Late on Sunday night, Tommy Fury and Jake Paul went in search of the truth in the boxing ring to finish a wild week in Saudi Arabia.
In the end, Fury won a split decision after eight torrid, bloody, scrappy and honest rounds of fighting. They probably both found the truth in the fight.
It was never going to be a masterpiece of skills and technique, but it was always going to be messy and fun. The pair hit each other on the break, held each other down, rubbed heads and grabbed each other in most rounds. It was gruelling, but always gripping.
Fury won for the ninth time in his short career and Paul lost for the first time in seven fights. It was too easy all week to forget they are absolute and total novices; Paul and Fury helped promote this fight like the fight of the century. It was too easy to forget that Fury is only 23, a brand new father and also part of the Fury fighting clan. That was a lot of pressure on the kid and that is why he finished in tears.
They each had to leave their previous boxing safety zones and at times they had moments where they looked uncomfortable. Paul simply had no idea how to get close and let his hands go and Fury, using nothing more than a simple step to one side, was able to make Paul miss easily.
Fury won the fight with a dozen well-placed jabs and Paul’s innocence was his downfall. Thankfully, there was a lot more to the fight than one man swinging and one man picking the other off with a few jabs in each round.
It started under the dark desert sky with a level of anticipation and the promise of immense riches that divided the boxing world. However, inside about twenty seconds it was clear that all the bold talk, the claims, the threats from each boxer about delivering bone-crunching knockouts, were never going to happen. Guess what? It was hype.
Paul looked confused at times when Fury moved his feet and Fury held tightly when Paul got close; they were doing exactly what two novices, matched against each other, would have been doing had they been fighting at York Hall in eight anonymous rounds. The problem for the critics was that the pair were splitting as much as $20m (£16.6m) and topping the bill. The hype both damaged and created the fight.
“Tommy boxed his ears off,’” insisted Tyson Fury, the WBC heavyweight champion of the world and Tommy’s big brother. “I’m proud of him, he was under so much pressure.”
In round five, Paul was deducted a point for hitting Fury in the back of his head. It was a shot shaped from frustration and not malicious intent. In round six, Fury was deducted a point for holding Paul down during the many clinches. Both deductions interrupted the flow of the fight and were unnecessary.
In round eight, Fury was dropped when Paul stepped forward and connected with a jab; Fury was not hurt, just annoyed as he regained his feet. It was a legitimate knockdown, an extra point to Paul, but the fight had slipped out of his grasp at that point. They were both very tired in the last round and that is to be expected.
Two of the judges sided with Fury, making him a three-point winner; the third judge narrowly scored the fight by just one point to Paul. It was close, hard at times to score, but over the eight-round distance and under intense scrutiny, Fury had done enough to deserve victory. The sport never suffered the predicted apocalypse at the attention the pair received and perhaps that is because they were revealed, in the end, as brave but raw novices. There was no shame in the Diriyah ring, just honest confirmation of their abilities. They each have a long, long way to go and a rematch was mentioned and would make sense.
There was a lot of hype, a lot promises and the critics went off deep into the Saudi night laughing at the fight and particularly at Paul’s loss.
That is harsh; Paul fought his heart out, but just lacks so many of boxing’s rudimentary skills. Fury, meanwhile, just knew enough to play the real boxer in the ring and that is why he won. The truth is that they were perfectly matched and that makes the second fight intriguing; can Paul learn from his mistakes and can Fury improve?
“Judge me on my losses and not my wins,” said Paul in the ring at the end. “Let’s do it again, Tommy.” Paul was bruised, beaten and selling the rematch. It will happen, they each have nowhere to go.
