Reporters’ star ratings for main events and undercards are based on in-ring entertainment, competitiveness and whether overall expectation was met
NORTH GREENWICH
APRIL 1
MAIN EVENT
UNDERCARD
ATMOSPHERE
THE great boxing photographer Neil Leifer, when instructed to capture the fight between Larry Holmes and Gerry Cooney in Las Vegas in 1982, was later informed by his then-pictures editor that he hadn’t taken a single photo that they could use. In each of those Leifer had submitted, Cooney, the losing fighter, was punching Holmes and therefore challenging the reality of what had unfolded, and it was concluded that there are occasions in a fight when even someone with Leifer’s skilled, experienced eye is subconsciously guilty of seeing only one fighter.
If that was true of Leifer on the night of Holmes-Cooney, it also often seems true of an entire nation – and perhaps also the entire boxing industry – during fights involving Anthony Joshua, and for all that Joshua may be attempting to convince himself otherwise, that unrivalled pressure and sense of expectation is contributing to him underperforming in the ring.
By the ninth round last Saturday at London’s O2 Arena Joshua had built, on the scorecards, a convincing lead, and yet even as the fighter with the noticeably greater power, when he and exchanged right hands it was the one Joshua absorbed that brought the biggest reaction from the crowd. After seeing him stopped by Andy Ruiz Jnr and outpointed twice by Oleksandr Usyk – who threatened to stop Joshua only in the final round of the first of their two fights – there inexplicably exists a perception that he is physically vulnerable and cannot risk taking punishment. The opposite, in reality, is true, and yet the punches he was taking were registering more than the many more he was landing, which no doubt was contributing to his tense, hesitant performance and his increasingly fragile frame of mind.
