IMAGINE that it’s last Sunday morning and you’re Dillian Whyte. The previous night one punch from a 40-year old veteran abruptly ended the 1,000 days you’ve spent as the No 1 mandatory contender for the WBC heavyweight title, which at long last you were in line to challenge for after coming through this fight. 

But you didn’t come through this fight, you lost, and now like a man falling off a mountain just before reaching the top, all of a sudden everything you’ve strived for, the years of pain and agony you’ve endured, appears to have been for nothing. 

Making your defeat all the more agonising is that you had your opponent down twice in the previous round, and that with the 40-year-old Russian visibly tiring, only something approximating a Hail Mary punch could have possibly turned things around at this point in the fight.