When I first read Dark Trade at the age of 15, it provided a guiding light. I was in France at the time, I remember it well, and knew not what the book’s title meant, only that it sounded different from all the other boxing titles I had previously read. On its cover was a washed-out image of Evander Holyfield, while inside the book I found, in the context of sports literature, a new language and a new way to tell a story. 

Everything I had read to that point, you see, at least when it came to boxing books, had been typical biography or autobiography fare. I had, by then, read one too many accounts of retired fighters looking back on their career with unavoidable bias. I had also read one too many attempts by journalists to deliver the A to Z on fighters with a detachment some would describe as professional and others would call dull, vanilla, or lifeless. 

Dark Trade, meanwhile, represented something exciting and different. Almost voyeuristic in its approach, it placed you, the reader, in the corners of changing rooms and other off-limits rooms, with Donald McRae, its author, the quiet but impactful conduit. In McRae, you not only had a way into these sacred rooms, but you had somebody with the capacity to report from inside them without ego, fully accepting of his outsider role and aware of both its perks and limitations. He knew, for instance, when to get close and he knew when to respectfully step back and collect his thoughts at a distance. It was then from these vantage points he reported what he saw and what he heard. It was from these same vantage points the sport, to me, had never appeared so seductive and intriguing. Also, accessible.

Perhaps because I had already decided I wanted to follow his path, the prospect of seeing things through McRae’s eyes was more appealing to me than seeing them through those of a boxer, so often blinded by pride. I wanted to learn about James Toney, yes, but I wanted to know what McRae thought of him, having spent time around both Toney and his manager, Jackie Kallen, in America. I wanted observations, not interviews. I wanted to read about the bits I believed, until then, you were not allowed to see, let alone report. 

Twenty-nine years on from Dark Trade, winner of the 1996 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, McRae has written a quasi-follow-up called The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing, which was published by Simon and Schuster on Thursday (March 13). This time the title is a little less ambiguous and this time we are all a little less naïve and a little less hopeful.

Donald McRae

McRae, for his part, once happy to watch, now knows that one must do more than just watch and suggests that to only watch in this day and age is tantamount to complicity. The sport, after all, has changed – some might say darkened – immeasurably since the publication of Dark Trade, and so too has McRae’s view of it. Still enamoured of it, on occasion, and still in awe of its fighters, McRae also says he is tired of it – the business side of it anyway. He says, for this reason, The Last Bell will be his last longform foray in the sport and, following Dark Trade, In Black and White, A Man’s World, and In Sunshine or in Shadow, his final book about boxers. 

If so, it should be treated with the reverence it deserves and preserved in a time capsule somewhere. For The Last Bell, like Dark Trade before it, strikes this writer as a radical act, the kind of work that not only captures the current boxing climate with precision, but also promotes a language and brand of honesty one feared had been eradicated from the sport in recent years. 

Whether The Last Bell is exploring the influence of Saudi Arabia, the shitshow that was/is Conor Benn vs. Chris Eubank Jnr, or dirty money coming into the sport via Irish drug cartels, McRae is unflinching to an almost alien and unnerving degree. Whereas some purport to write about these issues, only to flirt and circle around them, McRae goes straight for the jugular, with no concern for losing access. 

This, for anyone who knows the man, or his work, will come as no shock, yet to witness such objectivity and integrity at a time like this, and in a sport like this, is no less impressive and jarring. Often, in fact, whenever reading chapters about big-name boxers McRae plainly admires, I would wait for the glossing over of their various transgressions – usually pertaining to drugs, alas – only to be pleasantly surprised when McRae introduced these black marks to paint the full picture of talented but invariably flawed individuals. He did the same with each of the contentious issues previously mentioned, never once backing down or away, and in so doing has given us the truest account of what boxing is and what it means in 2025. 

At a time when some in the media are telling us the sport has never been healthier or in better hands, McRae uses his own to land sobering, sickening jabs, the type to have one’s eyes quickly water. He makes a mockery of the en masse cheerleading of clueless newcomers and company men and adopts a tone of voice by contrast parental, authoritative, and refreshingly sane. (To read of his experience getting summoned and sequestered in Saudi Arabia is to merely receive confirmation of what you already suspect.) 

This, make no mistake, is not the book they want you to read. And yet, for that very reason, it is the book you must read. If nothing else, read The Last Bell to gain a greater understanding of things so readily swept under the carpet or treated as trivial by men for whom triviality is considered the opium of the masses. Or read it simply for permission; permission, that is, to speak/write openly and honestly and realise that doing so is neither a crime nor indicative of a lack of love for the sport. 

Because McRae, despite all he has seen, still clearly has a love for boxing. If in doubt, read him on Oleksandr Usyk, with whom he discusses the war in Ukraine, or read the beautifully written chapters about the late Patrick Day, which McRae imbues with a humanity and compassion nobody in sports journalism can match. 

Yet, fond of it though he is, McRae also recognises that a love for the sport and its participants should not blind an observer to its ugliness the same way that pride tends to blind a fighter to their shortcomings. He understands, moreover, as a thoughtful, intelligent man with opinions, that covering boxing in 2025 without acknowledging the absurdity of it all is an impossible and, frankly, soul-destroying task. 

As well as a love for it, McRae accepts that he still has a need for it. This sadly became clear to him whenever his own life was beset by tragedy and he found himself turning to boxing, or specific boxers, as a means of either escape or therapy. In boxing, McRae could still find an unconventional guide by which to live; something analogous to the drama and turbulence of his own life. He saw feats of extraordinary courage in every fight he watched, while the sight of others enduring pain, albeit in their case just physical, offered a brief distraction from his own. “Boxing,” McRae writes, “has a perverse way of turning every significant bout I see into something deeply personal. It is as crooked and as destructive as it is magnificent and transformative. While watching boxers risk their lives, I fall for the gory drama once more.”

Thankfully, though the trade is now many shades darker, McRae remains a guiding light. 

** The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing is out now and available to buy from all good booksellers https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Last-Bell/Donald-McRae/9781398504189 **