Anthony Joshua lost for a second time against Oleksandr Usyk this weekend. Once again he found himself outboxed by the former cruiserweight. There a few takeaways:
The First Takeaway, Usyk may genuinely be the best boxer in the world.
It’s not very often a cruiserweight moves up and beats one of the top 3 best heavyweights in the world, let alone twice. Oleksandr Usyk is of that former USSR mould. A strong amateur boxer with solid all around fundamentals, who is able to take a basic, technical style and completely overwhelm an opponent with it. His cornerman and fellow Ukranian Vasyl Lomachenko is very similar in this regard, neither are super fast and neither of them are monster power punchers – what they are is simply great boxers.
This fight was notable not only for its technical display, but also just how silly judges can be, as one of the three judges somehow scored the fight for Joshua, and true to form in boxing, the scorecards simply didn’t make a lot of sense. The excuse I usually make for judges, while also complaining that they need a better set up, is judges typically watch a fight ringside and get a different view from the audience. The issue is that half the time you’d think they couldn’t see the action at all.
All three judges, and indeed a lot of viewers scored round 9 for Joshua, before he finally tired and Usyk completely took over the fight. The 9th round saw Joshua do very little other than swing and hit the Ukranian’s guard. This shouldn’t score, yet for some reason it can be quite easy to win over a judge by making mad swings and creating the illusion of activity when there’s very little going on. We normally say the reason for this comes down to judges being provided by athletic commissions, and they don’t necessarily know the game. If this is the case then apparently judges just aren’t capable of learning either, as scorecards remain baffling. While two judges made the right call overall in awarding Usyk the win – some of the rounds make you wonder if they came to that result by complete accident.
So now the question is, what’s next for Usyk? The obvious answer is a fight with Tyson Fury, in which Usyk will once again be the smaller man to an even larger degree. The match up is interesting because on one hand, Tyson Fury is a giant, with surprisingly good footwork and an awkward style, but on the other hand, Fury hasn’t the quality of opposition Usyk has – and he hasn’t faced an in-prime boxer with the technical ability of Usyk.
It’s been said that Joshua may still be able to fight Fury at some point, but with 3 losses in the last 3 years, it’s not hard to imagine boxing promoters moving on from it.
The second takeaway is more a question, is Anthony Joshua okay?
Far be it from me to make fun of a fighter in what is a very intense emotional moment, they’ve spent the last 45 minutes getting hit in the head, and have just lost at something that they dedicate their entire life to winning. I won’t make the crass remarks about CTE – but there was clearly something wrong with Joshua.
After losing, Anthony Joshua first lashed out with anger, dumped Usyk’s belts on the ring canvas and tried to leave, before returning, having a speech about how great Joshua was, and then that Usyk was a great athlete and got the crowd involved in actual hip-hip-hoorays, something hard to take as any thing other than sarcastic. More than anything, it looked like Joshua had that speech at least somewhat pre-planned for his victory, and then after losing decided ‘sod it, I’m doing it anyway’ and then crudely tried to rework it into a speech praising Usyk.
These actions certainly lost Joshua fans, and the fighter already finds himself at the centre of what seems to be a smear campaign. For years he was trashed for being ‘too polite’, ‘too boring’ or ‘fake’. A few years pass and after asking BLM protesters in a speech to support black owned businesses over large corporations, he was branded as a racist. Anthony Joshua doesn’t seem to be able to do anything right as far as boxing fans are concerned. Tyson Fury spoke recently against knife crime, after the tragic death of his cousin, and Fury was supported for it – but Anthony Joshua has been saying this exact thing for years and it apparently falls on deaf ears. For some reason people just refuse to like him.
I spoke a few weeks ago about Paddy Pimblett and the hate for hype. There are some fighters – who for whatever reason are just destined to be reviled by the public, for seemingly no reason. What we saw from Anthony Joshua, can only be considered a public breakdown – but many will claim that was the ‘true colours’ of Anthony Joshua shining through, as though any of us could know either way.
It’s a moment of public embarrassment that has ultimately overshadowed the fight. The UK and American press are always going to cover the English speaking fighter over their opponent, so it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that we aren’t talking about just how good Usyk is. Unfortunately, that just seems to be the industry.
