“THE fans didn’t pay to see this crap!”

Unwittingly but also and all so pertinently, boxing referee Christopher Young — in the midst of the fourth-round farce of the boxing contest pitting former Olympic gold medallist and two-time heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua against YouTuber Jake Paul — perfectly and simply articulated the state of the sport in our time.

Because by this point in proceedings at the Kaseya Centre in Miami, Florida, on Friday December 19, everyone involved in this Netflix-broadcast affair was exposed as a participant in a circus of the absurd.

That Joshua and Paul managed to escape from the building afterwards with a humongous bag of loot between them — this was proof positive that here was a case of the stupid being hoodwinked by the greedy in the name of all that is solid melting into air.

Said greedy brings us neatly on to the role of Matchroom Sport’s Eddie Hearn in this squalid affair. A poster child for Thatcherism and all of its malign “capital accumulation at any cost” works, Hearn comes over as a man for whom the mirror is his best friend and a pound note his first and his last love. The hair weave and the Essex-style glow-in-the-dark teeth belie an operator who would sell you his last flu virus, such is his adamantine adherence to the principle of no principles at all.

He it was who sold this dead pup of a fight to the public. And he it was who had the pristine gall to defend it afterwards.

Anthony Joshua (AJ) looked terribly disjointed until finally and mercifully sending Paul crashing to the canvas with a classic jab to the chest and right hand to the head in the sixth round. Before then he fought like a rank novice rather than the veteran pro he is. Perhaps in his defence he came to the ring underwhelmed by his opponent, and with his mind thereby preoccupied by his post-fight nighclub activities instead of the task at hand. 

Regardless, after being out of the ring for over a year, this was not an AJ performance to strike dread in the hearts and minds of future opponents. Specifically Tyson Fury whom he called out in the ring at fight’s end. Joshua’s timing, feet, rhythm and accuracy of punch were close to being entirely absent. That the big Londoner had prepared for Jake Paul in the environs of the Oleksandr Usyk training camp under the auspices of Jakub Chycki mattered not. The term smash and grab springs to mind where he was concerned.

Paul claimed that Joshua not only sent him down to end the fight in the aforementioned sixth round, but that he broke his jaw in two places in the doing. However, given that in his personage we have a social media influencer who has made millions by presenting fiction as fact and fact as fiction, it is impossible to be certain of anything he spouts. 

Suffice it to say that Paul has spent the last few years ploughing the unconscionable but yet incredibly lucrative furrow of self-delusion. Credit is due to anyone who summons up the courage and fortitude (some might say stupidity and recklessness) to climb into a boxing ring to do battle against the 6’6” physical specimen that is Britain’s Anthony Joshua.  

But then this he did less in the spirit of a boxer and more with the mindset of a long-distance runner. Inside a ring that was the size of half a football pitch (an exaggeration perhaps, but not by much), Paul did more running than fighting. And when he did get in close enough to trade, he clung onto Joshua like a star-crossed lover clinging onto his last chance. Down they went to the canvas in a clinch time and again, and down with them went the credibility of the event and all involved.

So that was the Anthony Joshua-Jake Paul farce in Miami on the Friday. The following evening, Saturday December 20, another instalment of such unfolded in Dubai, across the other side of the planet.

This fiasco saw another social media influencer in the shape of the always controversial Andrew Tate taking on a man by the name of Chase DeMoor. Male stripper name notwithstanding, DeMoor emerged victorious on points.

However the main point made was that Tate is clearly more comfortable abusing women than he is punching men. He looked like a funky chicken in there, and he fought like one. His oft-repeated boast of having been a world kickboxing champion in a past life came back to haunt him.

The idea that young impressionable and alienated men could ever see in Tate any kind of role model is tantamount to a criminal absurdity. There he was, arms and legs akimbo, being repeatedly folded like a deckchair by an opponent who fought like a drunk man trying to jump the queue at a Sainsbury’s Local on a damp Monday night.

It was ugly to the point of placing the “un” into unedifying.

Ultimately, these money-making spectacles have a decidedly Roman quality about them. They merely confirm that not only is this a time of monsters, it is also a time of wankers. It dictates that a return to first principles is urgently required in all things. 

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people,” once opined Karl Marx. When it comes to boxing in our time, the problem we have is that there are too many useless people producing too many useless things.

A merry Christmas and a happy new year to all.