Lose a fight in round one and it is entirely possible that you return to the changing room dry, not to mention humiliated, and want only to lock the door behind you. Of all the ways to lose a fight, and there are many, this is arguably the worst, despite the brevity of it all suggesting just a small amount of pain. 

Yet, of course, it is a psychological pain, more so than a physical pain, that a boxer tends to experience in a first-round loss. It is also this pain they fear more than any other; a pain not every boxer knows; a pain not easily soothed. It just sits there, that pain, first on their chest and then on their record, and nothing can be done to either remove it or reduce its size. Indeed, the very second it arrives, never has the idea of a points defeat, or even a defeat in round two, sounded so appealing. 

“I remember before the [James] DeGale fight and both [Carl] Froch fights I had this great fear of being wiped out in a round,” said George Groves, a former WBA super-middleweight champion. “It was a haunting feeling, something I couldn’t control. I feared getting knocked out straight away, and that’s all I’d then be remembered for. They’d say I was out of my league and I’d never be able to remove that humiliating first-round knockout defeat from my record.

“So, if I look at it that way, I’m now thinking, thank fuck I didn't get knocked out in the first round in front of 80,000 people. That’s always a fucking panic before any fight.”

Although finished by a Carl Froch right hand in front of 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, Groves managed to find a silver lining in the fact that it arrived in round eight, and not round one. He could just about live with that on his record – L TKO 8 – and in time he could make peace with it in a way he perhaps would not have been able to if the most devastating loss of his career instead looked like this: L TKO 1. 

Because even if boxers say that a loss is a loss, just as a win is a win, world champions, like journeymen, will also accept that it’s as much about how you lose as simply losing. They might not be as familiar with defeat as journeymen, but boxers accustomed to winning are no less conscious of it, nor oblivious to its different shades. 

Consider what happened to unbeaten British heavyweight Frazer Clarke last year, for example. In March, Clarke couldn’t be separated from Fabio Wardley after 12 hard rounds in London, yet when the pair reconvened in October, this time in Saudi Arabia, Clarke found himself hurt and stopped in round one. For Clarke, the one on the receiving end, there could be no greater shock and no greater humiliation; no worse way to lose. After all, the first time he and Wardley had met, he had given as good as he had got and came away with a draw, reason enough for there to be both a rematch and an assumption that the second fight would be just as close. And yet, seven months later, Wardley would settle the score in the most clinical and conclusive way possible, removing in an instant any debate or prospect of a trilogy fight. Suddenly now, with a dent in his skull and his unbeaten record gone, Clarke was no longer Wardley’s equal but his latest victim, wiped out before even landing a punch. 

“It was a difficult night for me and a difficult few weeks for me – as a fighter and as a human,” Clarke told Sky Sports two weeks after the loss. “I’m not one for making excuses, and I never will, and I’ve got to put it down to a great performance from Fabio and maybe a bit of a slow start from me. It’s heavyweight boxing, you know? I got hit with a shot and then after that it was really difficult to recover. I was in the best mental and physical shape of my life, I felt so ready for it, and then in a second it was over. I’m not sure I’m going to come to terms with that anytime soon, but I’m trying my best day by day.”

Perhaps in the end the only remedy for a fighter on the receiving end of a first-round KO loss is to return to the scene and write a different story. That doesn’t mean Frazer Clarke must return to Saudi Arabia and fight Fabio Wardley again, but he will certainly feel a lot better once he gets back in the ring this weekend against Ghana’s Ebenezer Tetteh. At least then he will be able to find his feet again and ensure that the first result people see when clicking on his professional record is not a TKO 1 loss to Fabio Wardley. 

Then again, even the boxers who have suffered first-round humiliation at the very start of their career seldom get over it and fully move on. Some will go on to achieve great things in spite of the loss, but few will conquer it completely, much less forget it ever happened. 

“It was level 9.95 psychological damage,” said Michael Bentt, the former WBO heavyweight champion stopped inside a round by Jerry Jones on his pro debut in 1989. “The only way to deal with that is to face it. 

“Everyone is judgemental. Everyone has an opinion. I remember one time going with my aunt to where she worked in Manhattan and she had a friend there who was a boxing fan. Every time I would see him he would be like, ‘Hey, Mike, how’s it going? When are you fighting next?’ After I got knocked out by Jerry Jones, though, I accompanied my aunt to her work and this guy gave me this look of complete f**king disdain. It was so painful for me. I couldn’t comprehend disrespect then, but now I can. He was judging me.

“There’s a certain part of us as human beings which means that when someone is doing well we may root for them and celebrate them but we also resent them because we’re not doing as well. So, when I lost, it was this guy’s chance to say, ‘Yeah, turns out you don’t have it, like you said you did, my friend.’ 

“That’s not taught in boxing. Nobody tells you that at some point you are going to lose. When that happens, people who claim to love you will very quickly s**t on you. That is what is going to have to drive you if you can accept it. It’s ugly but it’s part of it.”

Bentt, a heavyweight like Clarke, took almost two years off after losing his pro debut inside a round, but later responded by winning his next 10 fights. Then, in pro fight number 12, he shocked the world by stopping Tommy Morrison to win the WBO heavyweight title in October 1993. Somewhat fittingly, too, the finish came after just one minute and 33 seconds of round one. 

For Bentt, there could have been no better and more poetic way of winning his world heavyweight title than that. In fact, to join the legion of fighters stopped inside a round but remembered for more than just that must be the dream of all men and women who suffer the same fate. Fighters like Floyd Patterson, for instance, who was knocked out inside a round not once but twice and by the same man: Sonny Liston. Also, Michael Spinks, who, having dominated at light-heavyweight, found himself chinned by Mike Tyson inside a round in 1988, and John Ruiz, who won a WBA heavyweight belt but only after being wiped out in 19 seconds by David Tua in ’96. Then you have Julian Jackson, arguably one of the hardest punchers in boxing history, who suffered the indignity of getting stopped inside a round by Gerald McClellan in their 1994 rematch. Amir Khan as well. He had to somehow put it all back together following a brutal first-round knockout loss against Breidis Prescott in 2008. 

“You always think nobody will beat you,” Khan said. “I was no different. I didn’t think anybody could beat me as a teenager and then, when I was older and stronger, I thought I’d be the best ever.

“Even though I got beaten badly against Prescott, I still had that belief. I still thought I’d become a world champion. I just saw the loss to Prescott as a bump in the road.

“Some people suffer a defeat and it destroys them. You see that time and time again. It finishes them. They’re never the same. With me, I’ve always used my defeats in a good way. I ask myself why I suffered the defeat and it helps me to improve. I’ve always tried to change something after a loss.”

Khan, an Olympic silver medallist, was never supposed to lose to Breidis Prescott, let alone fold inside 54 seconds, but, once it happened, both the nature and speed of the loss only confirmed what many had feared; that Khan was fragile, in danger against a puncher, prone to recklessness. He was then duly written off, as is often the case, and forced to go away and reinvent himself, which he did in Los Angeles. Better yet, within three fights Khan had beaten Andreas Kotelnik to lift the WBA world super-lightweight title, a belt he would defend five times, and repaired much of the damage done by Prescott in Manchester. It was, on reflection, quite the turnaround, particularly given Khan was just 21 at the time of his first-round defeat. 

Frazer Clarke, in contrast, is 33 years old, with the experience and maturity of somebody who has been around the sport in various capacities for most of his adult life. In fact, prior to winning titles as an amateur and turning pro, Clarke worked security on some big boxing events in the UK and in this role would have witnessed his fair share of dramatic first-round knockouts inside arenas and stadiums. He would have then seen the faces of humiliated fighters from just metres away, on hand to offer consolation, or just sympathy, if consolation and sympathy were needed. 

The big difference now, of course, is that Clarke, 8-1-1 (6), is the one in the ring, and not the one standing by a corner post, observing, sympathising. The big difference now is that he knows exactly how all those fighters felt.