Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
This was part of an extended segment on Tuesday’s Top Rank Boxing on ESPN broadcast.
Top Rank Boxing returned to action on Tuesday night with a card that was, quite honestly, filled with uninspiring mismatches but did provide us this ridiculously painful body shot KO by Shakur Stevenson against Felix Caraballo. The strength of these shows figures to improve towards the end of the month and into July, thankfully.
By far the most poignant moment of the broadcast had nothing to do with fighting, however. The ESPN broadcast brought up the recent killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, then followed with a segment on boxing’s deep history of racism and issues regarding race. Afterward, host Joe Tessitore brought in analysts and former world champions Timothy Bradley and Andre Ward to share their thoughts on racial inequality in boxing, along with some deeply personal stories about racism they’ve encountered in their lives.
Every minute of this video is worth your time, particularly Bradley’s emotional story about being pulled over by the police with his four-year-old son in the car with him. Our friends at Bad Left Hook did a full transcription of Ward and Bradley, so all credit goes to them.
First, here’s Ward’s take on race as it relates to the boxing world, and his own experiences as a young kid.
“I am the son of a black mother and a white father. I’ve had to deal with disdain, looks of disgust from both blacks and whites. That was my reality growing up. Some of those looks turned into physical altercations with my father, because he was not about that. He was not about injustice, he was not about racism, he was not about divide, and he would fight for it, literally.
“So from being raised from a man like that, as well as my faith, I hate — and I don’t use this world lightly — I hate bias, I hate prejudice, I hate double standards of any kind. It’s my life’s mission to not allow any of that to come out of me, but to also fight for it and fight against it.
“I think for the boxing community, if we want to affect change, I think we can start right here at home. Myself as well as many other African-American fighters, for many, many years, we’ve had to deal with double standards, we’ve had to deal with certain prejudices and certain biases, where if an African-American fighter is not a villain, if he is not boisterous, if he’s not a guy who is jumping on tables and doing crazy things at press conferences, he’s not worth the price of admission. He’s not worth your streaming buy or your pay-per-view buy.
“That’s something I detest. I personally, as well as others, have protested this line of thinking, and have protested this thought where — when Floyd Mayweather was ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd Mayweather, nobody paid attention. But all of a sudden, when he became the villain, when he became ‘Money Mayweather,’ now he was worth the price of admission to see him lose.
“This is something that has bothered me. I have protested against it, other fighters have protested against it, and it should not be the case. And now that I have the opportunity to mentor another young African-American fighter in Shakur Stevenson, we have these discussions, and I encourage him all the time, if individuals — media, fans, whoever it may be — if they’re asking you to be anything other than yourself, Shakur, they’re asking for way too much.”
And here is Bradley’s eye-opening tale of his recent encounter with police, which thankfully never escalated into anything tragic.
“I want to share a story with you folks, something that happened a year ago, with my four-year-old son. I think all you guys need to hear this. We were getting ready for school, it was early in the morning. I went outside and asked my son, ‘Which car you wanna drive today? Which care you wanna go in?’ It was a car that I had been fixing for a little while, I haven’t driven it in about three years. And I knew he was gonna say that car.
“But I was a little skeptical to get in that car, because I knew the type of tension that that car can bring. I got in anyway, because I wanted to see the smile on my son’s face. We’re halfway to school, next thing you know, I hear sirens. I look in my rear view mirror, and what do I see? Not one, not two, but four officers behind me.
“I turned around and I looked at my son. My heart was pumping 100 miles an hour. I told my son, ‘Look at me. Do exactly what I tell you to do right now. Don’t say anything at all. Keep your hands up high. OK?’ He said, ‘OK, dad.’
“Anyway, I didn’t get apprehended once they figured out who I was. And as we continued to drive, my son asked me, ‘Dad, why did they pull us over?’ And I said, ‘Son, they pulled us over because of the color of our skin and the type of car that we’re driving. That’s the truth, son.’
“And I said, ‘Let me tell me something that my dad told me 30 years ago.’ He told me, ‘Because of the color of your skin, son, you already have a strike already on you. And I told my son that at four years old. And I said, ‘You might not get it now, but you will get it later.’
“My father shared that with me 30 years ago, and I just shared that with my son about a year ago.”
Strong messages from both men.
This segment also stands in very stark contrast to the relative silence the UFC has had on this subject matter, merely offering up “RIP George Floyd” on its May 30th broadcast, a pre-UFC 250 interview with Aljamain Sterling, and not much else. Plenty of fighters themselves have spoken up and/or joined protests, and we just had several UFC fighters participate in a video showing support for the Blacks Lives Matter movement. And yet, as of this writing, no official UFC account has shared that video on any of its social media platforms. The closest you have is the ESPN MMA Twitter account, which covers all major promotions.
Also of note from Tuesday’s broadcast is that Shakur Stevenson and one of his cornermen wore “Black Lives Matter” shirts, with Stevenson adding that he plans to join the ongoing protests now that his return to the ring is out of the way.