It is the nature of the sport of boxing, the pursuit of glory at potentially grave personal cost, both the explicit and the disguised, that participants and observers are pushed to their extremes of tolerance. The third meeting between Tyson Fury and Derek Chisora for the Heavyweight title was a luminous example in this particular collection of boxing’s gloomiest encounters. All involved, from the last spectator to those carrying buckets of spit, are complicit in permitting and encouraging Saturday’s prolonged brutality.

As expected, Derek Chisora was pummelled for thirty or more minutes. The masquerade of competitiveness tossed aside from the second round. Reality replaced salesmanship. Facts displaced fantasy.

Predictable. Pitiless.

Continue reading “Chisora the absorber, pummelled for pay and our ghoulish perversion” →