Hang up the boxing gloves

To accompany our articles this week on the legality of violence in sport and Norway's decision to re-legalise professional boxing, here is a leader we published on March 4th 1995 arguing in favour of boxing, but only without gloves

WHEN a young amateur or a journeyman pro is killed in the ring, as half a dozen are in an average year, there is not much fuss. But whenever a boxer dies after a world championship fight, or is seriously injured, the sport’s rule-making bodies come under intense public pressure to make the self-styled "noble art of self defence" less lethal. It happened, for instance, when Benny Paret, a Cuban welterweight, died in 1962 after being battered in a televised title fight in New York. It happened again in 1950 when Johnny Own, a Welsh bantamweight, died in Los Angeles after fighting for a version of that world championship. And it happened once more this week when America's Gerald McClellan lay critically ill in a London hospital where he had a blood clot removed from his brain after being knocked out by Britain's Nigel Benn in a televised fight for a slice of the world super-middleweight title.