Joe Joyce-Derek Chisora: It was the best of boxing, it was the worst of boxing

Derek Chisora’s 10-round unanimous decision win over Joe Joyce on Saturday at the O2 Arena in London was the sort of all-out, drama-drenched war that could make an instant hardcore boxing fan out of the most casual observer who might have stumbled upon it.

It was also the sort of grotesque, inhumane spectacle that could drive a casual viewer, or perhaps even a hardcore fan, to decide they never want to watch boxing again.

Joyce-Chisora was everything I love about boxing and everything I hate about boxing all rolled into one fight.

I am in awe of these two mountainous men with hearts their massive frames can barely contain. But I worry for them. Boxing is not forever; it’s something you do until you can’t anymore, and then ideally there are years, maybe decades – maybe a half-century – left in front of you to spend as a former boxer. And it was impossible to watch the punishment Chisora and Joyce dished out to one another and not ponder the way that that punishment would either limit the quantity or the quality of those remaining years — or both.

The consequences can be random, of course. Genetics and luck and other unquantifiable factors allow George Foreman, who had 81 pro fights and fought until he was 48 years old, to sound as sharp as ever at 75. Riddick Bowe’s speech was noticeably diminished after half that many pro bouts and before he’d turned 30.

So I can’t sit here and tell you that Joyce and Chisora won’t both live into their 90s without any ill effect from the punches they took. Maybe they will. I hope they do.

But the odds are not in their favor.

In all of this hand-wringing, as well as all of this praise for bravery, I keep mentioning both Joyce and Chisora. But if you watched the fight you know I’m mainly talking about “Del Boy”. He’s the one who’s been fighting professionally for 17 years; who is 40 years old; who had absolutely no legs under him for most of the last three rounds, and whose will to win never ebbed even when his body had nothing left to contribute.

Joyce, who is not a young man either at 38, showed heart as well and is plenty worthy of our concern. But it’s Chisora whose performance over those 30 minutes of action took both ends of that to the extreme.

It’s Chisora, the close but deserved winner, who provided the bulk of what made this a fight we will never forget.

It’s Chisora who scored a knockdown with exactly one minute left in the ninth round that made me yell out in shock while sitting alone in my living room. He landed the overhand right he’d been looking for all night. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a lucky punch. It was all that was left of whatever game plan he’d once had. His legs would barely hold him up; his right eye was reduced to a slit; the ropes were his four best friends, so he leaned back and tried to time Joyce for that looping right-hand punch. He landed a couple of them earlier in the ninth round, but they didn’t have the desired effect. Then one of them did everything he dreamed it would and put Joyce on his back — not for good, but for long enough to change whose hand would be raised.

This fight was fascinating in that it never tipped its hand as to what it was going to be. It didn’t let you know it would be a fight-of-the-year contender until it was. It didn’t let you believe Chisora could last the distance until he did.

For the first four-and-a-half rounds, it was pretty much what everyone expected — not bad; not great; just two ponderous heavyweights announcing to each other that a punch was coming and somehow finding the other guy’s chin still in the exact place by the time that punch arrived. There was a fair amount of holding; some brief stretches of bombs-away action (such as toward the end of the second round); a swollen eye; a couple of close rounds; a generally competitive fight, and a crowd getting what it paid for.

Then late in the fifth, we were offered a hint of what was to come. Chisora landed two enormous right hands, and “The Juggernaut” responded by stepping forwards and putting all of his 281lbs into his two-fisted response. Chisora’s chest was heaving as he returned fire, telegraphing wide right hands that the slightest hint of head movement would have foiled — but Joyce doesn’t do even the slightest hint of head movement.

Joyce bounced back to win the sixth, but Chisora, despite obvious exhaustion, carried the seventh. It seemed either man’s fight, and it had delivered on all of its promise – two faded former contenders giving their hometown fans a solid show. Then with 45 seconds in round eight, the narrative took a turn. A left hand shook Chisora. His legs moved as if part of a stop-motion animation scene where several frames were missing. The old man kept punching back and made it to the bell, but there seemed no world in which a stoppage wasn’t coming in the next round.

Then came the ninth, and the knockdown, and Chisora jogging away for the final few seconds of the round, and trying to run out the clock in 10th, but summoning a series of right hand missiles in the final 45 seconds to cap the ludicrous late rally.

The heavyweight champion of the world, Oleksandr Usyk, stood up and applauded in bug-eyed bemusement. Two months ago, Usyk beat Tyson Fury in what may have been the fight of the year — if you prefer high stakes and a high-skill level. If you don’t care about the stakes or the skills and you just want shock and awe, then Fury-Usyk probably takes a backseat to what we witnessed Saturday.

And the judges even awarded the victory to the right man. Boxing didn’t find a way to kneecap itself this time.

Except as delightful and inspiring as it was, Chisora’s corner could have thrown in the towel in any number of spots toward the end and nobody would have questioned them. A 40-year-old man who has fought as many brutally tough rounds as he has and who could barely see out of one eye and who seemed on the verge of collapse sometimes needs to be rescued from himself. Knowing what we know now, Chisora didn’t need rescuing — at least not in the short term. Knowing what we know now, a more conservative corner would have cost him one of the defining victories of his long career.

A more conservative corner also might have prevented Chisora from leaving the ring talking about what fight he’d like next.

I love this sport because, well, there’s no other form of entertainment in the world that can deliver a moment quite like what we saw in round nine.

I hate this sport because that one punch in round nine may have added 20 or 30 rounds and a few hundred punches to Chisora’s career.

Triumphant endings are exceedingly rare in boxing. So while, yes, Chisora can make another decent paycheck or two via the fight game – and, yes, there are still countless heavyweights out there he could beat – it’s hard to imagine his future could include a more perfect note to go out on than this.

It’s not my place to tell any fighter when to retire. But I know a storybook ending when I see it.

And nobody knows what any fighter’s cognitive future looks like. Maybe the damage is already done, or maybe there will be no noticeable damage no matter what. All I can say for sure is that taking more punches will not improve Chisora’s chances — nor Joyce’s, for the matter — of a healthy life after boxing.

I wish I could just sit back and enjoy a good, old-fashioned slobber-knocker without cringing. This is a fight that deserves to be celebrated, and these are two fighters who, for all their limitations, deserve to be applauded. Chisora and Joyce gave everything they had on Saturday night.

The problem is, when you give everything, you are by definition left with nothing. I hope that the passage of time allows us all to remember this fight for what Chisora and Joyce gave the fans and not for what they took from each other.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of and the author of 2014’s . He can be reached on or , or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.