What a heavyweight fight for the ages, and what a night at the national football stadium as Anthony Joshua finished Wladimir Klitschko after 11 dramatic rounds.
It had everything. Joshua showed us over those pulsating, thrilling rounds that there will be drama in his career, and that his powers of recovery are extraordinary. Heavyweight boxing is like no other sporting competition on earth. It is about knockouts, knockdowns and power. We got all three as two huge men, giant human beings and athletes, let their hands go. Neither man disappointed.
When the referee David Fields stepped in between them to rescue Klitschko at two minutes 25 seconds of the penultimate round, two judges had the London tyro ahead, the other Klitschko. It was headed to a close finish. Yet Joshua made it emphatic, after encountering demons himself. He will study those long and hard, and has said that a challenge like this would bring out the best in him. He was right. It did.
Felled in the sixth round himself by a long, long right hand through the middle from Klitschko which found its home and crumpled the Londoner – after he had downed the Ukrainian himself in the fifth – the 27-year-old came through almost nine horrid minutes when his body went missing, but when his head and his heart kept him in there.
You cannot teach that. This is the Joshua the public wanted to see.
Indeed, it is the Joshua that he wants to be. A fighter’s heart drove the Londoner on and on, and come the 11th round, with the vim back in his body and his head clear, Joshua did as he had promised and ‘‘unleashed hell’’, two left hooks poleaxing Klitschko as the young warrior, recovered, went hunting for the finish.
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