ANDY CLARKE enjoys a prominent place within the boxing media landscape, and deservedly so. His work as a broadcaster and commentator, covering the sport now for over 20 years, is infused with passion, intelligence and commendable insight. Those attributes he has brought to bear in the pages of his recently published book on the sport The Knockout.

Clarke: “The knockout started life as the ultimate means of conflict resolution, then over time became the ultimate expression of sporting victory and defeat and has remained so ever since. There is no other moment in sport that can rival it for its utter finality.”

The knockout, as Clarke argues above, is the most definitive event in the world of sports. It not only marks the inarguable victory of one human being over another in a sporting arena, it taps into something primordial when it comes to the human condition, something that many will no doubt find uncomfortable. Yet, even so, its enduring fascination cannot be denied.

Clarke: “Boxing has fascinated writers for millennia. The earliest surviving description of a knockout was written by Homer, in the 23rd book of the Iliad, his epic poem about the Trojan war.”

In an age where cultural refinement and mass sensibility has been shaped to abhor the kind of brutality commonly associated with a sporting contest in which the objective is to render an opponent unconscious or semi-conscious and unable to continue, Clarke does much to reveal every aspect of this particularly emphatic aspect of the ring.

Utilising his extensive network of contacts, we are treated to in-depth interviews on the subject with an array of boxing royalty, past and present. In no particular order Jamie Moore, Matthew Macklin, Ricky Hatton, Carl Froch, Amir Khan, Deontay Wilder, Tony Bellew and David Haye et al. provide the reader with the benefit of their own experience of knocking out opponents during their respective careers, and also of having been knockout out themselves. What comes through is the thrill of delivering a KO in the ring, transcendent in all but name, and also the stoical acceptance that it could happen to anyone.

Clarke: “Reactions to winning by knockout are varied and complex, born of an experience unrivalled in its intensity in any other sporting arena or walk of life bar the emergency services or armed forces…But to win by knockout you have to accept that you could lose by the same method and therefore life in pursuit of the knockout requires a very particular mentality.”

David Haye’s insights in the book were particularly compelling. When in his prime, Haye’s power was so explosive he had the ability to turn an opponent’s proverbial lights out at any given moment. During a long professional career which began in 2002 and ended in dramatic fashion with his rematch and second defeat to Tony Bellew in 2018, hardly any of Haye’s fights at both cruiser and heavyweight went the distance.

Haye: “It’s a beautiful feeling [the knockout]. It ends the conflict. We love the battle but to end the conflict in one fell swoop, the buzz … you can’t compete with that, particularly in a hard battle where there’s been beef, where there’s been thousands of people travelling, particularly if you’re the underdog and you need to prove you can knock this person out and you do it.”

Clarke doesn’t limit his subject to fighters alone. He also taps into the knowledge of some of the most preeminent trainers and referees in the game. We hear from Teddy Atlas, former trainer of Mike Tyson, Billy Graham, who trained Ricky Hatton for his 2007 clash with Floyd Mayweather Jr in Vegas, and also Joe Gallagher.

Here’s Teddy Atlas: “There’s a history that will show you certain fighters never got knocked out. They got dropped, they got hurt, but they never got knocked out. They got hit hard … But they never got knocked out and the biggest part of it is they refused to oblige the knockout.”

Atlas, here, introduces the role of human will when it comes to a given fighter’s propensity for being knocked out or not. Human will is a hard-to-define entity. To what extent can it push the physical and physiological envelope not only in a boxing ring, but in life more broadly? There is a fascinating debate and discourse to be had on this question alone.

Clarke grapples with this theme with the expert assistance of Dr Neil Scott, medical adviser to the British Boxing Board of Control since 2017 and who’s been ringside in the role of medical officer at numerous fights.

Dr Scott: “…anyone can be knocked out, it just depends on how difficult that process is going to be.” The doctor goes on: “…essentially what happens physiologically within the head is that you’ve got an impact and you’ve then got a shift or movement of the brain within the skull … The jolting force of [of the impact] totally disrupts the nerves and the nerve signals within the head, and the response to that is that the system momentarily shuts down.”

The Knockout constitutes a serious piece of writing and analysis. Not only does Clarke go deep into every aspect of this “controversial to some — exciting to others” event in all of sports, he leads the reader on an entertaining journey back in time to some of the most iconic fights of the modern age.

In the end perhaps it’s just as the great Depression-era US heavyweight, Jack Dempsey, said: “A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t”

The Knockout by Andy Clarke is published by Aurum and is currently available from all good booksellers.