You're damn right there's a double standard in boxing media (and among fans). Actually, there are lots of double standards-- and many follow the same general line of bias.
Remember when the media collectively shat themselves in outrage over Deontay Wilder in 2018 when he said this:
"I want a body on my record...I want one. I really do...That's the Bronze Bomber. He want one. When I'm the Bronze Bomber I don't care. I want that on my record."
You don't joke or fool around with something like that. Wilder clearly had no respect for the dignity of the sport or the time-honored brotherhood of fighters. What a brutish thug!
Fast forward to a week ago. Gennadiy Golovkin also went "there."
"You know Oscar, you know how dirty his mouth is," Golovkin said in response to Oscar De La Hoya saying that he could beat him. "He can say whatever. But let me put it this way – If I got an opportunity to legally kill a person in the ring, I might seize it."
Man, the media went nuts with that one! They almost forced him out of the sport for talk of murdering a Hall of Famer in the ring. Just kidding. They didn't say a damn thing. They just kept on tossing Golovkin's Kazakh salad, proclaiming his "historic" greatness, and hyping his upcoming soft touch.
Remember when Deontay Wilder became a universal source of mockery for his excuse-making and conspiracy theories regarding his loss to Tyson Fury?
Vasiliy Lomachenko, though, recently offered up his own heapingly ridiculous helping of excuses and conspiracy theories regarding October's loss to Teofimo Lopez.
"I didn’t lose the fight," Lomachenko told a sympathetic foreign interviewer. "Even if I won three rounds in the first half of the fight I wouldn’t win the fight [on] the scorecards. What does it say? It’s not about bias, it’s about being bribed. There was nothing about honest judging.
“I don’t know whose game it was...I do think it was somebody’s game. They knew the possibility of knockout from my side was around 20%. Why not then?"
...and crickets from most of the media.
Or how about in 2016 when Sergey Kovalev was hailed as "taking the high road" when confronted by an enraged Jean Pascal, who was enraged because of Kovalev's long history of racist statements and race-based mockery?
Or how about Terence Crawford being called on the carpet, repeatedly and aggressively, for his lack of quality, dangerous opposition at welterweight? The media had nothing but nice things to say about Gennadiy Golovkin, however, as he went 16 defenses-deep into his middleweight title reign without facing anyone who wasn't tailor made to be crushed. During that run, Triple G faced nobody comparatively more challenging than Jose Benavidez and Amir Khan were to Crawford. Despite both being able to lean on the excuse of being avoided by division top dogs, only Crawford was roasted alive-- starting one defense into his reign-- for not somehow, some way, making the big fights happen.
I could go on and on with proof of this double standard in boxing, but I think you get the drift.
It's damn hard to ignore what all of these cases have in common, right?
Black fighters being held to different standards than white fighters (or white-ish fighters) is an ages-old tradition in the fight game. And guess what? Nothing's been done about it, nothing WILL be done about it until someone starts pointing this shit out and holding some feet to fire.
Honestly, it's not even a race thing at this point, it's an honesty and integrity thing. Boxing is lacking in those areas and patching up those holes will go a long way in fixing the sport's many other problems.
Boxing is the gleeful last refuge of the politically incorrect—a place where racism, sexism, corruption, and even flat-out thievery produce a vicarious thrill in many. Boxing is a place where well-manicured, well-fed, middle-aged men “slum” in a dark and seedy alley. It’s a place where a murderous con man hustler can be a beloved “character,” unanimously voted into the Hall of Fame. And, yeah, it's a place where people can act like it's still 1944 and embrace/condone racist bullshit that could never fly in any other area of society.
In this environment, nothing is ever going to change for the better. Boxing needs better and braver men and women in its media, more who are willing to cinch up their sacks and take the fight to the creeps, scoundrels, and idiots ruining our sport.