PROFESSIONAL boxing has traditionally been viewed as the Wild West of sports by those who’ve removed the blinkers when it comes to its more unsavoury practices and aspects.

To an extent that no other sport does, it exists in a moral and ethical vacuum — happy to offer a warm welcome to those for whom prison comes into the category of occupational hazard, particularly if they come bearing gifts in the form of cash-money.

Rooted in a culture shaped in part by the interface that has long existed between boxing’s own and crime’s working-class roots, the values of polite society do not enjoy much in the way of purchase in this world, and neither do fit and proper persons tests.

What does enjoy purchase is the myth of the gangster as working-class hero, in the same low-income communities where boxing gyms are predominately located and from where the sport, even at the elite level, draws sustenance.

Even with this factored in, however, the revelations contained in the recent BBC Panorama documentary Boxing and the Mob, alleging that Dubai-based boxing adviser Daniel Kinahan sits at the apex of a major international criminal network whose business is drugs, guns and murder — and that he uses the boxing management company he co-founded in 2012, MTK Global, to launder money derived from major criminal activity — could not be more serious.

Here it should be pointed out that the man himself is adamant that the allegations made against him are baseless and unsubstantiated.

He and his supporters, of which in boxing he has a considerable number — among them world champions such as Tyson Fury and Billy Joe Saunders, along with prominent veteran US promoter Bob Arum — cite the fact that regardless of any such allegations, he is yet to be convicted of any crime in any country or jurisdiction. In this regard, we are obligated to be mindful that every individual is entitled to their share of natural justice, of which the precept “innocent until proven guilty” is a key pillar.

Just over a week after the Panorama exposé, Kinahan issued a statement in response. It reads in part: “I have tried my best to ignore the allegations that are constantly made about me. I have dedicated myself to my work in boxing for over 15 years.

“I have started from the bottom and worked my way up. I am proud to say today that I have helped organise over a dozen major world title fights. I continue to be involved in planning multiple record-breaking and exciting world title fights: I’m doing all I can to give fight fans around the world the fights they want. My professional commitment is always to the boxers, those who take the ultimate risk.

“I’m Irish. I was born and raised in Dublin. In a deprived area with serious levels of poverty, of crime, of under investment. People like me, from there, aren’t expected to do anything with their lives other than serve the middle and upper classes. Boxing is a working-class sport for which I’ve had a lifelong love and passion.”

This is inarguably powerful stuff, presenting the sport’s movers and shakers with a problem. Because either Kinahan is as his statement claims: a son of the Irish working class, a bona fide and legitimate boxing adviser being unjustly maligned, and is therefore allowed to operate openly in boxing without further molestation or harassment. Or he is the crime boss that the Irish authorities, Irish media, and now BBC Panorama allege, and so no-one in boxing should be dealing with him now or in the future.

What we do know is that the above mentioned Irish authorities have been engaged in a Herculean effort to regain control of the streets in Dublin over the past five years, from a savage gang war which has claimed 18 lives. The overwhelming majority of deaths in this war have been attributed to what has been named the Kinahan Organised Crime Group, allegedly controlled by Daniel Kinahan and his brother Christy Kinahan Jr from their base in Dubai.

Daniel Kinahan is reported to himself have been the target of an audacious and shocking assault in Dublin back in 2016, when five gunmen — three attired in Garda uniforms wielding AK47s, and one dressed in drag — burst into a boxing weigh-in that was being held at the city’s Regency Hotel and began shooting the place up. A close associate of Kinahan’s, David Byrne, was killed in the assault and Kinahan is said to have escaped out of a window.

What cannot be gainsaid is the man’s passion for the sport. The management company he co-founded with now retired British professional fighter Matthew Macklin currently boasts a roster of over 100 fighters, among them the aforementioned Fury and Saunders, as well as Scotland’s Josh Taylor. 

Further still, to a man, every fighter who’s had personal dealings with Kinahan has praised his efforts in helping their careers, vouching for his professionalism and integrity. Kinahan, it should be pointed out, claims that he stepped away from MTK a few years ago, selling his share of the company to go it alone as an independent adviser to fighters.

On the other side of the argument, Kinahan’s detractors — among them Barry McGuigan, who appeared in the Panorama documentary — claim that his passion for boxing is matched by his passion for murder and mayhem.

With momentum starting to build towards a major heavyweight clash between Anthony Joshua and Fury later this year, this is now a problem that needs to be resolved sooner than later. If not, it may well become an unwelcome and damaging distraction. 

In this regard, nobody should be in any doubt that how the sport navigates this situation in advance of the biggest heavyweight clash of the modern era will go a long way to shaping its public image from here on in.

Its self-image is another matter entirely.