Usyk vs Fury 2: Undisputed, undaunted - how Oleksandr Usyk became a heavyweight great

14 December 2024, 17:45 | Updated: 16 December 2024, 15:25

"I’ve prepared for this fight for 22 years. All my boxing career, I’m coming for my dream."

Oleksandr Usyk knew it all - his whole life in boxing - came down to this fight. Twelve rounds with the biggest and the best heavyweight in the sport. Four world title belts on the line. One undisputed champion to emerge from it.

That champion would be boxing's first of the four-belt era. The first man to be the unquestioned heavyweight champion of the world in a quarter of century.

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Beating Tyson Fury on a split, but momentous, decision in May wrote Usyk's entry indelibly into the history of the sport.

But for him, the fight was something more. It was intensely personal and unignorably political. His fight was a message.

The first words Usyk, and the rest of the watching world, heard from announcer Michael Buffer as he had his hand raised in victory, were: "From Ukraine".

"I feel good," Usyk said afterwards. "It's a big winner not only for me. It's a big winner for my country."

Ukraine is a country at war. Russia invaded in 2022. At that time, Usyk - who had already been an undisputed champion at cruiserweight - was about to sign a lucrative rematch with boxing superstar Anthony Joshua.

Instead, Usyk walked away from that to enlist in his country's Territorial Defense Force. That in itself was a sacrifice, not to mention a terrible risk.

Eventually he was granted permission to return to the sport and represent Ukraine as an athlete. He did so with unrivalled aplomb.

Usyk beat Joshua in their hard-fought rematch in August of that year. In 2023 he stopped Daniel Dubois, now the IBF belt-holder, in the closest he could get to a homecoming bout at Wroclaw stadium in Poland.

That brought him to May's collision with Fury. The Briton is titanic in a division of big men. Six foot nine inches tall, skilled with mazy footwork and deceptive hand speed, Fury first became a unified champion when he dethroned Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.

After returning to the sport he secured the WBC title in a hellacious trilogy with Deontay Wilder. For Usyk, Fury posed the ultimate challenge and the ultimate puzzle.

It was one he solved.

Usyk accomplished a feat no professional fighter had managed before - beating Fury. He did it by seeing through Fury's efforts to beguile him with showboating and by enduring heavy punches to the body.

He maintained consistent pressure and pace, lining up southpaw lefts to the body and the head, threatening with his right jab but, unusually for any boxer, managing to measure Fury out with his straight cross.

It was that backhand left that triggered the defining moment in the contest. In the ninth round Usyk swept it across as a hook, catching Fury's nose and jaw with stunning force. Fury's huge frame swayed away, his legs loosening as he staggered backwards. Usyk was on him, his eyes, as they had so often been in the build-up to the fight, stayed locked on their target.

Almost having to leap off the canvas, to zero in with head shots, Usyk struck Fury back with punch after punch, pitching the near 19-stone champion into the ropes.

The referee darted in between, deeming that it was only the rigging which had kept Fury on his feet.

That denied Usyk one more follow-up punch, one that could have laid Fury out and one which, so the Ukrainian's team argue, could have won him the fight there and then.

Regardless, Usyk would not be denied. He seized the lead he needed on the scorecards, winning 115-112 and 114-113 for two of the judges, though the third ruled it 114-113 for Fury.

The beaten champion can be furiously intimidating, as he was against Wilder, or mesmerising, as he was against Klitschko. But he can also be warmly human. He's still the Lancashire lad. Afterwards he walked over to Usyk. "We'll have a beer after this," he said. Given they were boxing in Riyadh, he then added: "Alcohol free!"

Still, as the smaller man going up against the giant of the division, in that moment of victory Usyk also became a symbol.

"It doesn't get much bigger than Tyson in the heavyweight division and Usyk was a cruiserweight coming up," Tom Loeffler, who founded K2 Promotions with Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, and has previously worked with Usyk, told Sky Sports.

"Beating guys in their prime who are 20 or 30 pounds heavier than he is, when he beat AJ twice, then he beat Fury, as of now I would have to put him right up there at the top of the pound-for-pound list."

Loeffler added: "That is a good analogy for what he's fighting for. A lot of people are surprised that Ukraine is still an independent country right now, especially in the first few days when most people were predicting it wouldn't take Russia more than three days, or seven days to get into Kyiv. It's just symbolising or embodies their fighting spirit for their country.

"He's got that undeniable will to win."

Loeffler had been watching the fight seated alongside Wladimir Klitschko, Ukraine's former unified champion who shared all four of the major titles with his brother Vitali, and so could never fight for undisputed himself.

Now Vitali Klitschko has a direct role in the conflict as mayor of Kyiv, while Wladimir is one of the most high-profile advocates for Ukraine in public life.

"He was so proud of Usyk," Loeffler said of Wladimir. "Now carrying the flag for Ukraine. I have to say it was very emotional."

That was more than a fight. "Especially now with so much at stake," Loeffler said.

"It was surreal, with the energy of the crowd," he continued. "It was surreal sitting next to Wladimir.

"It was definitely emotional when they raised his hand at the end.

"It was a tremendous night of boxing and a tremendous night for Ukraine."

Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight whose duties now involve keeping the capital city running as it endures Russian bombardment, is better qualified than anyone to describe what Usyk's victory meant.

"Sport is global and sport has amazing power. Sport has clear rules. It's a fair game and attention from the whole world [comes] through sport, and that's why it's very important to use the sport's stage for the good," Klitschko told Sky Sports.

"It's very important. It's very important to represent around the world, we need success, success in every activity and sport is worldwide. Sport has the power to change the world, a saying of Nelson Mandela. That's why we need success and we're so happy right now.

"Ukraine also took 12 medals at the Olympic Games in Paris. It's a great result because right now our sportsmen makes preparation in very different conditions.

"Also never forget there are a lot of sportsmen right now in the war who actually paid the biggest price, their lives."

"Oleksandr Usyk or another sportsman, a representative of the country, is doing everything to bring much more attention to Ukraine, to represent Ukraine, and to use the sport's stage as a stage to give a message: we need peace, we need unity around Ukraine, we have to defend our homeland and the attention of the world is very important.

"This is a global stage, this is the main stage, to be the heavyweight champion of the world, to defend the world title, it's huge attention from the whole world.

"To bring attention to Ukraine and to support Ukraine. To give the message to be united with Ukraine. Because unity right now is key to peace and freedom."

The heavyweight championship of the world was once the greatest prize in sport. Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson - in the past the world heavyweight champion was also the most famous man in the world.

Now, for the first time since Lennox Lewis in 1999, one man, with no other belt-holder to rival him, could call himself the heavyweight champion of the world. And that was Oleksandr Usyk.

He made himself special by doing things few others are prepared to.

Promoter Kalle Sauerland worked with Usyk in the World Boxing Super Series, the tournament that ultimately led to the Ukrainian going undisputed at cruiserweight.

"It's that old school, amateur, eastern approach, not in terms of the fights, in terms of the preparation," Sauerland told Sky Sports. "Elite fighters who have a very different preparation ethos to western fighters. He doesn't leave a stone unturned.

"A great guy, a great character for the sport, a great ambassador for his country. I think in this generation, an absolute great."

It fell to Sauerland to tell Usyk that the tournament had signed a deal to take his final, against Russia's Murat Gassiev, to Moscow.

At that time, in 2018, the war in Ukraine had not escalated to today's extent, but the east of the country was occupied territory and Russia had annexed Crimea.

Sauerland thought he was interrupting a holiday when he travelled to Barcelona to tell him the Gassiev fight news in person.

"He was out there preparing. Preparing for a fight that took place many, many months later," Sauerland recalled.

"No normal pro would go to the expense of it, and he was earning very good money at the time, it was seven figures, but it was still a big invest. There was no expense spared when I went and saw the stuff they were doing over there."

He added: "I said, 'I need to talk to you because this fight is going to Russia'. And he just grinned and said: 'No problem. But you just make sure I have security.' That was his approach."

He took the fight in Moscow in his stride and won it on a wide unanimous decision, comprehensively defeating the most dangerous man in the division.

Out there, Sauerland remembered, Usyk was "totally unfazed".

"Oleksandr Usyk don't get fazed," he said. "That's the other thing I noticed."

He didn't show it in the 12 rounds of his fight with Fury and certainly not in the build up to the fight. But it was a victory underscored by emotion. Usyk had missed the birth of his daughter as he trained for the Fury fight.

His family had never been far from his mind. Soon after his victory he thought of his father. He looked upwards, where his raised hand had been pointed. His father had lived long enough to see him become an Olympic gold medallist in 2012, though neither an undisputed champion at cruiserweight nor heavyweight.

"I think my father is now watching me and is very happy," Usyk said.

His voice cracked as he continued. "I can," he said. "You told me. I can."

He did. He won his battle. Usyk became great and for him it went far beyond the fight.

Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury's huge heavyweight rematch will be live on Saturday December 21 on Sky Sports Box Office. Book Usyk vs Fury 2 now!

(c) Sky Sports 2024: Usyk vs Fury 2: Undisputed, undaunted - how Oleksandr Usyk became a heavyweight great