The next day, deeply ashamed at his failure to complete the race, he quietly took a boat back to Japan, leaving behind his clothes and his dignity. In Sweden, the mystery of the “disappearing runner” took on almost mythical proportions, capturing the public imagination for decades. Kanakuri’s name remained stubbornly on the country’s missing persons list for more than 50 years, as authorities and sports historians alike wondered what had become of the marathoner who had seemingly vanished into thin air mid-stride.
In the 1960s, a persistent journalist finally tracked him down to Kumamoto in southern Japan, where he was living a quiet life and working as a geography teacher, having long since put his brief, bizarre Olympic legacy behind him. Upon learning of his survival and whereabouts, Swedish television arranged at great expense to fly the elderly Kanakuri back to Stockholm, ferrying him directly to the spot along the original course where he had abandoned the race over half a century prior.
So it was that in March 1967, Kanakuri finally completed the 1912 Olympic marathon in a time of 54 years, eight months, six days, five hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds. None of this, of course, was of the least sporting consequence. The medals had been handed out decades earlier, the records set and broken, and the geopolitical landscape of Europe fundamentally rewritten. But it was a nice story, generating substantial interest, and the newspapers could fill their column inches, and the broadcasters could fill their schedules, and perhaps ultimately this was all that mattered in the grand theater of public entertainment.
All of which brings us, by a similarly circuitous route, to Tyson Fury versus Anthony Joshua, a heavyweight boxing match that is often wrongly described as happening several years too late. Commentators and purists frequently lament that the bout arrives long after the 38-year-old Fury and the 36-year-old Joshua have passed their fighting peak, years since either man has beaten anyone of world-class pedigree, a glacial delay that makes the protracted negotiations of Mayweather versus Pacquiao look impromptu by comparison.
In fact, Fury versus Joshua is happening exactly as intended: at the precise sweet spot where commercial potential meets an absolute absence of genuine jeopardy. Make this fight back in 2021, and both men would have been putting prestigious titles, the undisputed heavyweight crown, and an entire undefiled fighting legacy at terminal risk. Make it in 2031, and not even the combined promotional horsepower and financial wattage of Frank Warren, Eddie Hearn, Dana White, and Turki al-Sheikh could persuade the public that this was anything other than a cynical fairground sideshow.
No, it has to be now, before anyone stops caring entirely. Like a market trader extracting the maximum price for a piece of fruit on the very brink of going rotten, this is the modern fight business operating on God-tier mode. “We will get it on at the right time,” Joshua once said. That was in April 2016, when a fight with his British rival would have been worth only a fraction of the £150m it commands today. When it comes to the sweet science of boxing, absence truly does make the purse grow fatter.
That this protracted delay is frequently regarded merely as a minor annoyance—a glitch in the system rather than a fundamental, existential-level malfunction—is just one of the primary reasons for boxing’s slow, steady drift toward mainstream irrelevance. Virtually every other sport on earth operates along the foundational principle that at some point the very best must meet the best, and actively assembles competitive structures, strict rules, and governing bodies that compel this outcome into being.
Boxing remains pretty much the only sport in the world where this baseline requirement is conspicuously absent, which raises the germane question of whether it can truly be considered a sport at all, at least in the modern, codified sense of the word. Instead of a meritocratic ladder, it functions as a loose federation of promotional fiefdoms where matchups are curated rather than earned.
Naturally, Fury has spent the past few weeks, months, and years desperately trying to pin the blame squarely on Joshua for the failure to secure the bout sooner. In Fury’s narrative of the saga, he has been ready, willing, and waiting this whole time, thwarted only by his opponent’s hesitation. This version of events conveniently glosses over the two and a half years he spent out of the sport dealing with a combination of doping charges, prohibited substances, and debilitating mental health crises.
It also overlooks the subsequent two and a half years he spent battling Deontay Wilder, not just inside the ring through their legendary trilogy, but across protracted legal battles in the courts. As frequently thrilling as those encounters with Wilder were, even at the time there was an unmistakable sense that the boxing public was missing out on something even greater—that as one domestic and global rivalry was playing itself out, others were languishing and suffering as a direct result.
Then there were the retirements, numbering around five in total depending on how one chooses to count such theatrical gestures. It feels pleasingly nostalgic now to recall that Fury first quit boxing back in 2013, declaring with absolute certainty that he would never fight again, before repeating the routine in 2016, 2017 with a dramatic “THE END” announcement, again in 2022 with claims that no amount of money could bring him back, and most recently during his hiatus from 2025 to 2026. One hardly needs to be an expert in contract negotiation to recognize that if an athlete is attempting to establish themselves as a bona fide sporting and business partner, stepping away and returning every few years tends to complicate matters.
Cowardice will always be far too strong a word for anyone who has the courage to step between those ropes and risk their physical health for public titillation. But it remains a profound shame that a matchup which could have definitively defined an entire generation of British boxing is happening only now, when the competitive stakes have been hollowed out. For all the biblical hype that will doubtless accumulate over the coming months, what does this fight actually tell us about either man? What gets settled or rewritten? And is it actually in anybody’s financial interests for anything to be definitively settled, given the immense potential for an even more lucrative rematch sometime in late 2027?
Prizefighting has historically owed its enduring success to the delicate ability to hold two opposing ideas in its orbit at once. First, there is the sense of sporting ultimacy—the idea that what we are watching represents the absolute pinnacle of raw human endurance, featuring the very best fighting men and women on the planet. Second, there is the undeniable element of vaudeville and pantomime, the deliberate and often provocative packaging of a spectacle designed purely for mass consumption and entertainment.
Boxing has always been at its greatest when each of these forces has been placed in the service of the other. A classic holiday cracker requires both the colorful wrapping and the explosive bang in the middle; remove either component and the whole concept inevitably falls apart.
For years now, however, these two core ideas have been fracturing in opposite directions. What modern audiences are left with is a sport increasingly rearranging itself around the two disparate poles of meritocratic sporting excellence and algorithmic celebrity power.
In the former category, rising talents like Moses Itauma remain some of the country’s best-kept sporting secrets, while an all-British world title clash between heavyweights Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley is feted by purists as one of the greatest domestic fights of the decade, yet generates virtually zero wider cultural recognition outside of hardcore fan circles.
In the latter category, internet personalities like Jake Paul operate as some of the sport’s most bankable commercial names, while the undisputed heavyweight champion of his generation, Oleksandr Usyk, takes exhibition bouts against kickboxers, veterans like Floyd Mayweather Jr float comebacks against Mike Tyson, and domestic rivals like Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr find ways to drag out their feud across years of delayed rematches.
Which world does the eventual meeting between Fury and Joshua truly belong to? Which half of the marathon are viewers being invited to watch? Audiences might want to believe—and streaming platforms like Netflix certainly hope they will—that Fury can still channel the terrifying force of old rather than functioning as an increasingly monotonous provocateur. Fans might want to cling to the memory of the Joshua of the 2010s, unscarred, optimistic, and possessing a pristine athletic aura. Deep down, however, everyone involved already knows the answer.
