They Look Like Grandads

My husband does not watch boxing.

He was watching the news, looked at the screen as Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury stood facing each other, and said:

“They look like grandads.”

And, fucking hell, they do.

Not literally, obviously. They are still two enormous men who could flatten most people without putting down their drinks. But somebody with no interest in boxing looked at that photograph and immediately identified the problem with this fight.

It has arrived about ten years too late.

This should have happened when both men stood near the summit of heavyweight boxing—when Joshua carried the belts, Fury carried the chaos and British boxing genuinely argued over which of them was the better fighter.

Back then, it would have felt dangerous.

Now it feels like a reunion tour.

Fury has lost twice to Oleksandr Usyk. Joshua lost twice to Usyk and was subsequently demolished by Daniel Dubois. Both men have won fights since, but that does not restore the moment boxing allowed to disappear.

They might be richer now. The promotion might be bigger. Netflix can carry it around the world and somebody will undoubtedly describe it as a historic sporting spectacle.

But commercially enormous and competitively significant are not the same thing.

Even the first face-off said it all. There was no genuine ruckus. No real hostility. They complimented one another, cracked jokes, discussed having a pint afterwards and finished by smiling for the cameras.

Perhaps that is maturity. Perhaps neither man can be bothered manufacturing hatred anymore.

But it does not make me desperate to watch them fight.

The contest will fill a stadium. It will make everybody involved another fortune. Millions will watch because the names Fury and Joshua remain enormous.

For me, however, the electricity has gone.

I wanted to see them fight when the result might have told us who ruled the generation—not when both men were approaching the end of it.