on social media<\/a> shortly after the fight. It\u2019s a contest Usyk certainly wants. \u201cI want to fight him and if I\u2019m not fighting Tyson Fury, I\u2019m not fighting at all,\u201d he declared here, having paid tribute to the Ukrainian military, something of great importance to the 35-year-old. He spent time before this fight serving in his country\u2019s armed forces as part of their defence against Russia\u2019s invasion. Usyk came here determined to provide his war-torn homeland with a reason to feel pride and joy and well and truly delivered.<\/p>\nThis was the second time Joshua had fought in Saudi Arabia, following his victory over Andy Ruiz Jr in Diriyah three years ago. As was the case then, both fighters were asked in the buildup about how they could justify taking part in an event that, quite clearly, was part of the kingdom\u2019s sportswashing strategy. Neither gave especially satisfactory responses, with Joshua making clear he was \u201chere for boxing\u201d. No doubt the minimum \u00a333m purse he and Usyk reportedly received for squaring up in the Middle East played a part in both of their decisions.<\/p>\n
And so, ultimately, attention turned to the Abdullah Sports City Arena, an impressive venue but unfitting for a contest of this magnitude given it only has capacity for 10,000 spectators. To put that into context, a crowd of 68,000 gathered to see these two fight in north London last year. The rematch clearly deserved a bigger stage, and the knock-on effect of not having one was an atmosphere that rarely rose above polite.<\/p>\n
In fairness to those in attendance here, which included boxing legends Roberto Duran and Naseem Hamed, the volume was lively enough by the time Joshua and Usyk emerged to do battle shortly after 1am local time and continued to rise during an epic encounter.<\/p>\n
Usyk was initially able to keep Joshua at bay with his southpaw jab but soon the challenger was landing with a succession of right hands. Usyk responded with a couple of clubbing lefts in the fourth that forced Joshua back while also bewitching him with his characteristically slick and clever movement.<\/p>\n
But Joshua kept on coming and connected with two crushing shots to the body in the sixth, forcing Usyk on to the ropes. Yet again, however, the champion displayed his class by smoothly getting out trouble and peppering Joshua with punches from various angles.<\/p>\n
The seventh and eight round were largely even and then came the ninth as Joshua exploded into life, fully using his superior size and power to rock the man in front of him. It looked like a shock win was on the cards but then Usyk did what he does best \u2013 taking command of a fight through a combination of sublime technique and relentless ferocity. In the end his victory was beyond question, something Joshua, in the most unique of fashion, also had to accept.<\/p>\n
story by Sachin nakrin<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Anthony Joshua it was ultimately all too much. Having been defeated by the outstanding Oleksandr Usyk for a second time and consequently failing in his bid to regain his status as a heavyweight champion, he threw two of the victors\u2019 three belts out of the ring before storming out of it himself on what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":25002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3295],"tags":[4830,7273,1109,11830,11866,12750,5810,7960,8924,9331,8908,9171,1110,10739,3015,7807,746,11638,3932,1444,4832,5252,7351,7519,8954,6077,3684,3797,8719,203,5572,12287,7078,7964,7735,11973,12103,7348,8443,2219,6978,587,3457,8160,1364,5349,10041,6965,723,1722,5555,10885,5654,5251,3954,10415,36,594,5784],"class_list":["post-25001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-sport","tag-andy-ruiz","tag-anthony","tag-anthony-joshua","tag-armed-forces","tag-bail","tag-boxer","tag-boxing","tag-case","tag-chance","tag-city","tag-coach","tag-crowd","tag-diriyah","tag-display","tag-epic","tag-fashion","tag-feel","tag-forced","tag-heavyweight-champion","tag-hell","tag-ibf","tag-invasion","tag-jail","tag-judges","tag-klitschko","tag-lennox-lewis","tag-london","tag-mexican","tag-middle-east","tag-mike-tyson","tag-military","tag-movement","tag-muhammad-ali","tag-north","tag-oleksandr-usyk","tag-one","tag-price","tag-red-sea","tag-retirement","tag-roberto","tag-rock","tag-ruiz","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-social-media","tag-speech","tag-split","tag-tottenham","tag-tyson-fury","tag-ukrainian","tag-victory","tag-vitali-klitschko","tag-war","tag-will","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who","tag-youth"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}