‘A malign influence in boxing’: the downfall of Daniel Kinahan

The Irish sportswriter Kieran Cunningham belongs to a small group of investigative journalists who are entitled to feel proud of their resolute courage and persistence in exposing Daniel Kinahan and his damaging control of boxing. Last Tuesday, at an extraordinary press conference in Dublin, US government officials stressed their determination to bring down the intimidating drug cartel allegedly run by Kinahan and his family.

“I would never think of it in terms of vindication,” Cunningham says after stressing that the journalistic heroes are the Irish crime reporters who investigated Kinahan long before he turned to boxing. “I just felt relieved, because it’s taken up so much space in my head for years. It felt like banging your head against a brick wall. Everyone who works in boxing would just say: ‘That’s boxing. It’s always been like this.’ As long as the fights are made they don’t care.”

Cunningham acknowledges that the omertà is partly driven by fear. In a similarly insidious way there is no corner within boxing which is not linked in some way to Kinahan. I have spoken to many fighters and trainers, most of whom are good people, and they remain unwilling to talk on the record for fear of reprisals or being shut out of the sport. Kinahan has undoubtedly been generous to the boxers he advises but in exchange they had to ignore or dismiss the allegations surrounding him. It has become a source of embarrassment and shame for boxing. For this reason it is instructive to hear from Cunningham and Stephen Dempster, another investigative reporter who produced last year’s BBC Panorama documentary which brought Kinahan’s involvement in boxing to mainstream attention.

“I’m not this great moral compass,” Cunningham says as he