John Fury fears the loser of Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua won’t cope with the abuse afterward. That could happen, but these two have waited so long to fight that a defeat shouldn’t carry the weight it would have five years ago.

“They’ll get that much stick, the loser, they won’t be able to cope with it,” Fury said in the BBC documentary Rivals: Fury v Joshua, as reported by talkSPORT.

You can understand a father worrying about that. The losing fighter will have clips of the defeat thrown at him whenever he opens his phone, especially if he gets knocked out. Years of accomplishments can get buried beneath one ugly night when fans want to rub it in.

Still, John is giving that reaction too much power. Neither fighter should have to beat the other at this stage to protect everything he achieved earlier in his career.

The trouble is that Fury and Joshua spent years being compared without getting into the ring together. That allowed their supporters to keep arguing that their man would win. Once they fight, one side will have a result to wave around, and the other will have to live with it.

But it won’t tell us who would have won when both were younger. It will tell us who has more left in December. Those are two different arguments, even if the winning side treats them as the same thing.

John himself accepts that both have declined. That makes his fear of humiliation harder to buy as a reason for the fight never to happen. If neither man is at his best, there should be room to accept a loss without treating the beaten fighter like a fraud.

A bad beating could make retirement the sensible choice for the loser. But where is the winner really going? Beating another aging heavyweight doesn’t suddenly make either man better equipped to face the younger punchers in the division.

My expectation is that the winner looks for another lucrative Usyk fight, if it can be made, or an opponent he believes he can beat. It is difficult to picture either volunteering to face Daniel Dubois. That would mean taking a dangerous fight when a more carefully selected opponent could keep the paydays coming.

That limits what this contest actually settles. The loser could be pushed toward retirement, while the winner carries on choosing his opportunities carefully. Neither outcome makes this the start of a fresh run through the heavyweight division.

John’s fear of the ridicule is understandable. But the winner gets bragging rights over another faded name, and the loser shouldn’t have his whole career dismissed because he came off second best.