Oleksandr Usyk becomes the Undisputed World Heavyweight Champion, a closely-fought contest against Tyson Fury, which could have resulted in a stoppage in Usyk’s favour!
Usyk had won the first couple of rounds, he was coming forward, cutting off the ring, using the jab and slips to get close.
Fury had started to come back in the 3rd round onwards, as he had more success with right uppercuts and shovel-hooks at this point.
Fury’s body-work also became more effective at this stage, noticeably having an effect on Usyk.
At this point, Fury is winning the rounds, but Usyk comes back in around round 8, having plenty of success with the left-cross and right-hook.
In round 9, Usyk lands a 3-2 combo that devastates Fury; Fury is wobbling across the ring, barely keeping himself up as he flails into the ropes from a continued onslaught.
The ref may well have saved Fury, as others may have been tempted to stop the fight; at this level, with so much at stake, this may have been in the referee’s mind.
Fury possibly had taken the last round, had Usyk taken this round, this would have made the outcome of the fight much easier to determine.
It was curious, that Fury had boxed the fight, and didn’t really on his weight very much; rather, he preferred to box on the outside, and try to draw Usyk onto shots.
What happens next?
I do believe there will be a rematch going ahead; Fury wants to run it back in October, that is roughly 5 months from now.
With Usyk solidifying himself as the best current heavyweight, an ATG, and quite possibly P4P #1 at this stage, there isn’t really much left for him to do.
A rematch with Fury makes the most sense, a trilogy with AJ not so much, because Usyk clearly won the 2 fights that he had with Joshua.
There is still the potential fight with Hrgovic, but that rests on how Hrgovic performs against Dubois; Hrgovic was a mandatory for one of Usyk’s titles.
Right now, it looks like the only thing that will beat Usyk, is age; his work-rate was less than what we’ve seen from him in the past, and he appeared easier to hit as well.
The Fight Card and Predictions
For the purpose of brevity, I will include brief reviews of fights I had made predictions on in this article, instead of posting new ones.
The Kabayel vs Sanchez fight was an interesting one, I had picked Kabayel to win and the odds were very favourable; Kabayel had got the stoppage against Sanchez.
Sanchez fought exclusively on the outside looking for counters; it had appeared that he came into the fight with an injury, which would explain his lack of confident.
On the other hand, Kabayel fought on the front-foot, constantly marauding forward, working hard shots to the muscular upper-body of Sanchez.
Eventually, Sanchez succumbed to a hard jab to the abdomen, and wasn’t able to recover.
Now, moving on to the Opetaia fight; Opetaia had earned a clear-decision win against Breidis, who was dormant until the championship rounds.
It was in the championship rounds that Breidis had most of his success; otherwise, it was Opetaia finding the mark with the jab and cross, stepping in and out in a southpaw stance.
Breidis’s reflexes have certainly reduced, not being able to counter effectively
Opetaia was hurt in the championship rounds, as Breidis decided to up the pace, and try to force a stoppage; credit to Opetaia, because his survival instincts were very good.
There were no knockdowns in the fight, just clean, pure boxing (minus the head-clashes that had occurred).
I think this was a good victory for Opetaia, many were expecting a KO/TKO performance, I wasn’t. Breidis has never been dropped, let alone stopped in his professional career to my knowledge.
The event itself was very good, very good selection of fights also.