent the potential of a fight-week illness plays on the mind of a boxer at that crucial stage in preparation, when suddenly everybody wants to touch them. (Two years ago, Josh Kelly told me how the illness which postponed a 2018 fight against David Avanesyan, combined with the fear of a repeat, led to an obsession with Lemsip and him becoming a borderline hypochondriac. “Two or three weeks before the Avanesyan fight [rescheduled in 2021] it came to a head and I started taking antibiotics by myself, getting prescribed them by a private doctor,” Kelly said. “It was no good for me. I couldn’t sleep and I was convinced I was definitely getting ill.”)
For Dubois, there was only disappointment and regret in Riyadh. Chances are, at the first sign of trouble, he would have had the same sinking feeling we all had when watching Dubois and Parker sit inches from one another and be asked to play truth or dare for content. He would have thought to himself, Is this really happening?
Sadly, it did. It happened at the worst possible time for Dubois, or any boxer, and no sooner had his illness been announced than Martin Bakole, the heavyweight division’s so-called dangerman, was named as Parker’s new opponent. Now all Bakole had to do was get on a few different flights, walk a few different runways, and hope that by the time he arrived in Riyadh he would be as alert as one can expect to be in that scenario and left to finally sleep.
As it happened, of course, Bakole was granted no such privilege. Instead, picking up where Dubois left off, the Congolese heavyweight, who had just travelled to Saudi Arabia from his homeland, was greeted at the fight hotel by all manner of YouTubers wanting to know how he felt and why he had taken this fight in such testing circumstances. In response Bakole probably wanted to say, “Tired”, to the first question, while to the second this: “The circumstances are only being made more difficult by you guys.”
But he didn’t. He simply played the game. If the game was truth or dare, Bakole picked dare and then paid the price when knocked out on the Saturday by Parker in two rounds. (He also came at a price, however, which no doubt softened the blow of all that travelling and lack of sleep.)
As for the truth of the matter, all we know is this: badgering boxers during fight week does not always lead to them getting annoyed, feeling tired, falling ill, or being knocked out, but it clearly isn’t helping them either.
