Oleksandr Usyk: boxing’s undisputed, unbeaten underdog
Why the Ukrainian champion is still having to prove he is the best of his era
Oleksandr Usyk knows the taste of victory probably better than most boxers know the taste of their own blood.
Olympic gold medallist, unified cruiserweight champion, heavyweight champion, and this year crowned boxing’s undisputed heavyweight world champion, the 37-year-old southpaw from Ukraine has one foot in the Hall of Fame, the other poised to rematch Tyson Fury in Riyadh on 21st December.
A quarter of a century separates his achievements from those of Evander Holyfield, the only other cruiserweight in history to become undisputed at heavyweight. For millions of Ukrainians, he is a David dancing among Goliaths at a time when improbable victories mean more than ever. Usyk’s professional record holds 21 wins, of which 14 knockouts, and zero losses. As of now, he has nothing left to prove.
Except, of course, he still has everything to prove.
On 8th October, the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority (GEA) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Turki Alalshikh, posted the official undercard to the rematch online. The billing showed Fury in first position on the left, Usyk in second on the right. After fans pointed out who had actually won the previous fight, their images were reversed and the card reposted. That it took the fans to notice demonstrates why, despite everything, Usyk remains an underdog.
Ever since entering the land of giants in 2019, Usyk (who stands at 6 ft 3 inches and weighs match fit at around 225 pounds) has fought men at least two stone heavier than him. Conventional wisdom in the sport insists that size trumps all in the glamour division. One by one, bigger and bigger British fighters have stepped forward to prove as much, and one by one Usyk (nicknamed ‘The Cat’) has out-manoeuvred, out-worked, and out-landed them.
Usyk’s year-round fitness, punch precision and exceptional judgement of distance have distinguished him since turning pro in 2013. His unorthodox training methods are well-documented also. A typical camp sees him holding his breath underwater to the point of syncope, juggling in alternate fountain patterns, and honing his peripheral vision using a Schulte table. All contribute to what former foes describe as Usyk’s impregnable psyche.
When Tony Bellew spoke on the True Geordie podcast in 2021 about his loss to Usyk in their clash for the undisputed cruiserweight title, he stressed the “mental taxation” Usyk places on his opponents.
“The fighters he fights…all tire in the second half of the fight. To keep up with him, you’ve got to have that mental strength for every second of every round,” said Bellew.
Derek Chisora fought and lost to Usyk as the World Boxing Organization (WBO)'s heavyweight mandatory challenger in 2020. Speaking on TalkSport Radio in September, the 40-year-old Zimbabwean-British fighter said:
“He starts off slowly, going in, going in, and it gets harder, and harder, and harder. By the time it’s round six, you think you’re in Round 10.”
Anthony Joshua felt the anguish of this most noticeably after the announcement of his second loss to Usyk in Jeddah in 2022. The 6ft 5-inch Adonis from Watford went viral in a fit of pique that escalated when Usyk’s attempt at flattery backfired.
“I don’t care about ‘strong’. Being strong doesn't win boxing,” Joshua snapped. “Skills win boxing! You’re not strong. How did you beat me? How?”
But while time has moved on, the conversation hasn’t. In the build-up to December, boxing pundits are once more chewing platitudes about the merits of size over smarts. Before Fury and Usyk squared off on 18th May, most pre-fight analysis consisted of commentators rehashing the maxim: A good big guy beats a good little guy.
Things didn’t play out so simply on the night. Having busted Fury’s nose in the eighth round, Usyk began driving his 6ft 9-inch opponent back towards the ropes, eventually catching Fury flush with a left cross that sent him stumbling through a three-legged tour of the ring before collapsing in Usyk’s corner. As Usyk towered over Fury to deliver the final blow, the referee Mark Nelson stepped in to give Fury a standing count.
Now the word is that Fury needs to take the rematch more seriously than he did the first bout. This is at best a backhanded compliment to Fury who, for all his showboating that night, fought bravely and with respect for the occasion. The suggestion of Usyk, meanwhile, is that he won because Fury’s head wasn’t in the game. Yet all of it tracks a prevailing bias towards more marketable British heavyweights.
In boxing money talks, and when it talks, it speaks English. Usyk’s lack of fluency has doubtless made life hard for the Anglophone commentariat. The response from journalists has been to focus their energies instead on building redemptive narratives around his former opponents.
Notable among them is Daniel Dubois, whom Usyk stopped with a short right-hand jab in the ninth round of their duel in Poland last year. Controversy lingers over whether a glove dug into Usyk’s abdomen in Round 5 was rightly ruled low by the referee. The shot had Usyk crawling on the canvas, and he was subsequently given nearly four minutes to recover. Opinions on the decision differ. Dubois’ trainer, Don Charles, is adamant Usyk played for time.
“Mr. Usyk is fake. Exceptional boxer, a masterful boxer, a genius. But he's a fake and a liar and a cheat,” Charles said in a recent interview.
“This is going out to Usyk - if you believe in the same God that I do, one of the ten commandments is you cannot cheat. Make your mind up, do you worship God or not?”
Last month, Dubois triumphed over Joshua with a fifth-round knockout in front of 96,000 people at Wembley. What followed were variations of the claim that if Dubois could bring the same aggression to Usyk that he did to Joshua, the Usyk enigma would quickly unravel. No-one sounds more sure of it right now than Dubois himself. Just two weeks ago the Greenwich-born champion said:
“With Usyk it's definitely unfinished business and next time I fight him it will be a totally different outcome. I'll go right through him.”
Fury vows to do the same. “There's no secret - I'm going in there to knock him out. I believe I have to get him out of there.”
Chisora is less convinced anyone can ‘go through’ the Ukrainian, except perhaps in one sense.
“If you train for Usyk, you’re training for a ghost.”
From the outside looking in, Usyk appears to have caused a monumental headache for the sport’s old establishment. Two men we can be sure wanted him out of the picture long ago are boxing’s biggest promoters, Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn. For them, the heavyweight division was supposed to culminate in a fight for all the marbles between Fury and Joshua. Neither banked on a cruiserweight taking them back to the steppes of Ukraine.
But with a moratorium placed on their infamous rivalry under the auspices of the GEA, Warren and Hearn no longer control the narrative. On a call from the kingdom to TalkSport last month, Alalshihk said plainly:
“If Usyk was a British or American fighter, he would be known all around the world.”
The fact that Usyk’s name scarcely resonates beyond boxing at such an historic inflection point says more about the cultural decline of the sport than it does about him. That a man of such rare accomplishment doesn’t get the same respect as those he has beaten shows just how creatively his story has been circumvented.
Negotiations between Fury and Usyk’s team began in March 2023 with an offer to split the purse 70-30 in Fury’s favour. Usyk’s team accepted. The deal still fell through. When Usyk was eventually declared undisputed a year later, Fury told the arena he believed the judges were swayed by the War in Ukraine. Such is the lot of non-English speaking fighters in a time of war, you might say. Fortunately, there are enough English-speaking fans who now know to demand respect for a champion when a rematch card defaults to placing him below the challenger.
No one can seriously deny that size matters in boxing, nor that prize-fighters need proper incentives to justify the risks that come with it. Boxing history meanwhile owes as much to the marketing brains of the sport as to the action in the ring for all its richness. The problem, as in any competitive arena, is when any fighter is deemed ‘too big to fail’, financially or physically.
The super heavyweight era spawned the notion that height and heft were enough to nullify any amount of athleticism or talent. Apart from anything else, this distortion of the sweet science misses the fact that Usyk is identical in height and fighting weight to Muhammad Ali. To build on Joshua’s own words, now might be a good time for the sport to rethink the definition of an effective heavyweight.
If Usyk wins the rematch in December, he could retire a bona fide marvel, leaving only a contentious win over Dubois for historians to mull over. Then there will be nothing in the way of the ultimate Battle of Britain showdown Warren and Hearn were counting on. For as long as Fury and Joshua have barbs to trade, that fight is a guaranteed box office bonanza. No other clash would bring as much joy to as many people in one night, and what a night to close the book on a generation it would be.
Only, if the fight does ever happen, it should be billed as: Usyk’s Broken English.