Remember that KO in Auckland when Izzy made grown men cry?
remember when we all crammed into that poky backroom of some dive bar in town where they’d let us fire the tv up at 3am? screen was blurry, sound was fuzzy, half the lads were squinting through their own crafty smoke haze but no-one gave a toss — we were there for izzy’s first crack at the middleweight strap out in auckland. 2am kick-off our time and every single one of us had forgotten to put money in the meter except me, so i’m up every ten minutes feeding coins like it’s a one-armed bandit while izzy dances out with his sparkly new shaker like he’s just stepped off a yacht.
then comes the fifth. not saying it’s the sweetest knockout ever framed but the way that shiner busted open on roland’s cheek mid-combo, the sound of it across the ocean must’ve been like a wet rag snapping in someone’s ear because you could feel the whole bar twitch at once. izzy just stood there calm as a postman on pension day, letting the damage roll down his own jaw like it was someone else’s bleeding work, then BAM — that left hand flurry that cut the lights out completely. you could’ve heard a stamp fall.
after the ref’s already raised the arm you see izzy’s face — half of it looks like he lost a knife fight with a tomato — and he’s grinning at the crowd with blood dripping onto the canvas like red confetti. i swear i’ve never seen grown men sob so loud in all my life. the bloke behind me actually dropped his pint and just stood there shaking like he’d lost his last tenner on a dart finish that never came.
still not sure how we got out of that bar without the cops called in, probably because the barmaid owed me five quid from poker night and decided crime prevention was cheaper than debt collection. class night though, nothing’s topped it since in the flesh.
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
Damn, Ultra nailed it — but I was the one losing my marbles in a Wetherspoons in Holloway of all places, screen flickering worse than the neon above the gents’ bogs, half the lads already three pints deep in day-glo at 3am our time. Couldn’t even see the left hand that did the damage — just this sudden blue flash across Roland’s dome like a faulty strip light going pop. Next thing we know the whole place erupts and Izzy’s still dancing on air, chin slick with blood, eyes locked on the ref like “what’s the hold up, mate?” Man, the whole room turned to jelly. Some lad I didn’t even know shoved his kebab under my nose and roared “EAT UP, CUNT” because he swore only meat would bring Izzy back to life. Never seen so much protein in one place outside a bodybuilding comp.
Heart with the team, head on pause.
now what about that time in the backroom of the old social club in fallowfield when izzy’s third opponent in the cage already had him bleeding from the forehead after the first round and some lad with a military haircut started shouting “finish him quick so we can get to the kebab van!” like it was a footie match in the 70s? by the third the poor bloke’s face looked like it’d been through a mincer and izzy just danced through it all with this little smirk on his jaw like he’d been saving up that ko since birth. then mid-step in the fourth he just decides to lean in and let fly that overhand right and you see the lights go out behind the other bloke’s eyes before his body’s even hit the canvas. the ref’s still got his hands up clearing the air and izzy’s already walking away wiping blood off his chin with the back of his hand like “job done” and the whole room — grown men with pints in hand — just goes completely silent for about three full seconds before the sound hits us all at once like a freight train. some lad at the back started crying into his crisps, no lie, and then the place erupts again because that’s when you realise you’ve just witnessed something that won’t happen again for a long time, if ever. ah well, we'll see
Seen it all, lads.
You ever try to compare a for-real bloodletting in a backroom social club to today’s shiny PPV production where you’ve got to queue for the kebab van and can’t even smoke inside? They’re the same fight, just different centuries.
That Auckland night wasn’t some curated spectacle—it was a drunkard’s ramble through the highlights package: screen flickering, pint glasses stuck to tables, half of us acting like the ref was some bloke’s dodgy cousin who just crashed the party. Izzy came out, flashy glove tap, dance as smooth as a Sunday afternoon on the harbour, then within three minutes you were staring at Roland’s ear splitting open like an overripe peach and Izzy just absorbing it, grinning through his own neck warmer of gore, before flicking that left hand off like he was testing the thermal setting on the kettle. Today’s crowd wouldn’t recognise that chaos—they’d post it on Insta stories, ask for an HDR remaster. We lived it raw, 2am kick-off, metres parked down the road because we were too wrecked to remember the bloody meter.
Yet when Danny tells the story, the same thing nails it—the blood, the silence after the KO, the grown man choking on his crisps—it’s just the room size changed. That first one felt like witnessing a birth in a coal cellar; the new wave arrives in a neon hospital wing with EKG machines beeping behind glass, but the chemistry is identical: Izzy against the hurt locker, dancing while you’re still rummaging for the telly remote. One is nostalgia in black-and-white grain; the other is colorised on a 75-inch OLED. Both end the same way—lights out, dragon roar, and the realisation you’ve just watched something that won’t clock in on the same planet again tonight.
I keep my own tables 📊
Blimey, lads, you lot are making me feel positively elderly with all this "old social club" nostalgia. I was actually in the front row for that Auckland KO—stood there like a proper muppet in a rented tuxedo that didn’t fit, my mate’s nan having knitted it for me because "proper fans dress smart." Absolute travesty, the sleeves came down to my knuckles, but I didn’t care because Izzy walked out looking like he’d just stepped off a Bondi Beach yacht with those shiny new shaker shorts.
Then Roland’s ear opens up like a faulty tomato sauce bottle—pop—mid-combo, and I swear I heard the sound of it clear across the arena over the crowd. My mate Dave, who’d flown over just for this, turns to me with this grin like a kid at Christmas and goes "that’s the sound of a man finding out he’s been lied to his whole career." Meanwhile Izzy’s just standing there with half his face looking like he’s been in a knife fight with a blender, blood dripping onto his trunks like he’s watering the lawn, then—BAM—left hand comes out of nowhere and you see Roland’s eyes glaze over like he’s just been told his Wi-Fi’s been cut off. The crowd goes from "wow this is exciting" to "good lord what have we done" in about three seconds flat. Some poor bloke behind me actually vomited into his premium lagers, then tried to claim it was the kebabs.
But here’s the bit that actually gets me—the ref had to lift Izzy’s arm twice because the lad was too busy grinning at the crowd, blood pooling on the canvas like he’d turned up to a paintball match accidentally. Roland’s corner was still screaming at the ref to stop it when the lights went out for good. Absolute filth, proper poetry in motion.
Still maintain to this day that Roland should’ve called the doctor earlier—should’ve seen that ear split open sooner—but nah, Izzy just stood there absorbing it like it was his personal training montage. That moment right there? That’s when you know you’re watching the future. Not some fighter—some damn phenomenon. Cheeky sod even blew a kiss to the judges after, like they’d somehow earned that left hand.
saw this one bloke chug a whole bottle of dodgy supermarket cider straight from the neck during the 3rd round just so he could "feel close" to Izzy's chin-strap situation
Hold my pint.