Don King was not in the room on Thursday, but his travelling surrogates did their raucous best to provoke Anthony Joshua into the sort of response that had illuminated the previous day’s press conference, starring the subsequently punished Dereck “Table-thrower” Chisora and Dillian “Sit-tight” Whyte.
Joshua, the IBF heavyweight champion, ignored the taunts of the American promoter’s hired help and smiled serenely within jabbing distance of his latest challenger, the equally polite Texan Eric Molina, who has entrusted his career to the excitable King, who may yet blow into town to stir a few winter leaves.
King would appreciate the confusion that spread through the promotion on Thursday evening. The British Boxing Board of Control fined Chisora £25,000, with £5,000 costs, and handed him a two-year suspended sentence, while allowing Whyte to keep his title, but not defend it here – although the bout is still officially an eliminator for the WBC world title. Only in boxing.
Whyte, whom Joshua knocked out in a spiteful fight a year ago, and Chisora – who upended a table and flung it over the podium, across the ducking heads of the promoters and Sky executives towards the British champion – have an unlikely defender in the mild-mannered IBF title-holder.
Joshua, who had his moments as a streetwise teenager in Watford and north London before the disciplines of boxing rescued him from likely ignominy, denied such scenes were altogether bad for boxing. “When it happens, it seems it’s what some people want to see,” he said, striking a note of realism, at least, about his business and which stuck a pin in the balloon of media outrage over the fracas.
“You see that in the amount of viewers who tune in to see it. Listen, this is fighting. At the end of the day, this is fighting. Throughout the history of boxing, you have these type of incidents. It doesn’t happen at every press conference but one out of 100 it may happen. But it’s just not me, it’s wasted energy. I’ve been there with Dillian and we just didn’t get along. I wasted a lot of energy, and you saw that in the type of fight I fought. So, from experience, that doesn’t really sit with me.”
But what of the image of the sport?
“I do see it both ways but I just ask myself: ‘What do I want to portray?’ I just stick to what I’m doing. But everyone likes a bit of rivalry, it makes for a good fight. This is not tennis, this is a gladiatorial sport. It’s flight or fight, so you’re going to get it. You saw that at the press conference with Tony Bellew and David Haye. Guys are just going to attack each other. It happens sometimes.
“Everyone has got points and when they get to them, they go out of character. With Chisora, Dillian just hit his last point. He wasn’t acting in character, he was acting out of character.”
Given Chisora, who has plenty of previous away from boxing, started the notorious post-fight brawl with Haye in Munich during 2012, after losing in a brave effort to Vitali Klitschko, it is debatable if Joshua has correctly nailed the Londoner’s personality. There will be no shenanigans with Molina. The champion and the contender could not be more courteous or respectful before Saturday’s fight at the Manchester Arena, although Joshua did leave him with one verbal dig near the end of formalities when he said he intended to make him “look like a novice”.
Molina, the sort of fighter who adorns rather than besmirches his sport – and who will return to his job teaching children with special needs in the Texas border town of Weslaco, win or lose – smiled when reminded of Joshua’s barb, and said: “I don’t play these fights out to be any bigger than what they are. It’s just a fight, man.”
He may be a gentleman but Molina, who went nine rounds with the WBC champion Deontay Wilder last year, is no pushover. He is looking for a knockout-or-nothing win. “Am I going to outbox him for 12 rounds? No. What’s my only chance to win? To knock him out.”
