Andrew Tate gets a pounding in the ring

While one absurd boxing event was taking place in Miami this weekend – Anthony Joshua’s mismatch against YouTuber Jake Paul – another, even more unpleasant, was happening in the Middle East.

There, in Dubai, influencer, self-confessed misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate was engaging in a fight against Chase DeMoor, a former American football player now known for the reality show Too Hot to Handle, apparently. Tickets for the bout, promoted by the Dubai government’s tourism board, cost up to £1,900.

In the event Tate’s gobby bravado was no match for DeMoor, the Romania-based hate-monger being defeated in the sixth round and turning up at a post-fight press conference sporting a black eye.

But it was also a defeat of sorts for Keir Starmer’s government, which had been urged to use Tate’s visit to the United Arab Emirates, which with the UK has an extradition treaty, to bring him home to face justice. Tate is wanted in the UK on 10 criminal charges including rape, assault, human trafficking and controlling prostitution relating to three women. Four women are also bringing a civil case against him, alleging rape, sexual assault and coercive control.

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Rats in a Sack

The UK obtained a European arrest warrant in March last year on charges of rape and human trafficking between 2012 and 2015, but a Bucharest court said the warrant could not be enforced until the conclusion of the proceedings in Romania, where Tate is also awaiting trial along with his brother, Tristan, for rape and human trafficking linked to their “sex cam business”.

Emily Darlington, a Labour MP who campaigns on behalf of the alleged British victims, called on Starmer’s government to use the Dubai fight as an opportunity to extradite Tate. But alas it appears no such attempt was made.

Meanwhile, one fan who turned up for the fight in the strict Islamic kingdom was… fervent Islamophobe Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.

Robinson managed to make headlines himself when, while being interviewed by boxing channel IFL he was approached by the boxer Ty Mitchell, who called him a “racist prick”, demanded to know why the interviewer was “giving him airtime” and added that the far right activist was a “racist rat”.

He then asked, not unreasonably, “He hates Muslims but is in a Muslim country? Work that one out. How the fuck does that work out?” before shoving him and having to be pulled away by security. Still, not as bad as what might have happened to Robinson under the Emirates’s notoriously strict laws on insulting Islam were he to have employed some of his usual hateful rhetoric during his jolly!