Nick Blackwell: How boxing's inherent darkness also makes it attractive

When boxing is at its most compelling, it is also at its most dangerous. It is one of the sport's many uncomfortable truths, as Nick Blackwell will attest to.

Nick Blackwell was stopped in the 10th round against Chris Eubank Jr

It is a relief that he can attest to anything. When he was sent into a coma by a combination of Chris Eubank Jr's fists and an anaesthetist's needle, things looked bleak. But after a seven-day sleep, Blackwell has a future.

As he contemplates life without boxing from his hospital bed, one wonders whether the knowledge he was injured while providing such stirring entertainment will be of any comfort. More likely, he just wants to fight again.

Many who have been watching boxing for long enough will have felt deep ambivalence towards the sport prior to seeing Blackwell leave the ring on a stretcher. It is possible, even natural, to love boxing and have huge respect for its practitioners while understanding why others wish to consign it to history.

When the American sportswriter AJ Liebling referred to boxing as "the sweet science", I can only assume he was being ironic. Even the two 'Sugars', Ray Robinson and Ray Leonard, had more in common with devastation than sweetness.

Boxer Nick Blackwell woke from his induced coma on Saturday

It is boxing's inherent darkness that has made it so attractive to generations of writers, artists and filmmakers. Like bats to a cave. Anyone who is fascinated by and gains pleasure from boxing and boxers contains a streak of voyeurism.

Most boxers punch for peanuts - someone ranked in the top 10 in his division in Britain might be on less than the minimum wage - and go about their business in boxing's dark alleys, waiting to get their throat cut. They are little more than pieces in some grotesque, real-life board game, in which there are many more snakes than ladders.

Even many successful boxers, those who win belts and inspire column inches, have a relationship with the sport that is strained and twisted.

American legend Bernard Hopkins once told me: "If any of your kids or grandkids want to box, distract and discourage them early. In fact, I would tell my worst enemy's kids not to box. I don't believe that any part of the body was made to be hit."

Boxing offered Hopkins a way out of prison. And so you might argue that the fighter, a serial criminal and convicted armed robber, had no choice. But why was he still boxing when he was almost 50 and had financial security?

'Boxers enjoy punching people and getting hit'

The argument that boxing exploits the poor is questionable in the 21st Century. You'll struggle to find a more polite, intelligent bunch of kids than Great Britain's amateurs in Sheffield. The notion that because they are from working-class backgrounds they were doomed to fight is deeply patronising.

But that old cliche about boxing saving people is also a truism. For some kids brought up in straitened circumstances or on the wrong side of the tracks, boxing is one of the few ways to achieve respectability.