JUST as Muhammad Ali had no business getting off the canvas after being nailed by a left hook from arch nemesis Joe Frazier in the last round of their “Fight of the Century” on March 8 1971 at Madison Square Garden in New York (the first instalment of what would be an epic trilogy), Tyson Fury had no business getting up after being nailed by a right hand-left hook from Deontay Wilder in the last round of their epic WBC title clash at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles on December 1 2018.

Though 47 years may separate these stunning demonstrations of will and courage in the ring, the unbridled drama, transcendent courage and beautiful brutality that both fights served up place them on the same page as powerful examples of boxing as (worn cliché, maybe, but what the hell) a metaphor for life. 

In the hours and days immediately following Fury’s inexplicably sublime performance against Wilder, one that saw him befuddle, bamboozle and almost completely out-class the current WBC champion — earning the 30-year old 6’9” switch-hitting giant a draw that made a mockery of the sport — the enormity of what unfolded was of such magnitude it had yet to be fully digested. 

For “inexplicably sublime” is inarguably apposite when weighing up what Fury achieved on December 1; and especially so given a subtext that if mooted as the plot of a potential boxing movie in the mind of a young and obscure Sly Stallone way back when, would have been so outlandish it would have been laughed out of the room by the Hollywood execs presented with it.

One of the conundrums of the human condition is that those who succeed in entering the heaven of self-realisation must first earn the right by experiencing the bowels of hell. 

And in Fury the world has itself a heavyweight lineal champion who has succeeded in turning his own personal hell of depression, obesity, drug and alcohol addiction, along with the resulting suicidal tendencies he’s shared, into a newfound sense of meaning and purpose. 

It is one that dictates that whenever he enters the ring he does so now for a cause greater than self. 

It is impossible to measure in scientific terms the reserves of inner strength such a dynamic adds to a fighter’s spirit, but that it does is the only way to explain Fury’s ability to rise up from the canvas in that last round against Wilder. 

It was a moment to savour even for tired veterans of a sport that so often serves up fights that fail to live up to the hype accompanying them, providing enough drama to render an entire year’s subscription to Netflix redundant. 

In his compelling account of Ali’s epic 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” against an in-prime and fearsome George Foreman, Norman Mailer writes: “Before fatigue brings boxers to the boiler rooms of the damned, they live at a height of consciousness and with a sense of detail they encounter nowhere else.”

The time that Fury spent at the coalface of suicidal depression, delivered there on the back of a spiritual, mental and emotional breakdown, was a personal boiler room of the damned that nothing in the ring could ever come close to replicating. Indeed, by his own account, it took him so low that even surviving it must have seemed the product of fantasy at his lowest point. 

However not only did he survive the experience, he emerged from it a man transformed, believing that not only would he be able to shed 10 stones in bodyweight, but that he could return to the ring in a comeback that would involve, after two tune-up fights against journeymen opposition, stepping into the ring against an undefeated champion who carries a KO percentage suggestive of a man who throws cruise missiles rather than punches. 

In her magisterial deconstruction of the sweet science, On Boxing, Joyce Carol Oates contextualises the sport with scintillating profundity: “Spectators at public games derive much of their pleasure from reliving the communal emotions of childhood, but spectators at boxing matches relive the murderous infancy of the race.” 

Yet what spectators at boxing matches also receive — in those rare legendary fights and legendary moments within them — are acts of unvarnished courage that inspire them out of the dull conformity of a regimented existence, reminding them, however briefly, of the ability of the race to transcend its murderous infancy and touch greatness.

While Fury’s feat in touching greatness against Wilder may not have been enough to take a title that should now be his, it won him the far greater prize of bona fide people’s champion.

The warmth with which the British public has embraced him in the wake of his draw with Wilder is all that he deserves, given where he’s been and how honest and open he’s been in articulating the cause of mental health and other issues afflicting society, specifically homelessness. 

Not since Ali have we had a heavyweight champion and global icon raising his voice on social issues beyond the ring; and it is mightily refreshing that we have one now. 

Speaking of which, Ali’s long time friend Richard Durham once said of “The Greatest:” “He will win because of his morale. He draws strength from the people. They nourish him and he keeps what they give him. It strengthens him the way a parent’s love strengthens a child. And, when he has enough of that strength, he can do anything the people want of him. If they want him to win, he wins. They do. He will.” 

Step forward the Gypsy King.