By Elliot Worsell
WE are all prone to getting carried away from time to time, particularly when a big right hand lands on a wounded fighter and the wounded fighter reacts as though they have been sucked down a plughole. The thrill of the knockout is, after all, as intoxicating as anything in the sporting world; something so easily understood it usually doesn’t matter who is doing the knocking out and who is being knocked out. It is simply the sight we covet. The sound. The sensation. The thought of one man being completely disconnected from his senses on account of the timing of another man’s fist.
If seduced by this sight, and most of us are, you will have no doubt been in your element last night (March 8), when Anthony Joshua produced not one but three picture-perfect knockdowns, the last of which left his opponent, Francis Ngannou, out cold on the ring canvas, soon to be surrounded by a gang of concerned bystanders as only the cameras respectfully turned the other cheek.
Each knockdown, Ngannou will need to be reminded, was the result of a Joshua right hand and each knockdown became all the heavier as a result of the one that preceded it. The last of the three, in fact, the most damaging and conclusive, was so wonderful and devastating in its execution it would have been worthy of winning any heavyweight title fight in history. Some at ringside, including Darren Barker, went so far as to say it was the most spectacular shot they had ever witnessed live, while other members of the DAZN crew, including the man tasked with asking Joshua about the punch post-fight, appeared on the brink of tears; both so moved were they by the violence they had just witnessed and so unwilling were they to consider its context.
Joshua celebrates a dramatic but ultimately meaningless win (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
For many others, however, ignoring the context was and is not quite so easy. Robbed, perhaps, of the feeling of being part of it, and hearing the shots land from ringside, it was hard when watching the three knockdowns scored by Joshua against Ngannou in Riyadh not to be reminded each time that Joshua, a former two-time world heavyweight champion, was scoring them against a man whose professional boxing record stood at 0-1 before last night and now reads 0-2. Which is to say, while the punches themselves, notably the last, were worthy of winning any heavyweight title fight in history, the actual fight in which they were thrown featured one man who wasn’t worthy of sharing a ring with the other. That’s not an example of revisionism, either; it’s just the fact of the matter. Whether you take into account or instead forget what happened in October, when Ngannou heroically pushed Tyson Fury to the wire, this was always a dangerous, reckless fight to make and one always predicated on hype and fantasy rather than any sense of competition or reality.
Indeed, the only reality last night was delivered by Joshua’s final crushing right hand. The only reality was seeing Ngannou, a man so tough and so brave, spread-eagled on the canvas as everyone around the ring were beside themselves with joy at the sight of what they had just witnessed. In that moment, the reality was never clearer and never as cruel, I’m afraid. In that moment the fantasy of Francis Ngannou being some sort of outlier who possesses the ability to beat world-class heavyweights with absolutely no background in the sport made way for the reality of a 0-1 novice brutally exposed and injured by the merciless right hands of a fighter who saw an opportunity – both pre-fight and during the fight – and took it; took it with all the shamelessness of a handyman scamming a pensioner at five o’clock on a Friday.
Anthony Joshua lands a huge right hand on Francis Ngannou in Riyadh (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
That’s not to say Joshua was out of order either taking this fight or finishing it the way he did. Of course it made sense for him, financially, to fight Ngannou following Ngannou’s exploits against Fury, and of course it made sense for Joshua to then try to finish Ngannou the way he did, especially as the second-round knockout he achieved proved to be so memorable; something Fury would have struggled to achieve had he shared another 10 rounds with Ngannou six months ago. Yet despite the obvious upside for Joshua, both of taking the fight and winning it in the manner in which he did, only those who don’t care about or understand the dangers of the sport will continue to discuss the knockout in the reverent tones used to discuss it in the aftermath. Only those who don’t care or understand will be unable to separate this knockout against Ngannou from all the other knockouts Joshua has manufactured in his 11-year pro career.
For the rest of us, meanwhile, the sight of Anthony Joshua, a former Olympic gold medallist and two-time world heavyweight champion, demolishing a man who should have never been encouraged to share a ring with him was no more than a reminder that in boxing nothing is more important than money, not even a person’s health. It was a reminder, too, that even serious injury and death – which is always a possibility in a fight like last night’s (as it is in any fight) – is still never enough for boxers and promoters to excuse awful, cynical fights when awful, cynical fights make “financial sense”.