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Boxing has been dead.
9/25 DAZN: Anthony Joshua vs Oleksandr Usyk (WBA/WBO/IBF Heavyweight Titles)
- Thread starter patscorpio
- Start date
It's weird when people say this, couldn't be further from the truth. It's not dead at ALL, I guess when people say this they are thinking of U.S boxing, but globally it's not dead at all, just with Matchroom DAZN have just done a massive U.K rights deal and now have their global rights, Sky Sports have recently done a deal with Boxxer, Top Rank, Wasserman (who have just started to make a lot of signings). AJ vs Usyk 65 thousand tickets sold out in 2 hours, think Canelo vs BJS had 70 thousand tickets sold.
AJ vs Usyk is gonna do some serious numbers, even if the promotion could be better but it's gonna be one of the biggest PPV's of the year still. It's a real fight also between a unified heavyweight champion and the former Undisputed Cruiserweight champion who is currently unbeaten in the pros, this is amazing for boxing.
There are many problems in boxing and it's not perfect but we shouldn't disregard the good things too and to say it's dead just isn't the case.
On 25th we have one of the biggest fights of the year with AJ vs Usyk and that's not to mention later we'll have Fury vs Wilder 3 (ok they shouldn't be fighting again, but it will be interesting who the 2 winner of those 2 fights will be so they can hopefully fight), Canelo vs Plant in undisputed, Shields has just signed to Boxxer so the Marshall fight looks like it's gonna happen down the line now they are both with Sky, Taylor vs Serrano should happen also before too long, Crawford vs Porter is happening, Whyte vs Wallin and so many other fights.
Like I said, not perfect, but it's impossible to be dead with what's going on and what's going to come too. There's certain big companies and investors that are investing heavily into boxing right now, if it was dead wouldn't be the case.
He actually never is, he's just genuinely cool generally, obviously like anyone if they get pissed off can change, but generally he's pretty cool and not fronting in that aspect. He does a lot of stuff behind the scenes people don't know to help people that he never publicizes, would never know unless the people involved hadn't spoken on it.
Dushane Hill
Superstar
I'm not disputing any of that, I've met him once before and he was very cool/humble - I'm also pretty sure he does lots to help others behind the scenes but that wasn't what I was getting at. Obviously he's not reading off a script but sometimes it comes across that way - Fury, Wilder, White etc. always give more interesting interviews because I feel their just giving you their personality as it is but I don't really get that with AJ, he just seems a bit more mindful of how he comes across and wants to stick to a script.
Then again he's the biggest name in the division with a lot more to lose. Just an observation though I hope he wins on Saturday.
I know what you're saying, I have some friends who feel similar but what I mean is he's actually just being himself lol, he's genuinely just like that, some people think he's too nice so it has to be scripted, but it's more he's actually just cool like that, his intelligence probably plays a role also, he's always looking to improve in everything and his values and ethics are important to him, he also knows that the media are gonna pick up on anything he may say and so he may be more thoughtful to try and ensure his words don't get twisted which may appear to some of us as scripted but it's just him taking a bit of time to think how he says or phrases certain shyt so people don't twist it. He's a very different character to Wilder and Fury, for the better in my opinion, they are perennial bullshytters, AJ to me keeps it more real cause he's not fronting or portraying an act, he'll back himself but without the extra shyt, I personally respect that more than Fury telling 1000 million lies all the time lol.
Yeah for sure, that probably plays a role, could say he's cautious but certainly not fake. Yeah I hope he wins too cause the Undisputed fight would be bigger with him involved so would be good for boxing. I respect Usyk too, should be a good fight.
when was it alive? what was the last era or time?
Dushane Hill
Superstar
Conscious Pilot
Do Better.
AJ by ref stoppage somewhere in 13-15
UncleTomFord15
Veteran
UncleTomFord15
Veteran
Marketing for this has been pretty bad 
It was a decade ago that Oleksandr Usyk’s glare narrowed and his jaw clenched at his first sight of Anthony Joshua.
“I said: ‘He will be the Olympic champion,’” Usyk recalls of the first time he clamped eyes on Joshua.
In the 10 years since, his eyes have not veered too far away from the freakishly powerful but then-naïve super-heavyweight from England that he watched from ringside in 2011.
The strange thing?
Joshua lost the fight that Usyk watched.
Still, the Ukrainian whispered to fellow fighters at ringside that he would go on to achieve big things.
Usyk knew at this point, watching a desolate Joshua’s head bowed in a rare defeat, that their paths would cross one day.
He was right.
By JAMES DIELHENN
Ukraine’s Usyk was 24 years old, approaching the zenith of his amateur career, heading into the World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan. Three years earlier, he had won gold at the European Championships by lighting up Liverpool then he had gone to the Olympics in Beijing. Two years earlier, he won bronze at the previous Worlds.
He was already, by this point, a fighter of some repute.
“Usyk had a reputation then. A lot of people, if they weren’t preparing boxers for the next fight, they would go and watch him,” Sky Sports were told by Paul Walmsley, previously the World Class Programme Coach at Team GB who took Joshua to Baku.
Joshua, though, was still a boy of 21. Full of raw physicality but laden with youthful naivety.
Just three months prior to Baku, he had been dealt a stoppage loss by Mihai Nistor.
“Not a lot was expected of Joshua, to be honest,” Walmsley admits. “It was more experience at that level just to see how he coped with it.
“There was no pressure on him, and he was reminded of that all the time. He’d been to the Europeans, where he came unstuck against the Romanian.”
“The standout win was against Roberto Cammarelle,” said Walmsley. The Italian was the reigning amateur world champion and Olympic champion.
“I thought AJ started to show a bit of maturity and there was just something there. All along, he was very novicey, he hadn’t had schoolboy and junior grounding in the sport. He had come into it late, so he was still a bit raw, novicey. Once that Cammarelle fight was over, I thought he had got it there. He’d got the tactics.
"He was showing signs of something special."
Joshua beat Erik Pfeifer to qualify for the final of a super-heavyweight tournament which included Erislandy Savon, Joseph Parker, Tony Yoka and Filip Hrgovic.
Meanwhile in the division below, Usyk was also creeping towards the gold medal fight, disposing of Artur Beterbiev along the way.
Backstage Usyk would often make his presence felt, explained Walmsley: “The room was about the size of a football pitch, where every country went in there and grabbed a few seats and claimed a little area to warm up in. It’s quite possible you would have had Joshua in there while Usyk has been warming up.
“Usyk was a character in the changing rooms. He had this crazy, crazy music blaring.
“He was running up and down the corridor, singing the words. He was dancing away and screaming the top note at this crazy music. He’s always like a character. Usyk was a crazy eccentric, but a brilliant boxer.”
Usyk lights up, raises a finger and smiles at his first memory of Joshua.
“I remember very well,” he tells Sky Sports. “He lost his final fight against Mahommedrasul Majidov.
“It was a good final, you know. I watched it live.
“I said to my team: ‘This guy is the future Olympic champion’.
“Next year, in 2012, Anthony was the Olympic champion.
“Why did I think this? I watched his fight. I watched Anthony. I saw him progress, progress, progress.”
The fascinating thing is that Usyk, from ringside, predicted Joshua’s fast rise despite watching him lose.
“I saw that this guy would grow up in his mind,” Usyk shrugged.
Joshua’s opponent in the final, Majidov, was a local Baku boxer. Usyk, by this point, had already claimed a gold medal.
Three hundred military personnel surrounded the ring in support of Majidov.
“There was some atmosphere,” Walmsley recalls. “Other than London in 2012, that’s the loudest noise I’ve ever heard in my life at boxing. The noise was incredible.
“I was so nervous for AJ because Majidov is a bit of a monster.
“Where we were sitting, at the bottom of the steps to the ring, it must have been six foot to the ring and I was literally screaming my lungs out. You couldn’t hear a thing. He couldn’t hear me. I had to shout to make myself heard, and that was between rounds.
“AJ has raw power. He shocked the local a bit on a few occasions. He lost by a point, but I definitely thought he pipped it and so did most people I spoke to.”
Nobody was more impressed than Usyk.
“He obviously must have seen something special there,” says Walmsley. “It was meteoric, the way AJ came flying through the ranks. He had that bit of magic. You knew he was going to come through at the top level.
“I’m a bit surprised that Usyk studied Joshua, given the weight difference.”
Was Joshua aware of Usyk?
“I don’t think so. He definitely didn’t mention to me about him.”
Usyk’s prediction about Joshua’s success would be proven right a year later at the Olympics. Both men won gold medals and, again, there was something about Joshua that Usyk continued to monitor.
“I have watched all of his fights,” Usyk says. “Absolutely each and every one of his fights.”
Still, Usyk’s fascination did not mean he was yet sizing up Joshua as a future opponent.
“I can’t say that I was so impressed by AJ,” Usyk remembers about the Olympics. “What really impressed me was our boxing dream team and our results.”
For the next few years their paths never crossed – Joshua became a two-time world heavyweight champion, Usyk the undisputed cruiserweight champion.
“We first watched Usyk together one evening during AJ’s training camp, when Usyk won the Muhammad Ali trophy [at the World Boxing Super Series],” David Ghansa, part of Joshua’s inner-circle, tells Sky Sports.
“I couldn’t believe how good Usyk was – so light on his feet, punching for 12 rounds. But AJ wasn’t too vocal.
“So Usyk was on AJ’s radar.
“There are no secrets.
“AJ studies boxing – he knows the kids coming up, the throwback fighters, the fighters outside of his own generation.
“I met Usyk in New York and told him: ‘We know who you are’.
“So it’s no surprise that we are here. They are no strangers to each other.”
“I remember that he made a sign to me. I think he noticed me in the crowd. He waved his hand to me..."
Oleksandr Usyk
The moment that changed the course of this bubbling rivalry was in 2018, in the glorious moment after a Joshua knockout.
Fists clenched, blood stained on his gloves, roaring to the baying crowd.
There was just one expressionless face in the crowd, covered by a dark hood, eyes fixed on Joshua. Just staring, utterly focused. It was the same stare from all those years ago.
“Of course I remember,” says Usyk. “AJ was fighting in London at Wembley with Alexander Povetkin.
“I remember that he made a sign to me. I think he noticed me in the crowd. He waved his hand to me. I was quite sure that good guys like us should fight each other.
“I had other things on my mind – my job, my family, my wife, my children. He was not on my mind. But I had a goal to fight with him.”
Why has Joshua always been Usyk’s obsession rather than Tyson Fury?
The reason is hauntingly simple.
“Because he is the Olympic champion.”
“Wlad denounced any involvement," say AJ's team.
But Usyk says: “I keep talking to him...”
Wladimir Klitschko’s involvement in this fight between two of his proteges is eerie.
Klitschko took Joshua under his wing long before the younger man ended his career in their classic Wembley encounter. And Usyk, his fellow Ukrainian, is signed to the K2 management label that both Klitschko brothers were involved with.
“When the fight was announced, Wlad said to Anthony: ‘I love you both, good luck, may the best man win’,” David Ghansa explains.
“Wlad denounced any involvement.
“I believe Wlad is a guy who doesn’t want to be involved.”
But Usyk says differently.
“Things that we discuss are private,” he mutters about Klitschko.
So you have spoken to him about this fight?
A long pause and a search for the right words…
“I keep talking to him.”
How is today’s Joshua better than the version that Usyk first saw in Baku?
“He has substantially improved his technical skill,” says Usyk. “Firstly, he has improved his boxing mind. He matured as a man. His body became more mature. His skills were upped.”
And how is Usyk different?
Another long pause followed by a cackle.
“I’ve got more children now!”
“If he stands still, I think Usyk will just pick him off and move..."
“Never in a million years,” says Paul Walmsley when asked if he ever expected his young and powerful super-heavyweight to eventually face Ukraine’s golden boxer.
“Because of the weight difference. Especially the size difference at heavyweight in the pros, which is absolutely massive.
“I suspect Joshua will come in a bit lighter than he normally does. I think he will have been working on what he does mainly now, which is the speed and agility. Being a bit more loose and agile, a bit more movement and flow.
“If he stands still, I think Usyk will just pick him off and move. But Joshua has always got that phenomenal power, so if he connects with anyone in the world, they will go.”
Vasiliy Lomachenko raised an eyebrow: "But Oleksandr is much faster.”
Anatoly Lomachenko aka ‘Papachenko’, who led his son and Usyk to Olympic gold medals, is back in Usyk’s corner.
"His father wouldn't train anyone else, but he will train Usyk, because Usyk is like family," promoter Bob Arum has said.
Usyk is sat with a menacing skinhead and a handlebar moustache. It is a hell of a look. He wears a Muhammad Ali t-shirt - Ali was known for taking down much bigger men.
He clearly understands questions in English before they are translated – just like inside the boxing ring, he is one step ahead at all times.
Will his speed be the key?
He removes his sunglasses and gets serious for the first time: “We will see.”
Usyk is pushed further – will his speed defeat Joshua?
“To some extent,” he teases, now cackling out loud like a madman.
It is a plot a decade in the making.
“I said: ‘He will be the Olympic champion,’” Usyk recalls of the first time he clamped eyes on Joshua.
In the 10 years since, his eyes have not veered too far away from the freakishly powerful but then-naïve super-heavyweight from England that he watched from ringside in 2011.
The strange thing?
Joshua lost the fight that Usyk watched.
Still, the Ukrainian whispered to fellow fighters at ringside that he would go on to achieve big things.
Usyk knew at this point, watching a desolate Joshua’s head bowed in a rare defeat, that their paths would cross one day.
He was right.
By JAMES DIELHENN
Ukraine’s Usyk was 24 years old, approaching the zenith of his amateur career, heading into the World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan. Three years earlier, he had won gold at the European Championships by lighting up Liverpool then he had gone to the Olympics in Beijing. Two years earlier, he won bronze at the previous Worlds.
He was already, by this point, a fighter of some repute.
“Usyk had a reputation then. A lot of people, if they weren’t preparing boxers for the next fight, they would go and watch him,” Sky Sports were told by Paul Walmsley, previously the World Class Programme Coach at Team GB who took Joshua to Baku.
Joshua, though, was still a boy of 21. Full of raw physicality but laden with youthful naivety.
Just three months prior to Baku, he had been dealt a stoppage loss by Mihai Nistor.
“Not a lot was expected of Joshua, to be honest,” Walmsley admits. “It was more experience at that level just to see how he coped with it.
“There was no pressure on him, and he was reminded of that all the time. He’d been to the Europeans, where he came unstuck against the Romanian.”
“The standout win was against Roberto Cammarelle,” said Walmsley. The Italian was the reigning amateur world champion and Olympic champion.
“I thought AJ started to show a bit of maturity and there was just something there. All along, he was very novicey, he hadn’t had schoolboy and junior grounding in the sport. He had come into it late, so he was still a bit raw, novicey. Once that Cammarelle fight was over, I thought he had got it there. He’d got the tactics.
"He was showing signs of something special."
Joshua beat Erik Pfeifer to qualify for the final of a super-heavyweight tournament which included Erislandy Savon, Joseph Parker, Tony Yoka and Filip Hrgovic.
Meanwhile in the division below, Usyk was also creeping towards the gold medal fight, disposing of Artur Beterbiev along the way.
Backstage Usyk would often make his presence felt, explained Walmsley: “The room was about the size of a football pitch, where every country went in there and grabbed a few seats and claimed a little area to warm up in. It’s quite possible you would have had Joshua in there while Usyk has been warming up.
“Usyk was a character in the changing rooms. He had this crazy, crazy music blaring.
“He was running up and down the corridor, singing the words. He was dancing away and screaming the top note at this crazy music. He’s always like a character. Usyk was a crazy eccentric, but a brilliant boxer.”
Usyk lights up, raises a finger and smiles at his first memory of Joshua.
“I remember very well,” he tells Sky Sports. “He lost his final fight against Mahommedrasul Majidov.
“It was a good final, you know. I watched it live.
“I said to my team: ‘This guy is the future Olympic champion’.
“Next year, in 2012, Anthony was the Olympic champion.
“Why did I think this? I watched his fight. I watched Anthony. I saw him progress, progress, progress.”
The fascinating thing is that Usyk, from ringside, predicted Joshua’s fast rise despite watching him lose.
“I saw that this guy would grow up in his mind,” Usyk shrugged.
Joshua’s opponent in the final, Majidov, was a local Baku boxer. Usyk, by this point, had already claimed a gold medal.
Three hundred military personnel surrounded the ring in support of Majidov.
“There was some atmosphere,” Walmsley recalls. “Other than London in 2012, that’s the loudest noise I’ve ever heard in my life at boxing. The noise was incredible.
“I was so nervous for AJ because Majidov is a bit of a monster.
“Where we were sitting, at the bottom of the steps to the ring, it must have been six foot to the ring and I was literally screaming my lungs out. You couldn’t hear a thing. He couldn’t hear me. I had to shout to make myself heard, and that was between rounds.
“AJ has raw power. He shocked the local a bit on a few occasions. He lost by a point, but I definitely thought he pipped it and so did most people I spoke to.”
Nobody was more impressed than Usyk.
“He obviously must have seen something special there,” says Walmsley. “It was meteoric, the way AJ came flying through the ranks. He had that bit of magic. You knew he was going to come through at the top level.
“I’m a bit surprised that Usyk studied Joshua, given the weight difference.”
Was Joshua aware of Usyk?
“I don’t think so. He definitely didn’t mention to me about him.”
Usyk’s prediction about Joshua’s success would be proven right a year later at the Olympics. Both men won gold medals and, again, there was something about Joshua that Usyk continued to monitor.
“I have watched all of his fights,” Usyk says. “Absolutely each and every one of his fights.”
Still, Usyk’s fascination did not mean he was yet sizing up Joshua as a future opponent.
“I can’t say that I was so impressed by AJ,” Usyk remembers about the Olympics. “What really impressed me was our boxing dream team and our results.”
For the next few years their paths never crossed – Joshua became a two-time world heavyweight champion, Usyk the undisputed cruiserweight champion.
“We first watched Usyk together one evening during AJ’s training camp, when Usyk won the Muhammad Ali trophy [at the World Boxing Super Series],” David Ghansa, part of Joshua’s inner-circle, tells Sky Sports.
“I couldn’t believe how good Usyk was – so light on his feet, punching for 12 rounds. But AJ wasn’t too vocal.
“So Usyk was on AJ’s radar.
“There are no secrets.
“AJ studies boxing – he knows the kids coming up, the throwback fighters, the fighters outside of his own generation.
“I met Usyk in New York and told him: ‘We know who you are’.
“So it’s no surprise that we are here. They are no strangers to each other.”
“I remember that he made a sign to me. I think he noticed me in the crowd. He waved his hand to me..."
Oleksandr Usyk
The moment that changed the course of this bubbling rivalry was in 2018, in the glorious moment after a Joshua knockout.
Fists clenched, blood stained on his gloves, roaring to the baying crowd.
There was just one expressionless face in the crowd, covered by a dark hood, eyes fixed on Joshua. Just staring, utterly focused. It was the same stare from all those years ago.
“Of course I remember,” says Usyk. “AJ was fighting in London at Wembley with Alexander Povetkin.
“I remember that he made a sign to me. I think he noticed me in the crowd. He waved his hand to me. I was quite sure that good guys like us should fight each other.
“I had other things on my mind – my job, my family, my wife, my children. He was not on my mind. But I had a goal to fight with him.”
Why has Joshua always been Usyk’s obsession rather than Tyson Fury?
The reason is hauntingly simple.
“Because he is the Olympic champion.”
“Wlad denounced any involvement," say AJ's team.
But Usyk says: “I keep talking to him...”
Wladimir Klitschko’s involvement in this fight between two of his proteges is eerie.
Klitschko took Joshua under his wing long before the younger man ended his career in their classic Wembley encounter. And Usyk, his fellow Ukrainian, is signed to the K2 management label that both Klitschko brothers were involved with.
“When the fight was announced, Wlad said to Anthony: ‘I love you both, good luck, may the best man win’,” David Ghansa explains.
“Wlad denounced any involvement.
“I believe Wlad is a guy who doesn’t want to be involved.”
But Usyk says differently.
“Things that we discuss are private,” he mutters about Klitschko.
So you have spoken to him about this fight?
A long pause and a search for the right words…
“I keep talking to him.”
How is today’s Joshua better than the version that Usyk first saw in Baku?
“He has substantially improved his technical skill,” says Usyk. “Firstly, he has improved his boxing mind. He matured as a man. His body became more mature. His skills were upped.”
And how is Usyk different?
Another long pause followed by a cackle.
“I’ve got more children now!”
“If he stands still, I think Usyk will just pick him off and move..."
“Never in a million years,” says Paul Walmsley when asked if he ever expected his young and powerful super-heavyweight to eventually face Ukraine’s golden boxer.
“Because of the weight difference. Especially the size difference at heavyweight in the pros, which is absolutely massive.
“I suspect Joshua will come in a bit lighter than he normally does. I think he will have been working on what he does mainly now, which is the speed and agility. Being a bit more loose and agile, a bit more movement and flow.
“If he stands still, I think Usyk will just pick him off and move. But Joshua has always got that phenomenal power, so if he connects with anyone in the world, they will go.”
Vasiliy Lomachenko raised an eyebrow: "But Oleksandr is much faster.”
Anatoly Lomachenko aka ‘Papachenko’, who led his son and Usyk to Olympic gold medals, is back in Usyk’s corner.
"His father wouldn't train anyone else, but he will train Usyk, because Usyk is like family," promoter Bob Arum has said.
Usyk is sat with a menacing skinhead and a handlebar moustache. It is a hell of a look. He wears a Muhammad Ali t-shirt - Ali was known for taking down much bigger men.
He clearly understands questions in English before they are translated – just like inside the boxing ring, he is one step ahead at all times.
Will his speed be the key?
He removes his sunglasses and gets serious for the first time: “We will see.”
Usyk is pushed further – will his speed defeat Joshua?
“To some extent,” he teases, now cackling out loud like a madman.
It is a plot a decade in the making.
There’s no hype for this fight. AJ by stoppage, though.
Promotion has been subpar for a fight like this, they should have done more. DAZN restricting some of their ish to subscribers, should have put it out for everyone to see so they would sign up to watch the fight. Shot themselves in the foot with that. People wanna see the fight but it's not cause of the promotion, got a feeling lots of politics in the background of this, will be interested after AJ's deal is up how the next fight roll out will be.