TOP flight fighters live in a perpetual emotional tussle between the high of victory and the low of defeat. One of the sport’s abiding and compelling features is this sharp distinction in emotional state with little if any grey in-between. In this respect, only a chosen few fighters have never experienced the low of the defeat — Rocky Marciano, Floyd Mayweather Jr, Joe Calzaghe, Tyson Fury et al. — due to them having enjoyed and enjoying unbeaten records. This said, as Fury’s tempestous personal journey has shown, a given fighter can also be low in victory. However that’s another story for another time perhaps.

When it comes to Fury’s biggest rival in Britain, in terms of popularity if not current form, Anthony Joshua — AJ as he is popularly known — is the Floyd Patterson of our time. Patterson it was who would carry a wig, glasses and false beard to his fights to wear afterwards should he be defeated in order to be able to leave the arena without being recognised, such was his sense of shame and humiliation in the event. “The fighter,” Patterson once opined, “loses more than his pride in the fight; he loses part of his future. He’s a step closer to the slum he came from.”

That Floyd Patterson retired from the sport a multimillionaire whose financial future was secure matters not for a man who literally fought to escape the slum he describes in the above quote. The psychological scars of poverty — of the slum — never completely disappear no matter how much money in the bank or how big the house.