Anthony Joshua vs. Oleksandr Usyk: The Fight Site Predictions
Photo by Tottenham Hotspur FC/Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images
Heavyweight boxing has been stuck in a quagmire of big money politics for quite a while now.
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise to even casual boxing fans: Heavyweight boxing has been defined by breakdowns in negotiations, promoter grudges and public scandals since its conception. That’s just how prizefighting works, sadly. But it can be argued that the latest ten-year in boxing has been particularly egregious in the amount of false starts the fans had to endure with fights either not being made, cancelled or otherwise postponed. The loss of Wilder vs. Fury 3 has made for yet another unfortunate setback in a division — and sport — already marred with unfortunate setbacks for years on end.
Enter Oleksandr Usyk.
After clearing his division out, the masterful Ukrainian has been dead-set on doing the same to Heavyweight, with the unified Heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua being his first true championship-level opponent at the new weight class, and a bonafide superstar, to boot. Will the former undisputed Cruiserweight champion’s technical prowess be enough to navigate the challenge in front of him? I suppose we’ll get a definitive answer on Saturday night. For now though, let’s look at what the Fight Site’s boxing team has to say about the fight. For this occasion they’re also joined by the Fight Site founder and boxing historian Kyle McLachlan, as well as trainer and Sky Sports boxing pundit Gary Logan.
Taylor Higgins: First things first, full credit to Joshua for taking this fight in the first place because I didn’t think a top heavyweight would go anywhere near Usyk until the latter half of the decade. And for good reason; the Ukrainian’s mobility, skill-set and ring IQ is a level above anyone else in the division. But is he too small to compete with the heavyweight elite? Whilst someone Tyson Fury would likely be a bridge too far, I think Usyk is going to beat AJ on Saturday night (although he might well need a stoppage considering the state of UK judging). If Joshua tries to pressure, he’ll struggle to pin his man down - the Brit isn’t particularly good at cutting off the ring or corralling opponents where he wants them, and Usyk’s movement will keep the champion turning and prevent him from setting his feet. Letting Usyk come to him might be another option, but then there’s the risk of conceding the initiative - the last thing Joshua wants is to allow Usyk to dictate the tempo with lead hand work and feints, because he won’t be able to keep up both mentally and physically as the bout wears on. If AJ is going to win here he’ll have to be proactive and get his own feints going to scramble Usyk’s reads, as well as investing in the body from the opening bell - left hooks and right uppercuts downstairs could be key to impeding Usyk’s circling and creating opportunities up top later on. That being said, I think the Ukrainian will prove too good on the night - he’s back with Anatoly Lomachenko for this one, so expect to see Usyk back to his best. I like him to ramp up the volume in the second half and claim a late stoppage as Joshua tires - if it goes to the cards however, expect some funky scorecards as Hearn won’t want to scupper any chances of a potential undisputed fight with Fury. Usyk by TKO Round 11.
Kyle McLachlan: I’m basically out of the game nowadays when it comes to boxing punditry, but have been known as a staunch Usyk defender since his amateur days. It might well be that if Usyk loses this fight I will not be able to stomach the sport ever again so thought I might as well return to my old stomping grounds to offer up an opinion on this fight before I disappear forever. And my main thought is: this seems unwinnable for Usyk. Not because of styles, or because he will be unable to adjust to Anthony Joshua’s power, but simply because of the location of this fight. Simply put, Britain is the most corrupt and bent place in boxing right now. Much as boxing fans expressed dismay at German judging in the ‘00s, Britain has overtaken pretty much everyone in terms of bad decisions. Hard to pinpoint examples, but watch domestic cards week in and week out and you will not just find eye-rollingly bad results but anger-inducing decisions that have you reaching for the remote control in disgust. So is there any chance that Usyk can win a decision against Joshua? In London? In the first humongous stadium show post-pandemic? No, there isn’t. And stylistically I don’t think Usyk can do much else but win a decision.
Typically, Usyk gets a good look at his man for the first handful of rounds, disarms them, then builds his workrate until the pace he sets becomes too much for his opponent and they are drowned in leather. Against a muscle-bound AJ--who does not react well to getting hit--you would think that Usyk might be able to put it on him late and get him out of there, negating the need to rely on Britain’s dodgy officiating.
However, the sheer scale of the job in front of him leads me to believe that the Ukrainian will need to take six rounds or even more to get good reads on Joshua, and thus his late surge will come too late. Taking away Joshua’s lead hand should be easy enough after five rounds or so: despite the Watford man’s improved outside boxing display against Andy Ruiz, not only will that be a bad gameplan against Usyk in my opinion (given his superior jab and speed of hand and foot and ability to get under the jab and inside Joshua’s range), Joshua trying to put a ‘power boxing’ gameplan to work at mid-range should be diffused also as Usyk will find it relatively easy to cause Joshua to second guess everything he does with his footwork, hand trapping and omnipresent feints.
Look at how low his output was at times against Joseph Parker, one of the first opponents to not be wearing diapers under his shorts. Not only is Usyk more classically trained so to speak, he shows no fear in his fights. Joshua on the other hand is a fighter who seems to display a lot of nervous energy when things aren’t going his way. He is really a bully type. I also consider him a bit of a ‘Ricky Hatton’ type.
Let me explain what I mean by this: Anthony Joshua has not displayed much in terms of mid-fight adjustments (getting a second wind and doing what you did well early on in a fight but couldn’t maintain through the middle rounds because you’re a musclebound monster doesn’t count). What he has shown is an ability to adjust within a chosen gameplan (i.e the difference between his approach in the first two Ruiz fights). Ricky Hatton was much the same: he either came in as a bruiser, or came in with his boxing brain in (the latter example would be the Paulie Malignaggi fight). But when under duress, he seemed unable to switch between the two gameplans, and Joshua appears to be much the same. Usyk on the other hand appears to be great at adjusting, great at catering his gameplan on the fly, and knowing exactly when to turn the wick up or not. So expect the champ to be a mess, biting on everything Usyk offers by the midway point and looking helpless by the championship rounds as he struggles to stay afloat. But given Usyk’s necessary safe approach early on, I expect Joshua will have just enough breathing room to end the bout on his feet, and Usyk will leave the fight in the hands of judges that are never going to give him a fair shake. Joshua via close and probably contentious decision is my bet. If it’s fair, fair enough. If it’s a bad one, it’ll be one bad decision too many for this old timer.
Dan Albert: My main questions for this fight concerns depth and ringcraft. Anthony Joshua certainly is far from a one-trick pony, though I do have questions about him if he faces someone who consistently can outjab and outpostion him at once. Primarily, Joshua works behind his lead hand as a measuring tool to establish counter threats and distance. Despite being patient and opportunistic, the caveat there is that he is incredibly reliant upon having some control of space through his power and said jab. Those threats alone are corroborated by his ability as an absolutely lethal finisher, although his commitment to hooks and uppercuts can lead him to smothering himself. That is to say, I suspect that Joshua’s best defense is his offense. Against someone with the poise and experience of Oleksandr Usyk, I feel this is a problem. Joshua showed against Pulev and Ruiz that he can pivot behind his jab and vice versa, though his own resets and tendency to cross his feet means he’s still liable to being backed into the ropes frequently. He’s yet to really be punished for this and has yet to fight an efficient ringcutter, though Usyk may be the first to truly punish some of AJ’s positional flaws. For one thing, Usyk excels at turning his opponent and operating behind a versatile jab, reinforced behind a plethora of feints and redirective footwork. The most dangerous phase, in my view, versus Joshua is in neutral exchanges, and a savvy feinter can overload triggers for countering – and the more Usyk can make you think, the more he can build momentum.
The Ukrainian certainly isn’t invulnerable; he can be caught on exits and is consistently susceptible to counter shots to the body, though he is an incredibly capable tactician. When Tony Bellew attempted to counter to the body, Usyk utilized hops and more throwaways to dull Bellew’s responses. On the backfoot, Usyk may be even trickier to handle. Marat Gassiev found himself outpositioned and turned into the Ukrainian’s jab all night and, despite enforcing his physicality on Usyk, Derek Chisora found his guard consistently worked over by Usyk’s check hooks. For Joshua, ring generalship will be the big question posed here against the arguable best ring technician in the division. Joshua’s counter game may well allow him to catch Usyk on entry far easier than pursuing a finish; however, I’m concerned that, without greater shot selection or threats, he may find himself turned and feinted all night long. I think there’s an argument about some difficulties Usyk has translating into Heavyweight, though I’m not convinced Joshua is the one to really pose those questions. Joshua has a good chance of spoiling Usyk, though I wouldn’t entirely bet on it. Usyk by decision.
Lukasz Fenrych: My thoughts on the style matchup and what each fighter needs to do to win is not dissimilar to my colleagues above, so I won’t belabour it: put simply, Usyk has the superior skillset in terms of movement, punch-picking and defence but Joshua is accurate and canny enough that it may not be enough to overcome the size difference, though the Brit probably needs to be more aggressive than he’s comfortable with being to really take control of the fight. A close, potentially dodgy decision is definitely a possibility. I do, however, give Usyk more of a chance for the stoppage than Kyle does, so I’ll explain why.
The first thought is to look on Joshua’s side for what Kyle already said, Joshua’s bulk. Now, it would be unfair to call him a big stiff idiot, for sure, but a lot of what he does is designed to work around his flexibility being less than ideal. For me, this manifests itself in two ways that could matter here.
Firstly, I’ve been fairly convinced for a while that more of Joshua’s upper-body and head movement comes from his knees rather than his waist than is ideal. It’s been a worry of mine in the long-term prospects that he might find his movement failing him earlier than might be expected because of it, but in a match like this, it might come into more direct play, since (if I’m right about this) it’ll be harder for him to both follow Usyk’s turns and change levels/move his head, and he could find himself out of shape and stiff-legged trying to do so. He might also just injure himself, although it’s a bit of a longshot, I don’t think Usyk should plan around that idea or anything.
The second thing is that Joshua has always had problems with people coming in under the level of his jab- whether that jab actually connects or not, opponents following it in low have often found him discomfited. Povetkin had decent success early on doing so then looping shots around and over it, and Ruiz did it in their first fight even before the first knockdown (as well as more generally proving that Joshua simply doesn’t defend shots coming from close and low very well in the wilder exchanges - as if he just doesn’t see them coming). It’s not a risk-free strategy because he has answers- that uppercut of his, notably, is a good intercepting shot when he times it right- but Usyk would be by far the most skilled and, especially, most mobile and least straight-lined boxer to try this against the bigger man, so he should have more routes to approach in close than those past smaller opponents. And once he is, Joshua simply doesn’t have that many tools to deal with it- he certainly doesn’t use his bulk to weigh down, spoil and shove around opponents particularly well.
Joshua’s chances, therefore, obviously rely on staying at range. The aforementioned intercepting shots are going to be very important. In his favour, this is his usual gameplan anyway, let opponents work past his jab and catch them coming in. So he won’t be relying on entirely new tricks. I don’t think he’ll be able to successfully do this the whole time, but since Usyk will have to be wary of that threat even if those shots don’t consistently land, he may be able to keep him at bay for just enough of the time.
That said, I’m going for that constant circling movement to take its toll and Joshua to slow down in the later rounds, leading to Usyk to up his volume and win by stoppage.
Gary Logan: Usyk is the best technician since Wladimir and his southpaw technique will pose real problems. However I’ve not been overly impressed with Usyk at heavyweight. I’ve got a feeling that AJ’s left hook over top of Usyk southpaw lead coupled with his ability to work the body leads to a Joshua win. I keep toying with the idea that Usyk keeps AJ off balance with his variable punch repertoire and movement but I just can’t see him withstanding AJ’s sharper, faster and ultimately harder punches. I know that ‘styles make fights’ but Chisora’s ability to pressure, buzz and trouble Usyk in his last fight leads me to believe that AJ wins inside 10.