Only boxing could make a hero out of Daniel Kinahan

There is no other sport built on such great contradictions as boxing, where unimaginable bravery leads to indefensible brutality; where the spirit displayed in the centre of the ring has always been corrupted by those who profit from the shadows beyond it. It is a conflict without an end or answer that has appealed to audiences for as long as morals have rejected it, leaving it in a compelling grey area where it is impossible to reconcile the right from the wrong.

Daniel Kinahan and Tyson Fury pictured in Dubai

It can make boxing hard to justify at the best of times, when every great act of triumph or tragedy is open to caveat. At other junctures in its history, it has regularly reduced the sport to something verging on irredeemable. Another one of those eruptions occurred last week when Daniel Kinahan, by now an ubiquitous influence at boxing’s highest echelons, was sanctioned by the US Treasury for being the alleged leader of a cartel responsible for “smuggling deadly narcotics to Europe”.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency has offered rewards of up to £3.8m for information leading to the arrest of Kinahan, his brother or his father. Shortly after the sanctions were imposed, Tyson Fury’s promoter, Bob Arum, claimed he had paid an amount no less eye-watering to one of Kinahan’s companies owing to the Irishman’s role as an advisor to the heavyweight champion. Kinahan, who has cultivated a Robin Hood-like reputation amongst a staunch and large group of boxers, has no criminal convictions and has always denied any wrongdoing.

With the cloak of complicity removed, boxing sputtered into the furious process of back-peddling and hand-wringing it has had plenty of opportunities to perfect. Promoters who have previously negotiated