Usyk’s Win Is a Plot Twist for Boxing’s Heavyweight Division
The New York Times
Oleksandr Usyk’s defeat of Anthony Joshua complicates the division but creates more opportunities for big fighters to face one another.
Late last week, the path to a single, undisputed heavyweight boxing champion looked simple.
Anthony Joshua, the power puncher from London who held world titles from most of the major sanctioning bodies, was favored to win his fight on Saturday against an undefeated Ukrainian, Oleksandr Usyk. From there, a springtime showdown with the winner of the World Boxing Council title bout, which is scheduled for next month between the champion Tyson Fury and the ex-champion Deontay Wilder, seemed imminent.
But then Usyk, a former undisputed cruiserweight champion who moved up to heavyweight, outboxed Joshua over 12 bruising rounds, stunning the roughly 70,000 spectators at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London and upending plenty of stakeholders’ plans for the first half of 2022. Usyk, a 34-year-old southpaw, may not match Joshua’s popularity, Fury’s panache or Wilder’s punching power, but he now owns three of the four major heavyweight title belts, which means he possesses some leverage over what happens next.
