Around the World in 80 Fights: A Lifetime’s Journey to the Heart of Boxing

An autobiographical white-knuckle ride around the global fight game by the legendary Steve Bunce: the voice of the sport who is celebrating four decades of writing and talking about boxers and boxing.

＂This book captures the magic of the sport - the glory and the heartache.＂ Ricky Hatton

In Around the World in 80 Fights, let ’the Voice of Boxing’ take you on the ultimate sporting odyssey: to the rings of New York, to the makeshift rings of Bukom in Ghana, to the riches of Las Vegas, and to Riyadh, Atlantic City, Bethnal Green, Mexico City, Rome and Berlin.

To the basement rooms in dingy pubs where old fighters chase the last round; a bullring in December under the stars; a small square on the outskirts of Naples with a ring obscured by a fountain; the abandoned centre of boxing excellence in a forest lost in East Germany; a railway arch in south London and a bin-bag packed with cash.

Let ’Buncey’ tell you about the conversations with Mr. T at ringside; a meeting with the Pope’s people; the thoughts of Donald Trump when he had plans to make boxing great again; Don King in exile in his nineties; an overheard conversation with Fidel Castro; and a very real diplomatic incident.

The hard conversations with a dead boxer’s mother in the hour after a machine had been switched off. The bravery, stupidity, guts, desire and glory of the boxers in the world’s most famous and unknown rings. They fought for millions, for pride, for their country and for nothing. They bled, cried and died in those rings.

Around the World in 80 Fights vividly reveals the simple, wonderful and truly awful business of boxing. It is Buncey’s business and this is his story.

Steve Bunce has worked as a journalist and broadcaster since 1984, writing about boxing for the Daily Telegraph for a decade and since 1999 at the Independent, as well as having a column in Boxing Monthly and for ESPN.com.

He has been at six Olympic Games, reported on more than fifty fights in Las Vegas and covered bouts in over twenty countries. He is a regular on BBC Radio Five Live, working on their monthly show since 2004, the weekly podcast and all major live fights. He has been part of the broadcast team at BoxNation since 2011 and also holds various ridiculous records on the BBC’s award-winning Fighting Talk.