Oleksandr Usyk out punched Anthony Joshua to become the Unified Heavyweight champion of the world

(Boxing news) The Ukrainian heavyweight boxer defeated Anthony Joshua via unanimous decision at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday to win the WBO,WBA,IBF and IBO heavyweight titles. Usyk completely out boxed Joshua and won the contest by scores of 117-112, 116-112 and 115-113 in front of 67,000 people. With this result, Usyk became only the third boxer after Evander Holyfield and David Haye to win world titles at cruiserweight and heavyweight.

Usyk's awkward stance and movement caused the British boxer a problem from the get go as the Ukrainian won the first four rounds comfortably to take the score to 40-36, but Josuha with all his experience and power came back in the next two with some crisp body shots and face blows on Usyk as Joshua reduced the deficit to 58-56. After those rounds Usyk just completely dominated the fight, a barrage of power from the Ukrainian almost knocked down the 6’5 British boxer in the final round. In the end Osyk landed 148 punches compared to Joshua’s 123 across the fight as this resulted in only Anthony Joshua’s second defeat in his whole career. With this victory Oleksandr Usyk improved his professional boxing record to 19-0 with 13 KOs and somewhat avenged Wladimir Klitschko’s defeat 4 years ago.

The defeat meant that his possibility of fighting Tyson Fury, which could have been the biggest boxing spectacle in the UK next year fighting for all world heavyweight titles ended. Anthony Joshua has a rematch clause in his contract which could mean a rematch against Oleksandr Usyk in Kiev might be a possibility. Whereas Tyson Fury will try to defend his heavyweight title against Deontay Wilder in the trilogy fight on 9th October. 

After the match Usyk said, “This means a lot to me. The fight went exactly the way I expected it to go, there were times when Anthony pushed me hard, but nothing special. I had no objective to knock him out. My corner pushed me not to do that.”

When asked if he will fight Joshua in a London rematch, he says: “I've been working so hard since January. It took me some half a year. I miss my children and I want to go home. I'm not thinking about the rematch. You didn't see the best Usyk. I can be much better.”

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Anthony Joshua after the match said, "I couldn't see in the ninth round, couldn't see anything really because my eye was shut. It was a good experience because, in adversity, you've just got to learn to control yourself, stay on top of things, so when I couldn't see anything – it's the first time that it's happened in a fight. I never tend to look at the opponent. I just tend to look at myself and realise where I went wrong. So it's not so much what he did, it's the opportunities that I gave him. It's not so much him. I'm just going to go back and look at myself and correct my wrongs.”
 

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