the cover of December 2018, our 30th anni-
versary issue, and Fury did so in April, after
the “Gypsy King” electrified boxing with an
epic draw against Wilder in December 2018.
So here, for the first time in the long history
of boxing, was a trinity of undefeated heavy-
weight champions and if one thing seemed
certain it was that someone’s “O” had to go.
Err... not necessarily.
Boxing took the money and ran. Boxing
Monthly’s June cover story was devoted to
why the big fights were not happening. “The
three marquee heavyweights are splintered
not only by the titles they carry (in Fury’s
case the lineal one) but by separate broad-
casting deals – Joshua with the streaming
service DAZN (and Sky in the UK), Fury
with ESPN (and BT at home) and Wilder with
Showtime,” said the publication. To which the
fight fan can only ask: so what? Who cares if
they are on different media platforms? Does
Showtime really tell Wilder who he is allowed
to fight? Do Sky, DAZN and Eddie Hearn
really boss Joshua’s career? Does ESPN really
call the shots with Fury? If the fighters truly
wanted to face each other, surely the deals
could be made and the fights would happen?
But it is academic now. The expected rematch
between Wilder and Fury did not come to
pass. Wilder had an embarrassingly easy first-
round KO against Dominic Breazeale in May.
Joshua was scheduled to fight Jarrell Miller
until Miller failed three drug tests and a fat
little Mexican came in as a late substitute.
Fury beat German nonentity Tom Schwarz
within two rounds in Las Vegas in June. This
wasn’t heavyweight boxing. This was the
bum of the month club. And then one of
the bums hit back. Whoops.
Full credit to Joshua for being commend-
ably gracious in defeat. No whining, no
excuses. His social media soundbites were
pitch perfect.
“This is Andy’s night... Congratulations,
champ... He [Ruiz Jr] is a champion for now.
I shall return.”
There were comparisons with Buster
Douglas giving Mike Tyson a good hiding in
Tokyo in 1990. But Iron Mike, despite being
unbeaten in 37 fights, was showing signs
of decline and Buster, emboldened by the
memory of his recently deceased mother,
was in the shape of his life. But the brutal
truth is that Joshua lost to an opponent
whose name wasn’t even on the tickets, a
boxer who proudly displayed a Snickers bar
on his Twitter page, a fighter so absurdly out
of shape that at the prefight press confer-
ence journalists mockingly likened the Ruiz
Jr midriff to a New York bagel.
It transpires that it wasn’t heavyweight
boxing that is on the edge of a new golden
age. It is English football.E
nglish football went rampant just
as heavyweight boxing slipped into a self-
induced coma. English football had something
that heavyweight boxing painfully lacked:
true competition. And the level of competition
made the Premier League the most compel-
ling sporting event on the planet.
English football produced all four clubs
in the two European finals – Liverpool and
Tottenham Hotspur in the Champions League
final in Madrid, Chelsea and Arsenal in the
Europa League final in Baku. The Premier
League was won by one of the greatest
English club sides of all time – Pep Guardiola’s
Manchester City. The two best games of the
season were the semifinals in the Champions
League – impossibly blood-pumping, Roy Of
The Rovers stuff, with Liverpool thrashing
Barcelona 4-0 at Anfield to overturn a three-
goal deficit and Spurs’ second-choice striker,
Lucas Moura, scoring a hat-trick in the final
35 minutes to knock out Ajax.
It is not too fanciful to suggest that the
weekly firefight of the Premier League gave
Liverpool and Spurs the grit required for the
greatest comebacks since Frank Sinatra won
an Oscar for From Here To Eternity.
English football was so good, so compelling
and so dominant because rivalry was relent-
less. On the last day of the season, Cardiff
City – already relegated – stuffed Manchester
United 2-0 at Old Trafford. A week before, I
watched Arsenal struggle to a 1-1 draw at the
Emirates against Brighton, who were just one
place above the relegation zone, condemning
the Gunners to another year of Thursday-
night football. But such was the level of
competition in the Premier League. It is unlike
any other league in Europe. The best players
are scattered across the continent – Lionel
Messi at Barcelona, Kylian Mbappé at Paris
Saint-Germain, Cristiano Ronaldo at Juventus- but the excitement is all in England. Club
football in Europe is a snooze-fest.
In Spain, Barcelona strolled away with La
Liga, eleven points ahead of Atlético Madrid
in second place. In Italy, Juventus cruised
to the Serie A title, eleven points ahead of
Napoli. In France, Paris Saint-Germain were
16 points clear of Lille. In Germany, Bayern
Munich were only two points ahead of
Borussia Dortmund but have still won seven
Bundesliga titles in a row. The true measure
of English football was that Manchester City
won the Premier League by just one single
point. If Guardiola’s Manchester City were
possibly the greatest English champions
of all time, then Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool - crowned kings of Europe for the sixth
time – were without question the greatest
runners-up in the history of English football.
The world loves the English Premier League
because the level of competition is insane.
When four English clubs contested the
finals of the Champions League and Europa
League, only eight of the starting players
were English. As in Germany, Spain or Italy,
football in England is a global game. What is
unique is the ferocity of competition. That
is what gives English club football its meaning,
its passion and unique place in world sport.
Because sport is only ever meaningless
when it lacks competition.D
ave Kidd wrote in the Sun, “Taking
on a ‘nobody’ on his American debut –
after more than eight months out of the
ring – has proved disastrous [for Joshua]. It
did not help Joshua’s strong British profile
that, instead of fighting in front of 80,000
at prime time, he was appearing at 4am on
a weekend dominated – on this side of the
pond – by an all-English Champions League
final. It felt as if Joshua’s camp had taken
their eye off the ball, that they were chasing
easy money rather than glory and had
become complacent.”
But football is not boxing. The same June
night that Joshua had his heart broken in
Manhattan, Spurs were coming up short
against Liverpool in Madrid. But Harry Kane
can come again. Spurs can dry their eyes and
try again next year.
When you take a beating in boxing – espe-
cially if you take the kind of beating that
Joshua took from Ruiz Jr – it puts your
entire career in harm’s way. Joshua will be
back, but he can never be quite the same
again. Anyone who fights AJ will fancy
their chances if they can hit him hard on
the chin. Nothing can be as it was at the
start of 2019, with Joshua the smiling
poster boy of British boxing and the clash of
three undefeated heavyweight champions
apparently inevitable.
Ruiz Jr vs Joshua feels like the end of
something. Perhaps what died was the sen-
timental, nostalgic dream that heavyweight
boxing could once again be the world’s
favourite sport.
Boxing is murderously dangerous – the
only sport that can’t be called a game – and
nobody begrudges the professional boxer
who makes himself and his family financially
secure for life. But without true competi-
tion, without the level of rivalry you see
every week in English football, then sport
is just light entertainment, hyped fluff,
essentially meaningless.
Here was the hard lesson that heavyweight
boxing learned in 2019.
There can be no safe spaces in sport.09-19DropParsons.indd 117 18/06/2019 10:43
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