The Two Sides Of Boxing Retirement…

 

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

An opinion piece from the only Donald worth listening to…

Full Stop – In British English grammar a full stop is a lengthy pause, in the US, you call it a period. In the UK that tends to suggest feminine products. Here it means a period of time where I look at something in boxing in a little more depth. I am typing from my perspective of a fan who watches the sport closely. It’s an opinion. It is my opinion. Don’t like it? There are other opinions out there but if you don’t like it then good, debate and democracy are a good thing. If you do like it, feel free to spread the word.

And in the end…

This week I have been taken by two stories about retirement from boxing. They could not be further from each other as I saw one in a BBC interview here in the UK and the other on social media. They concerned two boxers, an ocean apart, both dedicated to their craft, their sport and who have given so much to the ring craft that has brought them some recognition. They leave their sport with differing levels of fame, and very different levels of post ring security. They are the US’s Heather Hardy and Lanarkshire’s very own Scott Allan.

Hardy is a well-known figure in American sports broadcasts. Her two contests with Amanda Serrano, the last in August 2023, were watchable and highly competitive, but they were also 42-year-old Hardy’s undoing. Her interview for the BBC is a bit of a tough read. She came out of the ring the final time with double vision, concussion and a future of financial insecurity which was not the plan for her retirement. In fact, she did not plan to retire when she came out the ring. She had managed to score an opportunity to make her debut as a bare-knuckle fighter in mid-2024, but that was then called off after the effects of her fight with Serrano had not dissipated nor disappeared.

Hardy refused to say the R word in her final statement on the matter.

Allan, on the other hand, is ready to fly off to the Middle East for his final fight in a career that saw him transfer from being a martial artist world champion to a man who felt destined to become Scotland’s next big thing. It didn’t quite work out. What he did do, for a long period of time, was to make enough noise to annoy people into paying him attention. A self-styled “Title Taker” he got a Scottish and a Celtic title under his own belt and fought for British and Commonwealth titles before now looking to add a WBC international title to his collection in his final fight. He is the proud owner of several gyms in his local area and seems to be relishing the end of his fight game.

Allan has proudly boasted of his post-boxing retirement with relish.

Both fighters have beginnings in the far east, as Hardy came into a gym thanks to a gift for a karate dojo, whilst for Allan it was kickboxing that literally kicked him off.
The similarities stop there.

Hardy fought at Madison Square Gardens, fought three times for world titles, winning one of them. Allan has not managed to get in the ring for anything like world honors, though has been in for an international title before: Cardiff is his most exotic fighting location.

Hardy exhibits the classic signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) whilst Allan has two beautiful daughters, an affinity to his hometown soccer club of Motherwell FC and a healthy bouncing approach to life. Hardy has been involved in ‘Give a Kid a Dream’ charity through Gleason’s Gym whilst Allan has been leading his own way in offering positive mental health opportunities within his local community, particularly during COVID. Both have exemplary records in trying to give back. For Hardy that means looking to become a manager whilst Allan continues to work diligently and hard at the very thing that inspires him the most, making people within his own community know what the pathways for success are – hard work and dedication – just like himself.

I have never met Hardy but have met Scott a few times. I have not caught up with him for a few years but am looking to set up a chat after his final fight. I want to know what a fighter of his caliber and his experience has to say about the pro game. I shall never meet Hardy, I imagine. Others have interviewed her, and her views are very well known as she fights for equality for women within the game, rightly so. The disparity between purses for men and women is well worn and discussed but it brings back to mind the fact that we are not good at looking after former fighters.

The fact is that the fight game should include a mandatory package of support for fighters who struggle after they leave the sport. It is a tough business and one where you get abandoned so quickly after you have lost your worth in the eyes of any promoter. This is the year after we lost Ken Buchanan in Scotland and the overriding image, I have is not of the glory days but of a documentary which showed him fighting for cash at the tail end of his career. Having lost, again, he is in the dressing room with his son. His son is in floods of tears because his father, the man he loves, has been beaten up for money. That’s not Buchanan’s legacy, but with the types of stories of Hardy it is fast becoming an over familiar one. For Allan it is not the pathway for everyone, but it is a pathway which sees a guy who had the smarts to acknowledge who he was and what he had and use all of that to great advantage: the people most benefitting? His community.

Now that’s a legacy worth fighting for.

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