It was a fight for nothing. No titles. No belts. No prospect of a world championship challenge for the victor.
Yet it was a fight for everything. For honour. For valour. For pride. For manhood. For the endurance of pain beyond belief. For its own glory.
For the ages as well as for the aged.
The deliverance of a prize-ring epic does not depend solely on the coming together of two of the best boxers on the planet. It calls for a pair of heroes to give far more of themselves than we who merely watch have a humane right to expect. Step up to scratch Derek Chisora and Joy Joyce.
‘Will that be the Fight of the Year?’ one naive microphonic innocent asked of its promoter late this Saturday night.
Wrong question. Albeit close to the right answer from the promoter of boxing’s Fight of the Century. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said Frank Warren.
Derek Chisora (right) triumphed over Joe Joyce via unanimous decision on Saturday evening
Actually we have. But not for 50 years all but a few months. Not since the steamy rising of dawn over the Philippines on October 1 1975, when Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier came to the visceral culmination of their immortal trilogy.
Not since that earth-shaking morning when Smokin’ Joe was forbidden by Eddie Futch to go back out for the 15th and final round. A prohibition for which Frazier would never forgive his trainer even though the gargoyle swellings of both eyes rendered him virtually blind , but still shouting: ‘I could have found him with my fists.’
Not since The Greatest was saved by seconds from abdicating his world heavyweight throne when his trainer Angelo Dundee delayed compliance with his order to cut off the gloves just long enough for Futch to beat him to the retirement. Said Ali: ‘This is the closest I’ve ever come to dying.’
Not since that Thrilla in Manila.
Chisora and Joyce would not pretend to such greatness but they did earn the right in the 02 to be gasped in the same breath.
Joyce put up an admirable fight but came up just short in the thrilling contest at the O2 Arena
From the first second to the last bell they pounded each other with more sledge-hammer blows than are to be heard in a weekend of roadworks across London. That both were still standing as they fulfilled their contracted ten rounds was little short of miraculous.
Those heavyweight heads bounced like boulders from shoulder to shoulder. Sweat flew in floods across the ring. Internal organs groaned from the pile-drivers thundering into those huge bodies.
Del Boy – or War as Chisora latterly prefers to be addressed – landed more of them and with it the decision. Not least because Juggernaut Joe never so much as tries to block or elude the punches. Ultimate War-riors both.
For us, their full-frontal collision will be unforgettable. For them, who knows how soon they will forget. The brain scans are not llkely to make pretty reading. That they will continue doing this to others and themselves, they are now recommitted.
Chisora, at 40, had promised to retire after ‘this farewell dance.’ Joyce, 38, had been telling us for two years that he knows he is shipping more punishment than is good for the on-going health of any homo-sapien.
Chisora scored a knockdown on his opponent during the ninth round of the competition
Now Chisora announces he wants to battle on until his 50th birthday, resuming with fights in Manchester this December and in his African birth-place, Zimbabwe, next year. Up went the cheers. Now Joyce asks the onlookers: ‘Do you want to see more of me.’ Again, cheers.
Such is the drug-like addiction of true fighting men to the floodlights, the drama, the blood-soaked sawdust, the resin, the thrill and the danger, the roar of the crowd.
Should they be saved from themselves? Well, this mano-a-mano brutality is legalised violence. Even though in its savagery it would have pleased audiences in Rome’s Colosseum.
It was back-and-worth between the two heavyweight stars as the battled for victory
Here in the 21st century Chisora was given the Imperial thumbs up by judges not in white robes but in dinner suits. Not least because he scored the only knock-down, with a right-hand bolt from the depths of a ninth-round onslaught by Joyce.
Should we be watching this? It was a question to be asked of ourselves on the homeward journey through the dark hours.
But in the heart-thumping heat of the moment we stood to salute them. Oleksandr Usyk amongst us, this unified and undefeated world heavyweight champion who took an overnight break from advising Ukraine’s Olympic boxing team so as to support Chisora, who has been his friend since their fight inducted the formerly undisputed cruiserweight king into the heavyweight delights.
Said Usyk: ‘Derek is the one who has to go home and think about his future.’ For better or worse, he might have added. Because no-one knows better than he that nothing to equal the primitive blood-lust on the banks of the Thames will be seen during the glorified sports days unfolding now just an under-channel drive away in Paris.
