There is nothing like hearing the words, ‘protect yourself at all times’ in a ring, knowing you are about to fight. Even writing them they still cause my adrenaline to surge a bit even now, well away from any real fight, sat at a PC. They cause a special, rare sort of excitement that is hard to recapture. Occasionally as an academic a book comes along that has the same sort of effect, not so much adrenaline as respect and admiration. The sort you feel when someone in a boxing ring has hit you with a great hook or cross and you do that little grimace of respectful acknowledgement while slightly resenting their luck, fortune and skill. This book evoked all those feelings.

As an ethnographer, and a long-term fan and practitioner of boxing, the so-termed ‘Sweet Science’ (as well as the social form that we researchers practice), it was an absolute honour and a rare pleasure to be asked to write a Foreword for Deb Jump's phenomenal book, The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance. It is a fantastic and engaging work, and proves its author a rare talent, the once-in-alifetime prospect every coach seeks, but few find.

I grew up in boxing gyms full of men like those in the pages of this book, and these spaces proved a good place to make connections and meet people, a skill that has served me well for years subsequently as an academic ethnographer and criminologist. In ethnographic and qualitative research ventures, boxing has given me commonality with an array of people. In New Zealand I have talked Joseph Parker vs. Anthony Joshua with a full-patched member of the Notorious Mongrel Mob, Horn vs. Pacquiao with Australian gangsters, and used boxing to build a rapport with all sorts of staff and subjects in policing, prison and crime contexts worldwide. Boxing and the unlicensed (including the now burgeoning white collar fight scene) gave me the chance to introduce colleagues to the crime world often written about in crime fiction. I have also fought myself, and boxing, fast feet and big hands for a big guy got me out of countless scrapes. Still now I regularly spar (my real fighting days behind me) and know the appeal of boxing and combat sports to its fans and practitioners alike. It is more than just the violence. Yet, at its core, boxing is about one person hurting another. Only some of those lured to the sport know the practicality, that pain and adversity, intelligence and strategy, are all as much a part of triumphing.