Anthony Joshua vs Oleksandr Usyk: The Fight Site Roundtable
Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images
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This weekend, Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua travel to Saudi Arabia for their much-anticipated rematch. Joshua is fighting for revenge and for his career, whereas Usyk on top of all the boxing considerations is fighting to represent and offer pride for his home country in the midst of invasion. There’s clearly a lot going on both personally and in the boxing, so we sat down to talk it over.
Iggy: Anthony Joshua got thoroughly outfoxed, outboxed and on occasion, outmuscled. British boxing fans being what they are, all of that got written off as Joshua having an “off” night, or the wrong gameplan, or not eating the right brand of porridge the night before the fight.
All because Anthony Joshua is: 1) British; 2) Large, muscular and handsome; 3) Extremely media-whipped, so he knows what to say and when to say it to the casuals.
All this is extraneous to the sheer fact that Anthony Joshua is simply not the same caliber of boxer that Usyk is. It’s just how it is.
The common suggestion being thrown around is that Joshua should mess Usyk up in the clinch, use his size, use pressure — not let Usyk prance around and land “pitter-patter one-twos” to run away with the decision. Okay, sure, he might have the capacity to do it, but does he have the skill? Beyond that, Joshua got nearly put on the canvas numerous times against Usyk in their first outing, so the “pitter-patter” argument makes no sense to me. So the approach recommended by AJ’s fans suggests Joshua either: 1) Learn to be a different fighter; 2) Learn to be a different person.
He’s a decent mid-range boxer, sure, he’s a reasonably well-schooled outfighter, but to suddenly learn how to throw down in pocket and get dirty up close after a whole career of being taught to be this artificial being that’s pleasing to all demographics — a champion that downs his opponents with clean, civilised combinations at mid-range? I have doubts.
Lukasz: Yeah, the idea that Joshua had an off-night is something of an invention. If anything, he had the best performance of his career- it was just also against the best opponent, and one particularly well matched up to his weaknesses. He threw his shots with a greater variety of timing than we’ve really seen from him before and was less timid than we’ve seen since his loss to Ruiz. The things ‘he didn’t’ do are just things he’s never done. That’s not an off-night, that’s just losing to the better fighter.
What’s interesting to me is his choice of new head coach. Although all his talk has been about getting rough and aggressive and using his size to dominate and knock Usyk out, he’s gone with Robert Garcia - and while he’s certainly coached one or two rough and physical fighters in the past, even someone like Marcos Maidana beat Broner mostly with some pretty clean pocket boxing (and got outshoved a few times when they clinched), and his most notable students include the likes of Mikey Garcia and Nonito Donaire, neither of whom are the kind of aggressive pressure or clinch fighter both Joshua and his fans seem to be suggesting that he needs to be.
That might well turn out to be the right decision- trying to refine what he’s already got and find ways to control Usyk by using his size and power in technical ways is probably a better strategy than turning himself into someone else entirely, but even if he’s bluffing with his talk and that is what he’s going for, jumping straight into the rematch with no tune-ups means it’s a very big ask to properly embed any changes he’s planning to make- and even if all that does come together, it’s still not that easy to stop Usyk doing what he does. Certainly, the narrative from some quarters of ‘if Joshua just does the right thing this time this is a foregone conclusion’ is detached from reality.
Haxx: Narratives in this fight have turned into “This is what Joshua needs to do” already. The reality is that changing the dynamic of a fighter is difficult. Joshua already demonstrated improved shot selection, surprisingly thoughtful timing and a willingness to put himself in danger to land with impact. Winning (apparently) first demands that Joshua improves significantly over an already impressive (losing) effort. It is not enough for Joshua to merely surpass his previous level in what he employed successfully. He must also become an ungovernable clinch fighter with sharper finishing instincts on the inside and a 12-round high-volume gas tank under sustained, crafty boxing pressure he never possessed before.
Usyk is exceptionally good. As Ollie and Dan have both discussed, Usyk is not only an effective operator with slick skills, but he can also look beyond more than one dimension of his game, cooly offering mastery in:
The tactile - consider his domination of Gassiev with the jab, and then cleanly defusing the Gassiev counter left hooks through ducks and pivots.
The tactical - Why rely on one trick with his lead hand against Joshua? Employ advantages in breadth and depth to punish over and over.
The strategic - How to structure both fights around his clear advantages in ringcraft? How to use the tactile and the tactical to craft a consistent twelve-round approach
Rarely do you get that level of skill out of any boxer, let alone in a big man in the big man’s division…
There are paths to victory for Joshua. Victory will not come from pretending that issues in Joshua's game like the linearity of his retreats or his (comparative) lack of creativity against somebody who can tie you up in knots with his lead alone do not exist. Nor is the answer expecting Joshua to become a clinch god in the meantime. He must leverage size and strength in service of dynamism. A limited lead hand counter becomes far less limited if you can disguise the trajectory with a bit of grappling - and mid range can stretch surprisingly far with good clinch setups to 'disguise' the transitions between distances.
Iggy: Now that Lukasz has mentioned it, I can certainly see AJ trying to pick a strict directional approach using his already existing tools, and not necessarily an approach tied to a select distance, or an altogether new style of fighting. Doubling down on the larger variety of shots seems like a more sensible idea. He was laser-focused on throwing the right uppercut both to the body and the head the last time around, for instance.
I do think that investing in intercepting hooks to the body and to the head might be a good idea once AJ has Usyk along the ropes, but first of all he has to get Usyk going backwards in a straight line for that to even become an option, and second of all Usyk’s ringraft and fleet-footedness have befuddled him before, and given how stiff-legged AJ seems at the best of times, I’m thinking these two traits would befuddle him again. Usyk has been able to navigate the exchanges expertly in their first fight, even with Joshua showing a higher variety of punches. It’s not really the variety one has to look for when fighting Usyk, but timing. A tall task: Usyk is a master of playing with exactly that!
Lukasz: In fairness, timing is something Joshua is pretty strong on as well, at least with his mid-range punching. Where he’s going to have to sharpen up is, as you suggest, the timing of his movement- especially since he’s never going to match Usyk step-for-step. That might be the biggest single area where he just can’t compete on even terms - but it might be one where he can use his size to his advantage, without going gung-ho and against his strengths. Put simply, being so much bigger and longer means, if he leverages that right, Usyk would have to move more to get around him and takes the angles he likes.
The choice he’d have to make in that scenario would then be whether he tries to use that advantage by backing off a bit and making Usyk come to him, or pushes in a bit and tries to disrupt the movement and make Usyk move around him. It’ll be the latter, because he thinks he tried the former in the first fight. The risk there is that, if he fails to disrupt him, he’ll instead give him an open highway into the empty space around the side of his lead shoulder, something Joshua is not at all well equipped to turn to follow.
Haxx: I am very interested to see what Joshua has to offer to take away the Usyk lead hand, especially with roughhousing in the clinch. His current “public” media comments make him seem like a seething idiot trying to come up with excuses with the old one two three of:
1) I "just" need to change one thing!
2) He had one aspect I did not prepare for "properly"! (Southpaw)
3) I am bigger! I have the big, without being "the big"! I shall bully him!
And those broadcast an air of “I am a big stiff idiot and should get my head caved in”. Of course, I also never like to read too much into that: a Hawaiian Mixed Martial Artist had similar things to say facing a swarthy stocky Australian and then delivered one of the finest losing performances I have ever seen. Plus, Joshua was legitimately impressive in what he had to offer in the first fight, in my book. If he can do that, he can certainly continue to develop, especially on the shot selection front.
Joshua has not displayed the kind of nuanced boxing on the lead or the backfoot to make me think he runs up rounds trying to outbox or lean on his length without addressing that question (and even then). He has to answer it or get clobbered, especially if Usyk is an improved version of himself and looks as good as he has while also being bigger - and possibly hitting harder. It is difficult to imagine Usyk not arriving with some new tools himself, which will only raise another cavalcade of questions. Joshua may impress us all with new and improved AJ MK.III optimised to shut out last fight’s Usyk … and run aground on new looks he cannot adapt to.
Offering something in the clinch that leans nicely into timing seems useful. Nothing disrupts sight-based timing like blocking lines of vision with your body. Other ideas include throwing all kinds of ugly hooks (tying something new to the right uppercut to the head/body maybe?) and disguising or shutting down the out -> in transitions where Usyk can twirl around him like an angry ballerina. I could see Joshua surprising us all with being even better at leveraging his length or his “bigness” relative to before … but both together? It feels like a bridge too far to me, and Joshua has to cross that bridge to win in my book.
Lukasz: I think that’s what it comes down to. Joshua is capable of making the kind of improvements he’d need to beat Usyk, but all of them? In one fight camp? It seems unlikely. This comes doubled with the probable issue that throwing ‘ugly hooks’ and similar things is against his nature and even if he comes with the will to do that I don’t see him keeping it up under the concerted pressure that will rack up as Usyk steps the pace up. It seems counter-intuitive to mark a fighter down for not being untidy when pushed, but if he falls back to a smaller arsenal of completely clean punches, Joshua will be in trouble.
That slow raising of the tempo will be a problem for him too - because, put very simply, even as he is by no means a slow starter, Usyk will take his time to test the waters before really pouring the volume on. That means Joshua will be throwing his new work at a more cautious fighter when fresh, and then tire and have already shown much of his hand. It’s not impossible of course that AJ holds something back for when that aggression comes, but he’s never been a Terence Crawford in that respect, and probably doesn’t have the luxury to give up areas of control early to capitalise later anyway. On top of that, Usyk doesn’t flip a switch from less aggressive to more (the way his compatriot Lomachenko might, and got himself into trouble doing against Linares), he cranks it slowly, so there wouldn’t be one obvious moment for Joshua to bring new responses in.
Mateusz: To put it crudely, I think AJ’s main issue is that he is a good template fighter facing down the pound-for-pound process fighter in the sport.
As previously mentioned, AJ has indeed shown he can change his approach- most obviously he did it between the two Ruiz fights. The process took months, and he was advantaged by the fact that Ruiz lost an intermediary battle with the fridge door and showed a distinct lack of ability to adjust himself, but he did it.
He did indeed also show much more impressive adjustments in the first Usyk fight, where in the middle rounds he somewhat found Usyk’s timing and cracked him a good few times - even by Usyk’s own admission- and started to corral Usyk’s movement a bit with those now infamous body shots. I say ‘infamous’ because ever since, the notion of ‘working the body’ has been jumped on by commentators and AJ’s promo material as some sort of newly-discovered god-killer, along with the much touted ‘using his size’.
The problem was, Usyk being the information-absorbing, pattern-processing swarm that he is, took this new information on board in relatively short order and had negated it to a large degree within a round or two. AJ seemed not to be able to counter-adjust, and indeed it was the later rounds where he was threatened with being overwhelmed (admittedly not an alien experience in an Usyk fight).
This it would appear that while AJ is able to place a template on himself as to how he should fight in a given situation or a certain fighter, once he has reached out and traced the limits of said template and found that they are not suitable any more, the process to change the template is limited and clunky. The same absolutely cannot be said of Usyk; he flows from one situation to the next, seemingly always with an idea of how to clear an obstacle in a fluid series of manoeuvres.
That said,it’s not like there is no hope for redemption. There is a parallel for how Usyk may be nullified from within his own inner circle; Lomachenko was defeated by an opponent in Teo Lopez who clearly understood that he was onto a losing gambit if he tried to step-for-step keep up with a more mobile opponent, and was able to intercept Loma’s movement across his centre line, and use work to the body to slow down and dampen his stamina.
Let’s not get too carried away though, because while Teo found unprecedented success in allowing a smaller fighter to pivot around him and finding the right opportunities to capitalise on interceptions and use some pressure, Usyk is much better on the back foot than Loma and would likely be comfortably able to absorb any attempts to push him back in such a way. He certainly had no issues in fielding Chisora’s endless bumrushes, and nothing in AJ’s resume suggests he’d be any more effective at pressuring than Del Boy.
Now, it’s always hard to read much into promotional material for obvious reasons, but AJs pronouncements have strayed over the line from ‘promo fluff’ to ‘ surely you can’t believe that, pal’, which suggests a level of delusion that cannot possibly help him. He claims he ‘wanted to go the twelve rounds’ and that he could have knocked Usyk out if he wanted, and frankly this apparent hubris suggests a lack of nuanced thought heading into a fight with a very nuanced tactician. It doesn’t bode well.
Iggy: The bit about AJ's remarks is very true but it also bears mentioning that AJ is a media animal first and ring beast second. He just says whatever he thinks his target demographic wants to hear. This may sound harsh but that's just the perception I've developed over the years of following Joshua's career with what admittedly could be best described as "Mild disinterest".
This is your carte blanche to disregard my input right there, by the way. I don't find Joshua interesting or multi-faceted enough to justify breaking his fighting style down in as much detail or depth as I did Terence Crawford's for example, so if there are certain hidden skills I've overlooked, then I apologise.
However, while I could conceivably picture Joshua looking much improved or nuanced, I just don't see a (admittedly well-schooled) meat & potatoes boxer-puncher pulling out what is essentially a miracle out of his ass and knocking one of the greatest boxers of this generation stiff. We're basically getting into "Puncher's Chance" territory over here. Besides, for all the talk of Usyk's sheer skill, one has to remember that the man is also tough as old boots and if you go back and watch the 1st fight, Usyk eats whatever few good Joshua bombs like tic-tacs. And I don't think Usyk's chin is getting cracked any time soon, least of all by Joshua.
As an aside I've just pictured mouthbreathing boxing pundits talking about how "the Invasion is going to affect Usyk's mindset and give AJ an advantage" and puked in my mouth a little.
Either way I rest my case. Usyk gets it done again.
You know what? I'm not one for pussyfooting around with my picks, and I'm not gonna do it with this one either. Fuck it, Usyk by brutal KO inside ten.
Haxx: We often see AJ portrayed as a "basic" fighter. While I find this term overused for "fundamentally good" boxers who get all the I's dotted and T's crossed, it is true about AJ. We saw that in the first fight - even stepping up was insufficient to clear the gaps. That he was leaning into the new was admirable - yet his discomfort in ‘new’ ideas was apparent.
Usyk is also "basic" in a lot of fundamental ways. But, that forms the skeleton on which his depth, breadth and self-awareness rests. Confronting that over twelve rounds requires everything from AJ and then more. Usyk lives for this in his strange little ways. Great is not good enough, even if AJ’s new sources of greatness added quite a bit to his legacy.
Before the first fight, we had the "X-factor" of size being a possible advantage for AJ. Now, that is gone. He better be starting something new, or this is going worse than the first. The puncher’s chance remains, but even that feels less credible, with an embiggened Usyk looking very likely.
Mateusz: Honestly, yes, I'm leaning towards a relatively straightforward Usyk victory. AJ's chances of winning seem far too predicated on changing his style too much, rather than subtly building on what came before. Especially if he's believed the hype about 'needed to be a more aggressive big man and use his size (as if he implicitly hadn't been trying to before)'.
Despite my previously stated concerns I do agree with Iggy, in that I rather can't see AJ, who is fundamentally not a stupid boxer, and especially Garcia and his team being so foolhardy.
Having mentioned Teo Lopez's surprise victory previously, I just don't think AJ can become nimble enough from one fight to the next to employ a similar pivoting/tracking strategy, and to win in close he would basically have to learn a whole new skillset from scratch. Not happening.
So really, to win, it'd have to be a varied progression on what worked for a short while in the first- timing Usyk's in-and-outs and strafing his exits. That was dealt with already though, and I cannot believe that Usyk's camp won't have the answers to such developments; remember, out of the two fighters in this bout it's Usyk who has already fought rather against type, being surprisingly come-forward from round 1. He's the one who has shown the toolkit to drastically switch gameplans, not AJ. In the spirit of having a competitive heavyweight clash, I rather hope AJ can surprise us all, but I'm with Iggy again on this one- I think Usyk stops it, but I'll say a TKO 10.
Lukasz: Yeah, I think we’ve ended up being pretty united here. Joshua’s a good fighter, a tidy fighter, but ultimately a simple one, and not in the deceptive way a latter-career Floyd Mayweather might be considered simple. He’s capable of making the kind of improvements he needs to have a chance here, but it doesn’t seem likely he’s going to figure them all out in one go, even with a year to work.
As Iggy said, some pundits will be considering what effect the Ukraine situation might have on Usyk, but given that it could also mean the opposite- he’ll be as motivated as he has ever been - and we have no indication that it’s slowed down his training, it shouldn’t really factor into any predictive thinking about the fight.
With all that in mind, I’m going to have to go with all my colleagues and predict an Usyk win, and if Joshua does push more aggressively, then we could see more fatigue and a finish inside the distance.