NEWS that Nigel Benn at 55 is planning a return to the ring with a fight planned against a former world champion — 40-year-old Sakio Bika — in November marks a tremendously reckless and sad development in a sport that has borne witness to three ring fatalities in recent months. 

It also further contextualises, though not in a good way, the recent criticism levelled at Anthony Joshua’s trainer, Rob McCracken, over comments he made in a recent interview over Joshua’s loss to Andy Ruiz Jnr at the beginning of June. 

Specifically, McCracken revealed that during the fight he knew that Joshua had suffered a concussion but had allowed him to fight on nonetheless.

In response, McCracken was accused by leading brain charity Headway of putting his fighter’s life in danger. “It’s a shocking admission,” a spokesman for the charity said, “but it’s highly unlikely that this is an isolated incident. Trainers have a duty of care to their boxers and it seems clear that Anthony Joshua’s trainer’s sole priority was winning that fight, not protecting the fighter from a potentially fatal injury.”

Lamentably, though predictably, boxing closed its ranks and came to McCracken’s defence, maintaining in the process the myth that when it comes to fighters’ safety the sport knows best. 

This stance is not just rooted in nonsense, it’s rooted in dangerous nonsense. It speaks to the mentality of a cloistered sub culture with its own rules and values, instead of a mainstream mass spectator and mass participation sport.

Not that McCracken should have been crucified for his comments. He is one of the top trainers in boxing, the head of the GB Olympic set up no less and in the highly charged atmosphere of a world title fight in which much is at stake, trainers like him operate under huge pressure. He is not medically qualified and is part of a sport in which words such as “warrior,” “heart,” “iron chin” and “durable” do much to distort the reality that though even though competitive fighters train their bodies and their minds to enable them to go to places that ordinary people couldn’t possibly fathom, they remain human beings, made of flesh and blood, for whom the laws of medical science apply.

With this in mind, and given that the vast majority of fighters would rather go out on their shields than quit during a fight, at critical points trainers and fighters need to be saved from themselves.

It means that decisions such as whether a fighter is fit to continue at any given point must be taken out of the trainer’s hands, even in the corner between rounds, by a doctor in each corner with the power to intervene and end matters if he or she detects that a fighter is concussed, or even close to it. 

The hard truth is that in terms of sports science, boxing in many gyms around the world continues to exist in the dark ages, involving fighters starving themselves to make weight in the run-up to fights while putting themselves through hell in training camps, involving ring wars that do much to set in train long-term damage.

Returning to Benn, whose last competitive fight took place in 1996 against Stevie Collins, even though his November encounter with Bika is not being sanctioned by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBoc), it has received the sanction of lesser known British and Irish Boxing Authority (Biba).

In talking up the fight, Benn’s promoter Mark Peters has described him as the “fittest 55-year old on Earth,” while claiming that: “It’s his life and his prerogative to fight.”

Well, he would say that wouldn’t he?

Benn is one of the most explosive and exciting fighters Britain has ever produced, involved in some of the most memorable fights of not only his own but of any era against the likes of Chris Eubank, Michael Watson, Iran Barkley, Gerald McClellan and Stevie Collins.

Speaking of which, it should never be forgotten that his 1995 clash against McClellan ended in tragedy; what with the latter suffering severe brain damage during the fight to leave him permanently disabled. 

Based in Australia, Benn, like all fighters who come back after a long period of retirement, claims that it’s not about money. If not then we’re talking about a serious case not so much of mid-life crisis but mid-life madness. 

One thing is for sure, Benn, whose son Conor is currently working his way up the rankings at welterweight, has absolutely nothing to prove in a boxing ring. 

The unconscionable thing is not that Nigel Benn wants to mount a comeback at the age of 55. The unconscionable thing is that he’s been granted a licence and is being allowed to. 

“The man who has no imagination has no wings,” Mohammad Ali once famously proclaimed. An inspirational sentiment, no doubt, but nonetheless one that fails to take into account that even a man who has wings still can’t fly.

Don’t do it Nigel.