THE travelling circus that is top flight boxing descended yet again on Riyadh last week for the latest instalment in Saudi Arabia’s attempt to take its place on the world stage as a major player when it comes to hosting huge sporting events. We can, however, reasonably assume that the occupants of the torture rooms located in the country’s maximum security Al-haer prison, just south of the capital, were otherwise distracted with the agonising pain to which they were being subjected at the time to care overmuch.

Regardless, everybody else last Friday was treated to another evening of heavyweight action in a near atmosphere-free arena. Part of the kingdom’s now annual Riyadh Season of sporting events, into town rolled combatants Anthony Johsua and Francis Ngannou, Joseph Parker and Zhilei Zhang, along with a veritable parade of past, current and hopeful future champions, drawn to Riyadh less by the event than by the gold with which the Saudis stuffed their mouths.

Parker v Zhang was the fight of the night, pitching a resurgent New Zealander against the giant and hard-hitting Chinaman. Parker had to put in a shift over twelve hard rounds, during which he was dropped to the canvas twice. No matter, in the second half of the fight he came on strong to dominate the much larger man, who showed definite signs of too many miles on the clock. The end result was a majority decision and the capture of Zhang’s WBO title.