OVER the course of 2021, boxing served up more than its fair share of thrills and spills. 

The third fight in the trilogy between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder went beyond expectations set by their previous two encounters, each man dropping the other twice before Fury closed the show with an emphatic knockout in the 11th round to bring the curtain down on a classic heavyweight trilogy that will be talked about for many a year.

Staying with the heavyweights, and in inverse proportion to the rise in Tyson Fury’s stock in 2021, Anthony Joshua’s took a dent with his defeat to cruiserweight-turned-heavyweight Oleksandr Usyk in September. 

AJ entered the ring with everything to lose and little to gain, as to him was given the task of sending the Ukrainian back down to cruiserweight like the pumped up interloper he’d arrived as in this land of giants.

Instead, Usyk proceeded to hand AJ a lesson in the finer points of the noble art, exposing the bigger man’s increasingly worrying frailties under the lights against smaller men. 

To his credit, despite being offered a handsome sum to step aside and allow Fury a chance to challenge Usyk for undisputed heavyweight honours next, AJ has triggered his rematch clause with the full intention of facing the Ukrainian right away in order to put things right early in 2022, and win back the belts he lost first time round.

Scotland’s Josh Taylor made history in 2021 by becoming the first fighter from these shores to become undisputed world champion in the four-belt era.

This he did by travelling across the pond to Las Vegas in May and providing his opponent, Jose Ramirez, with a showcase in skill and will that justly drew comparison with Ken Buchanan’s achievement in winning the lightweight title all the way back in 1970 against Ismael Laguna in Puerto Rico. 

Taylor goes into 2022 looking to step up to 147, and with it the prospect of facing current pound-for-pound king Terence Crawford, after defending his undisputed super-lightweight title in a homecoming domestic clash against Jack Catterall in February.

Speaking of the 147 welterweight division, Conor Benn is living proof that destinies in the ring are forged not written. Fighting three times in 2021, his is an old-school approach, harking back to the days when the ring was home and the gym sanctuary.

His last outing in 2021 against former welterweight world champion Chris Algieri in mid-December at Liverpool’s Echo Arena only confirmed that he is on the cusp of world title honours.

First though is the prospect of a marquee fight in Britain against Adrien Broner in the early part of 2022.

When Billy Joe Saunders entered the stadium in Arlington, Texas in front of 73,000 partisan fans to face Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on May 8, he became the seventh British fighter to face the Mexican legend.

All six before him may have been outclassed in every department, yet Saunders, going in as undefeated WBO super-middleweight champion, descended on Texas supremely confident of upsetting the odds. He was wrong.

The fight was more or less even going into the eighth round, but a thunderous Canelo uppercut midway through not only stopped the fight, it sent Saunders to hospital with a fractured eye socket.

Whether Saunders returns to the ring remains an open question. If he does decide to call it a day, he can look back with a fair measure of pride on a career that saw him earn the status of two-weight world champion.

Elsewhere, Leeds’ favourite son Josh Warrington had a 2021 he’ll be looking to put firmly in his rearview. Both of his appearances this year were against the same man: Mauricio Lara of Mexico.

Warrington lost the first clash by TKO and drew the second after Lara sustained a nasty cut over his right eye from an accidental head clash in the second round. 

Warrington’s old rival, Kid Galahad, also had a bad year, losing the first defence of his and Warrington’s old IBF featherweight title in a shock defeat to Spanish veteran Kiko Martinez on the back of a brutal knockout.

Carl Frampton looked a shadow of himself against Jamel Herring in Dubai for the latter’s WBO super-featherweight title in April, prior to his corner mercifully throwing in the towel in the 6th round to spare him from further and unnecessary punishment.

The announcement of his retirement immediately afterwards marked time on an illustrious career involving some unforgettable nights in Belfast and beyond.

Perhaps the most significant development of 2021 in boxing was the astonishing breakthrough made by its female participants, with the likes of Britain’s Savannah Marshall and Ireland’s Katie Taylor becoming household names.

When it comes to developments on the other side of the ropes, boxing a business that sees Beelzebub regularly sitting down with Satan to debate the vagaries of the human condition.

The result is the sport’s mask of propriety being removed at regular intervals to reveal a face disfigured by its association with the values of the underworld from which it has traditionally drawn sustenance.

In 2021 this mask was not only removed it was ripped off — or at least it was if the allegations made in the February BBC Panorama documentary on Daniel Kinahan’s involvement in top-flight boxing and organised crime were to be believed. 

Personal adviser to the likes of Tyson Fury, Billy Joe Saunders and Carl Frampton, among many many others — not to mention supposed dealmaker when it comes to negotiating some of the sport’s major events — Daniel Kinahan in 2021 assumed the status of the elephant in boxing’s room as a consequence of the revelations contained in the documentary. 

Kinahan issued a strongly worded statement denying all the Panorama allegations made about him and his business dealings, stressing that he is yet to be convicted of any crime and arguing forcefully that he is the victim of a witch-hunt.

Whatever the truth may be — and the truth, as one Oscar Wilde points out, is rarely pure and never simple — Daniel Kinahan doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon, not when his Dubai base is increasingly host to major events and shows, and certainly not when the roster of elite and not so elite fighters he’s associated with continue to swear by him.

Elsewhere, Eddie Hearn moved his Matchroom brand from Sky Sports to US streaming service DAZN. Sky responded with a new format under the banner of Boxxer and promptly signed Josh Taylor and Chris Eubank Jr to headline. The more outlets, broadcasting and promotional, the better for boxing, the theory goes, so let’s see.