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They say it takes a strong man to cry and Anthony Joshua proved them right as he covered his eyes and wept with the emotion of having fought like a warrior king yet failed to regain his crown.
The morning was close to breaking but so was his heart.
Joshua had not seen him like this before. Not even in previous defeats. This one, on a split decision, proved to be the most despairing. Because he had worked so hard to prepare and then come so close.
Tossing into the crowd the belts which Oleksandr Usyk had spirited away from him in September and now kept through some adversity here was out of character.
It was a poignant moment and there were dry throats in an audience of sometimes cynical critics as he explained his reaction to this loss.
Usyk’s revelation that Joshua had been on the brink of lunging into bare-knuckle slugging with some of his team was another surprise.
The Ukrainian made light of it, saying: “I advised him against it. My men are some of the toughest street fighters in the world.”
AJ made amends by extolling Usyk, leading the packed crowd in the arena in three hip-hip hoorays for his nemesis.
“It was the passion running over, after all, I’d put into weeks of training,,” said Joshua.
So can he bring himself to go through it all again? Is the potential for disappointment included?
“I’ll be back in the ring come November or December,” he said — dispelling speculation that at 33 in October and after 10 years of combat he would retire.
“I’ll be a fighter for life,” he said. “Understand that fighters are not normal people. We live for this.”
So who could possibly be next after Usyk, the best boxer on the planet?
“Come one, come all,” Joshua proclaimed. “One fight this year, three more in 2023. Then I truly believe I will become a three-time world heavyweight champion.”
That ambition was the subplot to his burning desire to end Usyk’s unbeaten reign. But there would be no parting of the Red Sea through which Joshua might charge to the immortality which the gods of the ring confer upon the previous few all-time multiple winners of boxing’s holy grail.
