Dereck Chisora and Joe Joyce's 10-round decision victory over each other at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday was the kind of all-out war and dramatic action that turned casual spectators who happened to catch the fight into instant boxing aficionados.
It was also a grotesque, inhumane spectacle that could make casual viewers, or even avid fans, never want to watch boxing again.
Joyce vs. Chisora was everything I love and hate about boxing condensed into one fight.
I'm in awe of these two mountain men with hearts bigger than their bodies can contain, but I worry about them. Boxing doesn't last forever. You box until you can't anymore, and then, ideally, you have years, maybe decades, maybe even a half-century of boxing left. former Boxers. Watching the punishments Chisora and Joyce inflicted on each other, it was hard not to think that those punishments would limit the length or quality of the rest of their lives, or both.
Of course, the outcome could be random. Genetics, luck, and other unquantifiable factors mean that George Foreman had 81 professional fights, kept fighting until age 48, and still had clear pronunciation at 75. Riddick Bowe had half as many professional fights and his pronunciation deteriorated noticeably before he turned 30.
So I'm not here to say that Joyce and Chisora won't make it into their 90s without suffering the ill effects of the blows they suffered. Maybe. I hope so.
But their chances of winning are slim.
In all this praise of suffering and courage I keep mentioning both Joyce and Chisora, but anyone who saw the fight will know I am speaking primarily of “Del Boy”, a man who has been fighting professionally for 17 years, a man who, at 40 years old, was completely unable to move his legs for much of the final three rounds, a man whose will to win never faltered even when his body was no longer able to contribute.
Joyce, at 38 years old, is not young either, but he played courageously and is worthy of our attention, but it was Chisora's performance that pushed both extremes to their limits in a 30-minute match.
Chisora's narrow but well-deserved victory was a big part of making this a match we will never forget.
It was Chisora who scored the knockdown with a minute left in the ninth round that made me scream in surprise, sitting alone in my living room. He landed the overhand right he'd been looking for all night. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a lucky punch. It was everything left of the game plan he ever had. With his feet barely able to support himself, his right eye narrowing, and the ropes his four best friends, he leaned back, trying to time his looping right punch at Joyce. He landed a couple of them early in the ninth, but without the effect he hoped for. Then one of them did just what he'd dreamed of, putting Joyce on his back. Not permanently, but enough to change whose hand was up.
This fight was interesting in that there was no way to predict what was going to happen. Whether it was going to be a Fight of the Year candidate was unclear until it happened. Whether Chisora was going to last until the end was hard to believe until it happened.
The first four and a half rounds were pretty much what everyone expected: not bad, but not great, just two stocky heavyweights telling each other they were going to throw a punch, only to discover that the other's jaw was still in the exact spot by the time the punch landed. There was a lot of holding, some short punching action (like late in the second round), some swollen eyes, some close rounds, and overall it was a competitive fight where the crowd got what they paid for.
Then, late in the fifth round, we got a hint of what was to come: Chisora landed two hard right punches that “The Juggernaut” stepped forward and responded with all his 281 pounds of body weight in his hands. Chisora fought back, chest rising and falling, landing wide rights that only needed the slightest movement of his head to block, and Joyce did.
Joyce fought back and won the sixth round, but Chisora, despite clearly tiring, dominated the seventh. It was unclear who would win, but as expected, two faded former challengers put on a great fight for the hometown fans. Then, with 45 seconds left in the eighth round, the story changed. A left hand rocked Chisora. His feet moved like they were part of a stop-motion animation scene with a few frames missing. The older man churned out punches and held on until the bell, but there seemed to be no world in which the fight wouldn't be stopped in the next round.
Then came a knockdown in the ninth, Chisora jogged away in the final seconds of the round, tried to run out the clock in the 10th, but capped off an incredible late fightback with a series of missile right hands in the final 45 seconds.
Heavyweight world champion Oleksandr Usyk, wide-eyed and confused, rose to his feet and applauded. Two months ago, Usyk beat Tyson Fury in a fight that was probably the best fight of the year for those who like high-stakes, high-skill fights. If you're looking for nothing more than shock and awe, Fury-Usyk will probably take a backseat to what we witnessed on Saturday.
And the judges gave the victory to the right man. Boxing could not allow itself to succumb this time.
It was an entertaining and emotional fight, but no one would have questioned Chisora's corner had they thrown in the towel multiple times in the closing stages. A 40-year-old man who fought rounds as tough as he did, who could barely see in one eye and looked like he was going to collapse, sometimes needs to be rescued from himself. Knowing what we know now, Chisora didn't need bailing, at least in the short term. Knowing what we know now, a more conservative corner would have missed out on one of the decisive wins of his long career.
A more conservative corner might have prevented Chisora from leaving the ring. We're talking about what kind of match we want to play next..
The reason I love this sport is because there is no other form of entertainment anywhere in the world that can deliver moments like what we saw in the ninth round.
I hate this sport because that one punch in the ninth round could have added 20, 30 rounds and hundreds of punches to Chisora's career.
Winning endings are extremely rare in boxing, so while Chisora could certainly earn a decent payday in one or two more fights, and there are still countless heavyweights he could beat, it's hard to imagine his future ending in a more perfect way.
It's not my place to tell a fighter when to retire, but the story ends the way it should.
And who knows what the future holds for a fighter's cognitive abilities? Maybe the damage is already done, or maybe there won't be any noticeable damage no matter what. What I can say for sure is that even if he takes a lot of punches, Improve Joyce also has no hope of Chisora living a healthy life after retiring from boxing.
Wish we could just sit back and enjoy a good old fashioned drool-inducing fight without cringing. This was a fight worth celebrating and both fighters deserve praise, no matter what their limitations. Chisora and Joyce gave it everything they had on Saturday night.
The problem is, when you give it all, of course you have nothing left. Hopefully, time will remember what Chisora and Joyce gave to the fans, and not what they took from each other.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with over 25 years of experience covering boxing for outlets including Boxing Scene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat and The Ring (where he served as editor in chief for seven years). He has also served as co-host of the HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney and Ring Theory. He has received three Best Writing Awards from the BWAA for his work on The Ring, Grantland and HBO. Outside of boxing, he is a Casino Report 2014 Money maker effectContact details: X or LinkedInor email us at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
