Folks, this may just be the most heartwarming sports moment you’ll read about all year, presuming our hunch here is correct: The referee holding both boxers’ hands at the end of this match must be their dad!
Wow. No matter which boxer won the fight, this whole family wins by being together (these guys gotta be flesh and blood, holding hands like that…right?)!
Boxing is a brutal sport by nature. That’s why it’s so beautiful to see these two brothers put aside the violence they inflicted on one another in the ring to stand hand-in-hand with their biological father (disclosure: we haven’t confirmed if these people are all immediate relatives or not, but who better to referee a bout between two boxers than their very own dad?! It just makes sense!). For spectators of the match, this is an incredible reminder that in boxing, what’s important isn’t winning or having fun or even being good at boxing, but sticking together as a family with the people who officiate your fights and also your opponents, in both a legal and genetic sense. After the final bell rings, punches, knockouts, and sportsmanship mean nothing at all if you can’t join hands with your opponent and your referee and say, “We are literally immediate relatives.”
Just from the way this referee is looking out into the crowd as the boxers we’re assuming are his boys cool off from walloping each other, you can tell he’s proud of them both for being brave and for taking daddy’s hands right after the match ended (look, it’s 2025…if you’re quick to assume this referee isn’t the dad of these boxers, be a bit more open-minded about the shapes modern families can take!). To punch each other in front of a packed arena and then be willing to hold hands anyway is a wonderful testament to how well this referee raised these boxers, despite being a single father (not enough evidence to suggest there’s a mother in the picture here).
Simply adorable (very few scenarios where an older man like this ref holds the hands of two younger men unless he’s their dad, just saying!). If you didn’t love boxing before, you probably do now!
Hey, even if these people aren’t a single-father family unit after all (and we have a gut feeling they definitely are), we could all learn something from this show of unity they’ve put on despite engaging in violent combat. Kudos to them!
