Anthony Joshua retains heavyweight boxing crown.
The gentle giant from Golders Green and Watford born Anthony Joshua once again united boxing's diverse, world heavyweight championship belts with a crunching, thundering knockout of his spirited and game Bulgarian opponent Kubrat Pulev. It had been coming for Pulev and he must have expected this deadly and violently concussive blow from the Joshua gloves because the man from Bulgaria was cowering and hiding away from the Londoner's savage artillery of punches that ended in the ninth round.
And so Britain woke up yesterday to find itself with a worthy successor to the likes of Henry Cooper, Frank Bruno, Lennox Lewis, and now Joshua himself. The only difference, in this case, is that Joshua has finally claimed the world heavyweight belt for his own personal satisfaction. In a year of the chronic virus that has both ruined and scarred 2020, Joshua made us all sit up and feel good about ourselves. The capture of a major global boxing victory may seem distinctly unimpressive given the traumatic events that have made themselves painfully evident but at least we can still produce authentic sporting heroes.
To all outward appearances Joshua is a pleasant and agreeable boxer, free of the arrogance and attitude that may have led to the downfall of his predecessors. We all know of course that Frank Bruno was just a lovable charmer who just wanted to be accepted for who he was rather than the way his critics would have liked him to be, growling and grumbling, threatening to turn off the lights of his challenger in the ring in two rounds.
For Bruno boxing was quite heartless and unsympathetic. When the defeats came along like London buses Bruno began to lumber around like a wounded elephant, beaten senseless, disillusioned with everything around him and nursing a whole succession of black eyes, swollen lips and battered ribs. Towards the end of his career he became a shambling, downtrodden man reduced to the level of the celebrity pantomime character and a relentless figure of fun. Then it all went dramatically downhill and now Bruno lives only with his memories.
In the case of Anthony Joshua, boxing is very much a matter of an evening in the office, getting it all over and done with as quickly as possible and back to the dressing room with the victor's belt around his waist. Joshua is a ruthless, powerful, pragmatic fighter who does everything efficiently and skilfully with little fuss. He boxes very cleverly, an educated and academic boxer who puts his combinations together with an almost learned command of boxing's semantics.
On Saturday night at London's Wembley Arena, Joshua gave yet another reminder to Tyson Fury that heavyweight boxing needs another needle, acrimonious showdown, two boxers hell-bent on inflicting lasting damage on each other's egos. Fury was watching from afar and over the weekend confidently predicted that he would knock out Joshua and then into some small corner of outer space. The mutual loathing that boxers normally reserve for each other once again manifested itself in this dramatic and enthralling contest.
From the very first round this was clearly going to be the case one of those very tactical games of boxing chess where neither fighter felt ever so inclined to commit themselves to the lightning-quick conclusion. Joshua was cool, careful, judicious and calculating, measuring, judging and assessing, a master craftsman of the ring, moving his Bulgarian opponent around like the proverbial pawn or bishop that looks for openings and then eventually finds the right angles.
For the first five rounds Joshua, technically correct but circumspect, kept flicking those muscular arms out rather like a viper poking out its tongue. The glove was like an instrument, weighing up the opportunities to attack at close quarters and then picking the right moment to deliver the killer blows. The recurring image of the whole fight is of the white Joshua glove hovering in the air, choosing the moments with a very worldly shrewdness and a maturity that could only be admired.
Then by the sixth round Joshua was jockeying Pulev and slowly pushing his man into a corner he couldn't escape from. The Bulgarian smirked and smiled at Pulev as if convinced that everything Joshua had thrown at him hadn't connected and the man was making a fool of himself. Gradually though Joshua was exerting a menacing authority on the contest, a brutish barbarian of a fighter experienced in all of boxing's finer arts. Now it was that Pulev began to run out of steam and the bolshie defiance was ebbing away.
Deep into the eighth round, Joshua unleashed the fatal ammunition, an upper cutting masterclass that left Pulev wobbling precariously on his feet. The punches came thick and fast, with Joshua breaking through his opponents guard with low, slicing, slashing, swinging fists that ground down the Bulgarian's resistance.
By the ninth round Pulev was quite literally out for the count, a desperate, bleeding, bloodied fighter with very little left to give. The uppercuts were raining in relentless torrents, tentative rights and lefts that sucked the air out of Joshua's brave bruiser. Then another barrage of punches to Pulev's head destabilised him before it looked as if it was about to explode at any moment. In a swift bombardment of furious hooks and lethal upper cuts Joshua had got his man where he needed to be.
Finally with the ninth round closing in, Joshua isolated his man and threw the hardest and most ferocious knockout punch that any boxer has ever delivered. The Joshua glove lashed out decisively and poor Pulev was laid flat out on the ground where he eventually stayed. It was a pulverising, frightening punch that the late Muhammad Ali would have assured us may well have been heard on the other side of the world. Down went Pulev like a mighty oak tree that had finally toppled to the ground by a huge gust of wind.
So Joshua is still the heavyweight champion of the world in some, if not all of boxing's many divisions and Tyson Fury waits in the wings. Boxing, rather like other sports, has shown a classy resilience at a time when sport may have been forgiven for feeling very sorry for itself. We shower the Watford born heavyweight with deserved praise. We will also recognise that this was another triumphant night for British boxing.
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