IF THERE has been any year in which boxing exposed its diseased soul to the world, that year was 2022.

The extraordinary joint press conference held in Dublin on April 12 by the Irish, US and British authorities to announce financial sanctions against the so-called Kinahan Organised Crime Group, implicated in the importation of drugs into Europe from South America on a grand scale, along with a raft of murders and arms dealing, was well-nigh unprecedented in the annals of a sport whose relationship with organised crime traces a long and ignoble history.

This is because, of the principal members of the otherwise known Kinahan Cartel — named specifically during said joint press conference as targets of law enforcement — Daniel Kinahan had been operating within top flight boxing for years.

This he did first as co-founder of a sports management company —  first MGM Marbella then latterly MTK Global — which at its height was the biggest of its kind in the world.

And then as personal adviser to a who’s who of the sport’s elite names in: Tyson Fury, Billy Joe Saunders, Terence Crawford, Josh Taylor, Liam Smith, Savannah Marhsall, Jack Caterall, Sunny Edwards — the list goes on.

But it is not only fighters who were happy to associate with and vouch for Daniel Kinahan’s bona fides, even as accusations of his deep involvement in major organised crime had been swirling around him over many years.

Major promoters — Eddie Hearn, Frank Warren, Bob Arum, et al — and also broadcasters had likewise been comfortable in dealing with him when it came to putting together major boxing events.

Heavyweight king Tyson Fury was pictured with him in Dubai as recently as two months before the April press conference to cast a pall over his mandatory defence against Dillian Whyte just two weeks later at Wembley.

When questioned in the lead-up to this fight over his association with Daniel Kinahan and Kinahan’s alleged involvement in murder and mayhem, Fury proclaimed that “it’s nowt to do with me. None of my business.”

This was the response taken by boxing in its entirety, the embrace of a “move along nothing to see here” approach to a scandal that should have but did not rock the sport’s very foundations.

Nobody mentioned above, it should be noted, has been implicated in any criminal activity whatsoever, but also nobody mentioned above has yet to offer a satisfactory explanation as to why they accepted into their midst a man with alleged links to murder, drugs and organised crime going back years.

The resulting no-fly list imposed by US law enforcement, denying entry into the country to 600 individuals with links to Daniel Kinahan, is said to have included many from within the boxing fraternity.

Again, an unprecedented turn of events that would simply never obtain in any other sport.

As to matters pertaining to the ring itself, 2022 proved a case of the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good came in the shape of Dmitry’s Bivol’s masterclass performance to defeat pound-for-pound king Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in May to confirm that Canelo is man not machine after all.

Prior to that, in February, Kell Brook finally put to bed his years long feud with Amir Khan in one of the most eagerly sought UK domestic clashes ever fought with a commanding performance over the twelve-round distance.

February also saw one of the most controversial judges’ decisions after the final bell in a British boxing ring, when Josh Taylor was given the split-decision nod over challenger Jack Catterall.

At that moment Taylor, then undisputed king at 140lbs, went from being one of the most popular fighters in the country to one of the most despised, with not only himself but also members of his family subjected to a tsunami of online hate and abuse.

More positively, the ascendancy of women’s boxing to new heights took place in 2022, culminating in a serious contender for fight of the year involving Claressa Shields of the US and Britain’s Savannah Marshall at London’s O2 at the end of October.

The result after an epic tussle at middleweight was the judges deciding in favour of the American for all the belts. More importantly, we witnessed the first sell-out crowd for a headlining women’s bout and massive viewing figures over and above that. Sylvia Pankhurst may well have been smiling in her grave.

The above-mentioned Tyson Fury, heavyweight boxing’s current talisman, fought twice in 2022. On neither occasion did he have to get out of second gear in order to dispatch two domestic opponents in the shape of Dillian Whyte and Derek Chisora.

Fury’s fight against Chisora in early December justifiably met with scorn from many over the fact that it was a horrible mismatch.

No matter, the 60,000 who braved the weather to turn up at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London to watch it unfold disagreed.

They confirmed that Fury’s star power is now of such magnitude that people would be willing to pay good money to watch the Gypsy King paint his own living room wall.

And speaking of Fury, the failed attempts to match him against either Anthony Joshua or Okleksandr Usyk in 2022, despite the clamour for both fights to take place — along with the likewise failed attempt to bring Errol Spence together in a ring with Terence Crawford at 147 — stand as yet further indictments of the sport’s organisation and business model.

Rivalry between promoters has long been an impediment to some of the most compelling “what if” fights in the sport’s long history.

That it continues to be so only enforces the belief that boxing is a sport that in many respects, and on multiple levels, stands apart from every other, though not in a good way.

Overall then, 2022 has to go down as a stand-out annus horribilis in the history of top flight boxing, the notable exceptions mentioned above notwithstanding.

It was a year not of highs and lows, but of lows and lower.

Never more popular has the sport been, and at the same time never more sordid. This particular connection may be more profound than it appears at first rendering.