Boxing Clever farewell: Fighters who put their lives on the line deserve thanks

FINAL BOXING CLEVER COLUMN: Sadly this is the final bell for this column which has brought you every cough, spit, uppercut and knockout blow from the ring down the years

Chris McKenna is the Daily Star’s boxing correspondent and an expert voice on the ‘sweet science’, along with a hugely experienced football reporter, who primarily focuses on Merseyside giants Liverpool and Everton. He has covered world title fights all around the world, Champions League finals, FA Cup finals and Premier League title deciders.

For around 30 years this column has had a home on the sports pages of The Daily Star.

Sadly, it is time to say goodbye. It is with a heavy heart to write that this will be the final Boxing Clever. Yet it is somewhat of an honour to bring down the curtain on what has been one of the longest-running national newspaper columns.

Boxing has always been – and hopefully will remain – hugely important to The Daily Star. Boxing Clever has been so instrumental in that. My previous sports editor Howard Wheatcroft told me how key this sport is to this newspaper’s readers which was music to my ears when he appointed me first as boxing correspondent in 2014 and then later author of this column in 2015.

READ MORE: Ebanie Bridges ‘shows off car knowledge’ as boxing star shares ‘favourite sides’READ MORE: Carlos Alcaraz ‘dating swimsuit model’ after romance rumours with Emma Raducanu

We have had some superb boxing writers over the years, such as the well-respected Ken Gorman. Boxing Clever lasted through the decades from its birth in the mid 1990s.

It started with revered photographer Lawrence Lustig under the late Phil Rostrom’s guidance as a place for off-beat stories. Lawrence brought plenty of them.

Then Kevin Francis took it on around the turn of the millennium and with the help of sports editors Jim Mansell and then Howard, it continued to prosper and was must-read for fight fans.

Howard backed myself to take over writing the column in 2015 after Kevin hung up his pen and allowed me the freedom to dictate who and what this column should cover. Current sports editor David McClay continued to give this column huge backing.

All the sports editors deserve plenty of praise for giving the column and the sport such prominence in their papers and allowing us writers to travel the world to cover the sport. Thank you.

This was a column which packed plenty of punch, did not shirk the blows and told it how it is and was. But it was not just about opinion, holding those in power to account, or bringing readers behind the scenes on how certain deals were done.

It was also somewhere for fans to find out about the future heroes and learn about those with colourful stories, who may or may not have made it all the way to the top.

You will have read interviews with British boxing stars like Joe Calzaghe, Ricky Hatton, Carl Froch, Kell Brook, Tyson Fury, Carl Frampton, Josh Taylor and more before they were on the pages of our rivals.

It is figures like those – and the much lesser-known names – who we must thank, too. Boxing is brutal both in a business sense and in a physical one.

Every fighter who enters a ring does so knowing they are putting their life on the line whether it is a small-hall show in your local leisure centre or a stadium event at Wembley.

They do so for many reasons including money and legacy but also for our entertainment. That gives us journalists plenty to write about and this column wouldn’t have existed for so long if the boxers didn’t take the risks they do to bring us the stories.

Thank you to the readers for supporting us, too. Keep following this great sport. Farewell.