Oleksandr Usyk Dethrones Anthony Joshua To Claim The Unified Heavyweight World Championship
Oleksandr Usyk put on a world class performance to shock Anthony Joshua and become the new Unified World Heavyweight champion in front of a sell out crowd at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
In what was the biggest fight of the year so far, 'AJ' Anthony Joshua put all his belts on the line in a mandatory defence against Cruiserweight king Oleksandr Usyk. A lot of talk pre fight was about how Joshua would approach the fight, whether that being trying to outbox Usyk or using his power and try to stop the Ukrainian.
The fight started at a fairly high pace, with Joshua holding the centre of the ring whilst Usyk showed his world class movement and footwork to move in and out of range to land scoring punches, Joshua couldn't seem to handle the speed and accuracy of the Ukrainian.
Usyk landed a left cross in the third and temporarily hurt Joshua but the Londoner managed to see out the round and it was apparent the task Joshua had on his hands.
AJ started to have more success in the mid rounds but still wasn't enough to convince the ringside judges of many rounds, however, he did land one of his trademark right hands in the fifth, but Usyk took it well.
A left hand from Usyk in the seventh left Joshua stumbling back, only just managing to stay on his feet. By the tenth, both fighters were bloodied and bruised, AJ had some serious swelling on his right eye that closed up during the last couple of rounds.
In the twelfth and final round, Usyk set his sights on a stoppage and almost achieved that in the dying embers of the fight with less than twenty seconds to go, he had Joshua back up on the ropes landing shots at will with no response from the Brit, but the bell came in to save Joshua.
The scorecards read 117-112, 116-112 and 115-113, all in favour of Oleksandr Usyk to become the new unified World Heavyweight Champion.
A rematch clause is in place and whether that will be activated by team AJ is yet to be known, but after that performance from Usyk, you do really wonder if Anthony Joshua could get the better of the Ukrainian.
Lawrence Okolie made a successful first defence of his WBO World Cruiserweight title with an effortless win over mandatory challenger Dilan Prasovic.
Okolie looked levels above Prasovic and showed that by dropping his opponent in the second round before finishing the contest with a body shot in the third round.
A unification fight has to be next for Okolie. Mairis Breidis is who he wants, but there are still options with WBC Champion Illunga Makabu and WBA Champion Arsen Goulamirian looking for a fight.
Callum Smith scored a devastating second round knockout over Lenin Castillo that left him leaving the arena on a stretcher after being rendered unconscious by the Liverpudlian.
Smith was making his Light Heavyweight debut under new trainer Buddy McGirt and showed that he could bring his power up to 175. There are so many potential fights that could be made on the domestic scene, so it will be interesting to see where Callum goes next in terms of opponents.
Campbell Hatton controversially won a six round decision over Spaniard Sonni Martinez. Hatton was out boxed for the majority of the contest and lacked in his basic boxing skills. The pressure for Hatton to perform is huge purely because of his name, but putting him so high up on a major PPV card in front of a packed out stadium is not how they should be handling his career. The crowd were very vocal about the decision with boos ringing out when the decision was announced.
Florian Marku and Maxim Prodan opened the night with a fairly entertaining contest. Both fighters were going at it all week in the build up and had fans desperate to see this bout.
Marku was calm and composed throughout the fight, landing his stiff jab in the face of Prodan throughout and scoring with accurate combinations. It didn't go without controversy though with the result being a split decision with the Italian judge scoring it 99-91 for his countryman whilst the other two judges scored it 96-94 and 97-93 in favour of Marku.
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