Inside the barbaric wild west of white-collar boxing – and the horrifying story of a dying within the ring that each father or mother ought to learn

It’s a Saturday night in the West Midlands town of Cannock and at a boxing ring rigged up inside a local leisure centre, an asthmatic is taking a serious beating.

The fighter, who has been introduced to the ring as ‘John Taylor’, does not seem to know what’s hit him, exhausted by the second round, then gasping for air before the referee pulls his opponent away.

A medic sitting ringside is asked by the referee to examine him, a ‘medical retirement’ is called, and amid the febrile atmosphere at the Chase facility – where this is the first contest in a long night of boxing – his opponent Callum Bullock is declared the winner. Taylor leaves the ring, draws heavily on his inhaler and staggers away.

The thick stench of boxers’ sweat permeates the place as an audience adhering to the strict dress code of plain shirt, tie and smart trousers – cocktail or evening dress for women – are attended to by waitresses in a ‘VIP’ dining area.

They scream for one competitor to thump another, as they eat in the hot, clammy hall. A photographer is busy behind the ropes, frantically taking photos which will later be sold back to fighters. It’s a barbarian spectacle.

This is a night of white-collar boxing – an unregulated sport in which people with little or no boxing experience pay for 32 hours of training across eight weeks by bringing in a minimum of £250 worth of ticket revenue for their fight organisers.

It’s a lucrative business for a Derby-based company, Ultra Events, who have enhanced the appeal for would-be boxers by partnering with some of Britain’s most cherished charities, including Cancer Research UK, and getting boxers to raise money for them through sponsorship.

The night is a cash machine for Ultra, who in Cannock are making thousands of pounds by selling signed memorabilia and £69.99 framed images of the fighters in action.

The fund-raising allows Ultra to declare that its boxing events have raised £38.2million in the past 11 years, while training people in a sport which they say helps them to behave ‘morally and ethically.’

But behind these claims lie grave concerns about this unregulated, but yet legal form of boxing, in which three British competitors have died in the past seven years, followed two months ago by a man who died after a MMA Ultra Events bout near Edmonton, Canada.

A coroner examining the death of one of the three men who died, 26-year-old Dominic Chapman, has written to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport raising questions about the safety of these bouts and asking Secretary of State Lisa Nandy to review the ‘sport.’

But 10 months have passed since that letter was sent and there has been no action. England Boxing, which governs the amateur game, say they are planning a ‘round table’ with MPs. 

The British Boxing Board of Control say there must be real urgency. They have told Mail Sport it is unsafe to set people in a ring to punch each other, with minimal training or medical examination.

Cancer Research UK’s exclusive charitable link with Ultra Events ended nine months after Dominic’s death, though Ultra is still telling callers to an information line: ‘We have now raised over £100m for Cancer Research UK’ – the suggestion being the relationship still exists.

Dominic died three years ago, though his inquest only took place last year because of the months the coroner spent trying, without success, to secure footage of the fight from Ultra Events.

A memory card containing that video was ‘accidentally’ wiped by an Ultra Events employee. The coroner was eventually told the employee could not be located and the inquest proceeded without this vital evidence.

At his home in the suburbs of Worcester, Dominic’s father John describes to Mail Sport the mounting concern he felt for his son after the two of them watched five or six three-round bouts together early on the bill which featured Dominic, in the city’s Tramps nightclub.

It was Grand National day and the two of them met at a sports bar in Worcester to watch the race at 5.15pm. They shared a love of horses and Dominic’s membership of the Cheltenham course had been a gift from his father.

Dominic was thriving, hosting hospitality events and writing for a racing website. Writing was his passion. He’d been at the Aintree meet the day before.

He wasn’t his usual ebullient self that night, his father relates. ‘To me, he seemed a bit anxious. When we watched those first bouts, I was amazed by the ferocity of the fighting. I wasn’t expecting that – people absolutely clogging each other.

‘I’d thought it would be a group of novices. We found later that former boxers who had been unable to find competitive fights were competing in these events.’

Dominic’s fight was eighth on the bill. His father told his son ‘good luck’ and wondered, as he watched him leave the £50-a-seat VIP area to head backstage, whether he really wanted to go through with it.

‘He had a lot of friends there to see him and he’d raised all this money,’ Mr Chapman says. ‘People he didn’t want to let down.’ He was fit and active and had raised money for charity on a hiking trip around the Swiss-French border. ‘He’d separated with his girlfriend and seemed to need this challenge to get back to his old self,’ Mr Chapman says.

Dominic was up against James Bradley, a fighter older than him who, the inquest heard, had done kick-boxing training twice a week for more than nine years, though Bradley contested this. Mr Chapman was sitting 10ft from the ring, in one of the VIP seats, as the fight started. ‘Dominic was jabbing and stepping back,’ he says.

Then, in the second round, his son sustained a blow to the head in the second that caused his father to wince. ‘I felt that it blunted him,’ he says. ‘I thought it might be a moment to retire from this.’

Dominic got back to his feet, though, and returned to his corner, not immediately affected. It was when the fight had concluded, and Dominic returned to his corner for a last time, that he collapsed. Mr Chapman initially heard someone say: ‘Don’t worry. It’s the adrenaline. This happens.’ But his son did not move.

A paramedic and two first-aiders arrived at the side of the ring, placed him on a stretcher and carried him out. Mr Chapman followed them, desperately trying to rouse his son, who was unconscious and foaming at the mouth.

In the background, he could hear the loud music and cheering of competitors in the next bouts. The boxing didn’t immediately stop. The medics reached a room where the stretcher was placed on the floor. ‘It was a dark, cold room,’ his father says.

The medics tried to hydrate him intravenously. An ambulance was called, it arrived within eight minutes and Dominic was carried back out through the makeshift boxing arena and placed in it. The boxing had been halted by then, but there was not a designated room which gave direct access to an ambulance.

He was taken to the neurological unit at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital – a journey which took 90 minutes. He had suffered a subdural haematoma and never woke up.

The inquest, although not specifically dealing with Ultra, shone a light on broader concerns about white-collar boxing, including the falsification of paperwork to obscure dangerous, unequal match-ups. The coroner heard that the weights of fighters Luke Aldington and Chris Bedford, on the same bill as Dominic, were ‘falsified’ by organisers so they fell within an allowable 7kg difference and could be pitted against each other.

The hearing was also told about gloves being used by boxer after boxer, making them increasingly heavy as they absorbed moisture. Headguards were also used multiple times, became slippery and dislodged on competitors’ heads because of the sweat. Dominic’s opponent told the inquest his headguard, drenched in other boxers’ sweat, ‘kept moving.’ The gloves were also wet by the time he and Dominic pulled them on, he said.

In Cannock, Mail Sport watches a member of staff repeatedly remove gloves from fighters as soon as they have competed and take them backstage. Among the match-ups are Alex McKenzie who is 65, against a man, Jim Butler, who looks at least 30 years younger. McKenzie, who carries a paunch over his personalised shorts, barely moves against his fast, thrusting opponent, but by barely attempting to lay a glove on him gets through the fight, which is awarded to Butler.

A medic with experience of working at Ultra boxing bouts tells Mail Sport the practice of using shared, sopping gloves is common and a major concern. He also says the system of assessing if a competitor is fit to box – which fell to medics like him – is inconsistent.

‘I would do three blood-pressure tests and take an average,’ he says. ‘If it’s over 160, I wouldn’t let a boxer fight. But other boxers say over 170 or 180. Ultra would not give any guidance on what the blood pressure should be. I’ve also been put under pressure from a fight organiser (there is no suggestion this was Ultra) when I try to say someone shouldn’t fight. They don’t want to lose fights and income. If the blood pressure’s too high, they’ll say, “Can’t you just let him sit down for half an hour?”

‘There should be doctors making these assessments, as there would be at regulated boxing. I’m seeing active ex-boxers who’ve fought for years coming onto this circuit and going up against novices who’ve signed a waiver saying there’s nothing wrong with them.’

In Canada, an investigation is under way into the death of Trokon Dousuah, a 33-year-old father of two who died in the Ultra Events Canada MMA event in November.

Jon Leonard, the owner of Ultra Events, declined a request by Mail Sport to speak about Dominic’s death and broader concerns our investigation has turned up. The company told us: ‘If anyone is claiming that corners are being cut on the medical front, we would take that incredibly seriously.’ In a statement, the company added that a ‘trauma-trained paramedic’ at a fight was ‘better’ than a doctor, who might not have a ‘trauma-related’ experience.

It said that participants were all asked to fill out forms before training and if there were any ‘indicators’, doctors would be asked to declare the participant medically unfit. 

Despite three deaths, the statement said its injury rates were ‘extremely low if you compare them to sports such as football and rugby’.

Ultra said it equipped boxers with foam-padded gloves designed to reduce the strength of impact in bouts. ‘Several sets’ are used through an evening, allowing staff to check them as soon as they are sent backstage.

The firm declined to comment on Dominic’s death. Leonard has previously said the 90-minute ambulance journey time for Dominic was acceptable.

Mail Sport has spoken to several sources who are astonished neurological help was so far away.

Ultra said their continued use of Cancer Research UK’s name on one of their information lines was an oversight, blaming the company providing the service who they said should have disconnected the line ‘some time ago’.

Despite these rebuttals, the fact remains that boxing is a lethal sport if novices are left to fight it out and lack the necessary experience to defend themselves against unexpected blows.

The other men who died in British Ultra bouts were Nottingham University graduate Jubal Reji Kurian, who was struck by a punch to the face in 2023, and Alastair Peck, who was made more vulnerable by a head injury sustained during sparring before he died in 2017.

The former world cruiserweight champion Johnny Nelson told Mail Sport: ‘A boxing ring is the only place where you can get legally killed.

‘White-collar boxing allows people to be repeatedly hit in the head without any brain scans and the stringent checking that the British Boxing Board of Control will make any fighter go through. I don’t know what has to happen for this to be outlawed or regulated.’

To this day, John Chapman has kept his son’s coat and water bottle where the young man left them, at the dining table.

‘There’s not a day that passes when I don’t wish I’d discouraged him from stepping into that ring,’ Mr Chapman says. ‘To anyone who’s got a child who wants to sign up, I say, “Tell them, no.” If I’d known then what I know now, I could have saved his life.’