With David Haye winning a version of the World Heavyweight championship and Manny Pacquiao confirming his status as best fighter in the world, boxing is making the sports headlines again. We rejoice in having another British World Champion. Nonetheless boxing continues to raise moral and ethical questions.

Just how violent boxing can be is illustrated by the following quotations from people on the inside.

Thomas Hausar, biographer of Muhammad Ali: "The job requires a man to move toward a battered, beaten foe whose hands are down, whose eyes are rolling and, if the referee allows, smash his face again".

Chris Eubank, former world super middle-weight champion: "The objective is to incapacitate your man and they [the crowd] want to see you do it. … The cameras are looking at you; the people are there howling for your blood. A guy is punching me to pieces. It's all very basic."

On the other hand, Dr David Bosher, director of the Pain Research Institute, said, "Throwing Christians to the lions in ancient Rome was so much better. At least only one contestant suffered. In boxing both participants pay the price."

There have been a number of boxing champions who have been vocal about their Christian faith. When Floyd Patterson defeated Archie Moore to win the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in 1956, he commented ‘I just hit him again and the Lord did the rest’ (The New Yorker, 27 July 1957).

George Foreman combined a career in boxing with being a pastor – and still found time to sell meat grills. He had an encounter with God in his dressing room after losing a fight to Jimmy Young. He became a Christian and went on to form his own church in Houston.

Evander Holyfield, the former world heavyweight champion also has a strong Christian faith and added the following to autographs: “Philippians 4:13 – I can do all this through Christ who gives me the strength”.

Yet boxing raises serious issues for the Christian. The fundamental question is whether a sport where the intention is to hurt, cut, injure and knock-out one’s opponent, can be reconciled with the Christian view of man and God.

Danger and injuries are, obviously, present in many sports. The difference with boxing is that hurting your opponent is the aim of the sport. Since the Second World War over 350 boxers have died from ring injuries.

The Church has always had an ambivalent attitude to boxing. When St Paul wrote to the Corinthian church “I do not fight like someone beating the air” (I Corinthians 9:26), he was not trying to write a theology of boxing. He was simply using a sporting analogy to make a point about the Christian life.

The early Christian writer, Terullian (ca.160 – ca.220 AD) warned his fellow Christians to keep away from the stadium for the things done inside them were wholly inappropriate for believers to see: blows, kicks, cuffs, and ”all the recklessness of the fist, and every disfigurement of the human face, God’s image”.