Another splendid showing by AJ

Bart Barry-

Saturday world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua once again filled a gigantic football stadium and successfully defended his multitude of titles by knocking silly a man one doubted any man might knock silly. This time it was former Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Alexander Povetkin, possessed of both fists and chin. Joshua punched him till Povetkin’s trainer pleaded for mercy on the apron while the match’s referee tried to soften Povetkin’s second plunge to the blue mat.

Whatever happens next, let us pause and rejoice at a present good fortune so aptly illustrated through the pair of Povetkin challenges that just concluded. Before anyone scoffs or even dares consider it, he’s invited, first, to watch this fight, every last second of its 36 minutes, and see what Joshua so blessedly rid us of.

Have you forgotten how awful most Wladimir Klitschko title defenses were? I sure had. Then I took what happened Saturday and subjected my memories of it to what happened five years ago when Povetkin made his first title challenge. The aesthetical disaster of it, the frightfulness that made a man gargantuan as Klitschko fistfight in a way best classified as passive-aggressive: jab-jab-hook-bellyflop-armwrap-tackle | where’s the ref? | leapback-dolphinbreach-armwrap | where’s the ref? | jab-gloveswaddle-headtuck | where’s the ref?

We’re properly spoiled by Joshua if as aficionados we’re not genuflecting to him semiannually. He didn’t untitle Klitschko the way Tyson Fury did, by outwladding Wlad, but rather he made the temperamentally temperate titlist go man-to-man for once and beat him into retirement, beat him right, gave Klitschko a last stand more honorable than the sum of its 20 predecessor stands. And Klitschko thanked him for it in part because, as a 40-year-old man whose career began before YouTube, Klitschko hoped longsuffering fans long since driven to welterweight spectacles instead of his might recall of his legacy only the images of those final rounds in Wembley and the text of his resume.

But do notice how very little anyone misses the Brothers Klitschko, how fully this new era of heavyweights makes us forget the last era’s insipid sibling monopolists.

A brief recap why. Saturday the heavyweight champion of the world, in round 1, stood near enough and grappled little enough with a puncher who knew how to get his nose bloody bloodied and his equilibrium briefly beggared. No preceding quarterhour of guardslapping (what infamous 2008 tactic against Sultan Ibragimov got Wlad exiled a sevenyear from American arenas) – instead a man throwing hands with another man and letting come what might. Then a change in tactics that concerned punching, actual punching, a new target, a changed trajectory, but still punching, not fleeing, not landing the grand jeté, but punching a challenger who wanted to hurt the champ with every offering. And finally the finale, a gorgeous cross thrown at a man still plenty dangerous followed by a pursuit ferocious to a point near recklessness.

Joshua wanted to be tested in a way the heavyweight division’s previous princes never did. He justified once again his enormous following’s faith in him by competing and winning in entertaining a fashion as possible. Then he demonstrated an uncanny rapport with what 80,000 Brits braved the raw conditions of an outdoor arena where the skies drizzled them. He had a laugh at his promoter’s expense. He conceded a sense of the pressure so many folks’ reliance on him brings. He promised an April return. He named fellow titlist Deontay Wilder as his preferred opponent.

Not so fast, there, AJ. Whatever the oddsmakers say there’s good a chance as not a countryman of yours will wear the WBC belt in the new year, not Wilder. My, how fully we’ve forgot, on the evidence of a single showing a halfyear ago, how bad Wilder can be at boxing. And where Joshua should probably outclass the winner of Wilder-Fury nobody should be surprised if Fury outclasses Wilder, 11-1, in a soggydamp spectacle Americans in attendance do not forgive quickly.

There’s a mounting momentum that assumes Wilder deserves a win against Fury because of Fury’s apparent madness, and that’s not how our beloved sport works. Much as Wilder eschews traditional technique is how much Fury eschews traditional entertainment demands. Fury fights nothing like a man his size should, but his style is likely a full foil for Wilder’s. Everything that looked right about Saturday’s spectacle is what will look wrong in December.

Saturday’s challenger attacked, tried to take the champ’s crown by offing the head that bore it. And the champ replied with measure and mastery. Povetkin got in with clever aggression, throwing punches leveraged to devastate. He clipped Joshua with an uppercut-hook combo textbook as it was unexpected. He made an honest confrontation from the opening bell: I’m going to hit you hard as I can, and if that means you do the same to me I’m prepared for it. Before the match Joshua predicted a violent game of chess but it was blessedly more belligerent than that.

December, contrarily, will see a challenger actively endeavor to shame a champ from attacking him – making Wilder hate him so much before the opening bell Wilder hates the idea of failing to hurt Fury slightly more than he hates Fury. It’ll bring entertainment in both a different way and in the bizarre way only heavyweight prizefighters, among all athletes, can. Life’s greatest attestation to this may forever remain the number of German venues Wladimir Klitschko filled.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry