By Bart Barry-
Saturday at Wembley Stadium in London, before a crowd of 90,000 or so, British heavyweight Anthony Joshua defeated by 11th-round technical knockout Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko to become the undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world – in an excellent and valorous four-knockdown brawl anticipated by nothing on Klitschko’s resume. Any impulses to lead a treatment of Joshua’s victory with Klitschko’s age or previous knockout losses to men unremarkable as Ross Purity or Corrie Sanders should be stayed by a paragraph or two, even if they weren’t just now.
What belongs at the top of any consideration of Joshua from this moment till the end of his career is that he became recognized as heavyweight champion the right way.
Perhaps Klitschko was no longer what we considered him in his 30s but he was still the best prizefighter above 200 pounds in the world – as there is nearly no doubt he’d’ve beaten Tyson Fury in a rematch the Gypsy King avoided shamelessly. Klitschko’s reign was, again, unremarkable as any in the modern era, a string of mostly mediocre performances against mostly mediocre opponents with occasionally some emphatic violence against an occasional, emphatically bad opponent. He left Saturday’s ring entirely diminished in physical stature if not legacy. Klitschko’s legacy was to remain the same, win or lose; he got dropped and stopped by, let’s see if it’s possible to get this right, A YOUNG HUNGRY LION and therefore will not rise in historians’ esteem anytime soon; but if Klitschko’d’ve won Saturday historians’d’ve moved him no higher in historic ranking because no one would yet know if it were feat or farce till Joshua revealed his true self in the decade that followed, sort of the way aficionados’ esteem for Fury underwent a nineminute revisionist fever after Klitschko dropped Joshua in round 6.
When Joshua tore out his corner to open the championship rounds, comporting himself like nothing so much as a champion, and Wlad’s legs got somehow stiffer in flight than they were in pursuit, my spirits lifted a touch. The hyperbole was en route, desperate as British fightfans are for a man who justifies their passions, but it was not going to be misplaced as other recent happenings like the Fury coronation. When Joshua’s right uppercut took Klitschko from Go-Go-Gadget neck to legless jitterbug and you knew there was no way a 41-year-old was getting to round’s end my spirits crested then fell then rose anew: It’s hard for a disinterested viewer to escape some sense of sympathy when a man enormous as Klitschko shrinks to a bony quivering thing, his physique transformed from ripples to lumps; that sight dropped my emotions and their descent got further weighted by what faux expertise was then sure to awaken and now does awaken – when every toughguy with a microphone or pen who abandoned boxing after Lennox Lewis tenderized Mike Tyson 15 years ago comes roaring back, old hungry lions they be, to tell us how much the new champion reminds them of their favorite old champion who reminded them of themselves and that time in the bar or backalley when they brought extreme justice in a bareknuckle violence orgy for whose storied perpetrator local authorities today continue their search.
A couple seconds of those thoughts, though, happily yielded to a sense of relief and gratitude; relief for the Brits in our legion, as no one save the Mexicans has done so much to keep our beloved sport afloat this last decade, and gratitude that our new face of boxing is so preferable to our last face of boxing. In the deafening cheers of 90,000 spirited Brits one heard many things among which was a crashing halt to the Money May era. Anthony Joshua is already better at every facet of prizefighting than Floyd Mayweather, with the exception of fighting itself – and Joshua’ll never be more than half as good at that as Mayweather, so it hardly matters.
(No, a 147-pound version of Joshua would not win a round against Mayweather, the same way a 130-pound version of Klitschko would not survive a round with 2005 Manny Pacquiao.)
One now halfway hopes Klitschko retires while splitting the other half of his hopes between an immediate rematch and a pasting of Deontay Wilder in PBC’s consolation league. Dancing Wlad lacked the movement and energy to dissuade Joshua for more than a halfhour and will fare still worse on the next go, but he’s still way too young and active to lose to “Wilder &” Wilder, which would make Joshua-Klitschko II an even bigger spectacle than Saturday’s was. Joshua, meanwhile, has no earthly reason to fight anywhere but London for the foreseeable future; in all of boxing only Canelo in Mexico City or Pacquiao in Manila could hope to sell half as many tickets as Joshua just did. There’s absolutely no reason for him to do Las Vegas or Madison Square Garden; he’s already larger than both those venues, and there’s not currently an American heavyweight who belongs in the same arena as him.
There’s much room for Joshua to improve as a prizefighter, but here’s to hoping he doesn’t; he’s good enough to ice any man in the world but not good enough to jab-jab-hold smaller men to decision victories. Joshua is perfect as he is right now. May he remain that way for a good long time.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
