To American fight people, British boxers and the circus that surrounds them can appear a little, shall we say, eccentric. Mostly they keep their disdain hidden, or at least muted. Other times they don’t bother. When Don Cockell, the Battersea Blacksmith, pitched up in San Francisco to fight Rocky Marciano in 1955, local reporters noted his appetite for ice cream. Over a Las Vegas weekend 11 years ago Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fans were left bemused by the sight of thousands of Mancunians parading up and down the neon-bathed Strip, loudly proclaiming that they were “walking in a Hatton wonderland”. So Tyson Fury was simply maintaining a tradition when he serenaded his audience at the post-fight press conference on Saturday night with an ebullient chorus of American Pie.
Imagine an American heavyweight breaking into On Ilkla Moor Baht ’at after a world championship bout and you get some idea of why they think we’re a bit weird and, in boxing terms, not entirely serious.
But before his impromptu aria in the Staples Center on Saturday night, Fury had forced them to ignore the eccentricity and acknowledge the seriousness. Facing a man who might not be one of the all-time greats but is known to pack a proper knockout punch, the Gypsy King displayed all his extravagant gestures – the tongue-waggling, the arms withdrawn behind his back – but made them look on this important occasion like nothing more than the trimmings on a core of proper fighting expertise.
As recently as last June, his four rounds against Sefer Seferi in Manchester were about as low, in terms of competitive edge and sporting spectacle, as boxing can get. Which is, of course, very low indeed. Some observers noted that there was a more serious fight going on in the ringside seats than inside the ropes. Afterwards Fury claimed that he would have finished off the hapless Albanian within the first 10 seconds had he not needed the ring-time and the TV exposure following a long absence. In Belfast two months later he gave himself 10 rounds of gentle exercise against Francesco Pianeta of Italy before announcing that the title fight against Wilder was on. And he showed us on Saturday that once the nonsense – some of it extremely hard to stomach or forgive – is stripped away, his talent as a fighter justifies the belts that he once carried and might yet carry again.
One of boxing’s age-old problems is that seldom do two champions coincide in the ring while close to their prime. That can make for a special poignancy, while leaving regrets. Fury and Wilder met in Los Angeles on equal terms: the contest was enriched by the knowledge that no allowances needed to be made. This match between two men in their early 30s was, in every sense, a fair fight, one that might have helped to rehabilitate the sport in some eyes, even though the weekend finished with Adonis Stevenson, the 41-year-old Canadian light-heavyweight, in an induced coma in a Quebec hospital after losing his WBC title by a knockout to a man 10 years his junior.
The three judges whose combined verdict resulted in the Wilder-Fury bout being declared a draw came in for criticism reminiscent of insults directed at Eugenia Williams, one of the three judges of the first fight between Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis in 1999. Williams had scored the bout in Holyfield’s favour, tipping the verdict away from his opponent and leading to sustained outrage among the British media. Not, it should be said, in this corner. My scorecard read 115‑115, as did those of two other far more experienced observers from the tabloid press, both of whom understandably preferred to keep their heads down amid the ensuing storm.
Lewis certainly landed more punches in the target area over the course of that fight – 338 to 130, according to the official statistics – but few of them had made much impact. The younger man had started the fight strongly but eased off, choosing a circumspect approach that did not justify a victory over a more aggressive opponent.
Boxing has changed since that night. In the ringside seats at a packed Madison Square Garden 19 years ago were the likes of Magic Johnson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Spike Lee, Bo Derek, Michael Douglas, John McEnroe, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Simon and Keith Richards, evoking the star-studded crowds that flocked to see Marciano and Muhammad Ali.
Although the appeal of Wilder and Fury attracted former champs such as Holyfield, Riddick Bowe, Buster Douglas and Michael Spinks to Downtown LA on Saturday, along with Shaquille O’Neal and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, it was not enough to persuade the stars of Hollywood to descend from their hillside mansions. A crowd of 17,000 meant that around 3,000 of the arena’s seats were left empty.
But what value the two men gave to those who turned up or even just forked out £19.95 for the pay-per-view package. For the first long act, lasting nine rounds, Wilder occupied the centre of the ring, looking for a chance to let his right hand do its work, while Fury prowled the fringes, demonstrating the art of evasion while ignoring no opportunity to taunt and provoke. In the last three rounds, everything changed. Now it was Fury who took centre-stage to show that wherever it was that he lost that 10 stone, it wasn’t off his boxing brain.
Plenty of people were willing to claim that he won the fight despite being knocked down twice in those closing stages. But whatever the stats sheets said, as with Lewis and Holyfield, the truth was to be found elsewhere. Those two knock-downs perfectly balanced Fury’s general superiority. The draw was a true verdict. And next time there will be a few more stars at ringside.
