By Ray Wheatley – World of Boxing

Promoter Dean Lonergan explained his thoughts on the hand injury sustained by Australian heavyweight champion Justis Huni in his bout with rugby league football legend Paul Gallen which forced him to withdraw from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

“Justis’ entire family is gutted but equally they are the ones who wanted to do the fights and I fully endorsed that,” Lonergan told the Wide World of Sports. “We thought activity was the best way to get the best outcomes. This injury started in sparring, so he would have been doing it tough anyway if he were to be going to the Olympics.

“So there’s nothing to say the injury would have occurred anyway. I don’t think there were mistakes made in the build-up to this. It’s just the way things go.

“The reason why Justis went pro is because he couldn’t get any fights as an amateur when COVID hit. Justis had to have the fights that we’ve had. He would have had no fights going into the Olympics and probably wouldn’t have fought upwards of a year and a half.

“That would have been just as bad as not going at all. It would have been a tragedy. There’s just not that many guys to fight and the ones that do come from COVID countries.

“It’s so easy to say this is the reason why and so on – but it’s always more complex than what it is on the surface. There’s no way he could have performed on the basis of that.

“You can hurt yourself just as much in a fight as you can in sparring and training. And unfortunately, the injury that occurred was the major one, the injury to his knuckle, that happened in sparring and it could have happened in any training camp whatsoever.”