Boxing champ says ‘someone high up’ harbours personal grudge against him

The organisers of a boxing tournament have accused "somebody high up in power" for an eleventh-hour cancellation of a boxing fight featuring Scottish champion Scott Dixon, at the Floriana FC football ground earlier this week.

Dixon, who is facing separate charges on drug possession, was blunt about the way the police arbitrarily demanded organiser Abner Abela to "return the permit" just one hour before the fight started.

"Obviously this came from someone high up in power," Dixon said. "Why did everybody have to suffer just because someone has a personal vendetta against me? What days do we live in?"

The PN's organ maltarightnow.com quoted Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia denying that a person close to the ministry was responsible for the cancellation of the event.

It is known that Dixon was formerly a partner of TV presenter Stephanie Chircop, the estranged partner of Silvio Scerri, the chief of staff at the home affairs ministry. MaltaToday has no evidence that the strained relationship is linked to the police force's decision to cancel the permit.

The police has so far not publicly declared itself on the reasons behind the boxing fight's cancellation.

"We had the permit in our hands, we had insurance, a permit from Floriana FC, and every single thing to be in accordance with the law. Then it all started to spiral and go downhill," Dixon said of the eleventh-hour cancellation.

"Abela was asked by the police to return the permit one hour before, or that he faced arrest. So blunt, so blatant."

Dixon said the police started making demands until the organisers could no longer comply.

"Police said there should be no alcohol and we complied. They said we had to cover the area with a green net, which we did, but then they said it was visible from a nearby hotel. Then they said that the 700 seats we had on the Floriana football pitch had to be affixed to the floor. They knew this was a football ground, so why did they tell us one hour before?

"Every time a door opened, immediately it was closed in our face. So it obviously came from someone high up in power."

Dixon is a former Commonwealth welterweight champion currently who was formerly the national coach for the youth Olympic boxing team. Not a stranger to controversy, in 2009 he revealed the details of a savage assault that very nearly cost him his life 10 years ago.

Long before finding himself splashed about the local papers for his alleged involvement in a local cannabis trafficking ring, Dixon said he had been abducted in his hometown Hamilton, a suburb of Glasgow, by three men: one of whom was his friend and boxing companion, Gary MacMillan.

Dixon was forced into a car and driven to the outskirts of town, where MacMillan and his two companions repeatedly beat the boxing champion on the head and limbs with a baseball bat, a hammer and a knife... breaking his left arm and both his legs in the process.

It seems the motive for this assault was jealousy: Dixon had previously had an affair with one of McMillan's ex-girlfriends. MacMillan was eventually sentenced in 2004 to five years in a Glasgow prison, for what the judge termed a "cowardly attack".