Oleksandr Usyk's team believe fans misinterpreted the ninth round of his world title rematch with Anthony Joshua early this month.
The Ukrainian appeared to be hurt at multiple points during the fight, but was never truly wobbled by Joshua except for a brief spell in round nine. He had been bossing the fight, but Joshua got through and appeared to be turning things around when he seemingly hurt the champion badly for the first time in their 21 rounds together.
But Usyk's cornerman Russ Anber has insisted the reactions were a bit much and that the champion returned to the corner essentially unfazed. He believes his fighter was simple "weathering the storm", and was never as badly hurt as it may have appeared on the broadcast.
“It was a great [Joshua] round,” Anber said during an interview with BBC 5 Live. “I think you’ll understand this. Even though he doesn’t have a lot of professional experience, all he did was weather the storm. So it looked like AJ was all over him, got him hurt, the big guy’s hitting you, right?
“But instead of trying to grab and panic, he just weathered the storm. He knew this guy was coming. ‘OK, I’ve lost this round, doesn’t matter, I’m not going to lose it any worse than this.’ So he came back to the corner. He was fine when he came back to the corner. We hit him with the ice water. He was fine. The evidence was what happened in the next round.”
Despite seemingly taking some damage in that ninth, Usyk did return to boxing in the tenth just as he had been for not only the previous eight, but also the 12 in London last year that saw him win the belt. The Ukrainian ultimately ended up dominating proceedings and took the belts home again, with Joshua taking the microphone and making a bizarre speech afterwards.
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The Brit had completely changed up his training camp in an effort to get his belts back from Usyk although it proved fruitless. However, he had clearly improved a great deal and even managed to win the fight on one particularly controversial judge's scorecard.
“100 per cent,” Anber added of Joshua's improvements. “He had the guard up. He was difficult to hit. He wasn’t letting Usyk move him back like he did last time. He stood his ground. If he sensed that he was getting any sense of danger from Usyk he just fired back to keep Usyk honest.”
Now, it appears the heavyweight division will finally be unified in a bout set for February between Usyk the unified WBA super, WBO and IBF champion, and Fury who holds the WBC belt. The division hasn't had an undisputed champion since Lennox Lewis, and never had anyone hold all of the belts in the four-title era, with even the less fancied IBO title and the ceremonial The Ring Magazine titles on the line.
