The Big Fight

List of Contents:
1. How I Knew
2. Why not Fury?
3. Why Usyk?
4. Should you believe me?
5. What happens next?
6. BONUS!

How I Knew

In 2015, Wladimir Klitschko was imperious. Nobody expected his reign would end. And yet I called that Tyson Fury would beat him.

As I saw it, Fury's feet didn't stay put, his head didn't stay still, he'd be scrappy when close, and Klitschko would not know how to react when meeting a type of fighter unlike any he'd faced in years.

How did I know Oleksandr Usyk would beat Fury? Simple. It made sense to me that 9 years later the shoe would be on the other foot.

Why not Fury?

I'd always leaned Usyk. And became more convinced he would win when writing out my thoughts on the fight. It was after tallying up the oldest men in undisputed heavyweight fights that I had to take notice of Fury being up there in years. It was seeing those photos of the new "skinny" Fury that meant I could not ignore how difficult it seemed for him to get into shape. It was confronting his unending proclivity for antics that forced my judgement call.

Those insights were reinforced during the fight. Fury wore his shorts high to cover his spare tire, he postured in the face of the Usyk corner as soon as he got in the ring, he played to the crowd in the opening round without having done anything. A conman out of tricks. A faded rockstar garbling lyrics out of tune. Another British fighter who could not hack it when facing the best of the best.

Has there ever been a more meteoric fall in boxing stock in such a short period of time?

What is Tyson Fury's legacy now? His greatest win was the decision over a 39 year old Wladimir Klitschko. And it's only by the grace of Boxing Corruption that he was allowed to fight in November without disclosing that he tested positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid, earlier that year. Nevertheless, he beat the man.

After a longer-than-brief retirement, there were wins over lightly regarded European competition and domestic footnotes Dillian Whyte & Derek Chisora. Then came the back-and-forth wars with the infamous can-crusher Deontay Wilder, who still nearly crushed Fury twice. Entertaining fights, yes. But they were fights in a vacuum. The credibility of those wins would only hold up if Wilder's credibility held up. Then at the end of 2023, Wilder went on to be dominated by the only other top opponent he's faced, losing in a 12-round mauling to Joseph Parker.

The nadir, however, was barely beating boxing-debutant Francis Ngannou. Fury getting dropped by the Cameroonian challenger in a non-title fight was an eye-opening moment for many. The champ was an overweight chump. But it couldn't be Fury's fault, could it? Maybe Ngannou deserves more credit? Could he belong among the top heavyweights in the world? Spoiler: Ngannou would go on to get convincingly beaten by Fury's domestical rival Anthony Joshua. The same Joshua who has knocked out every mutual opponent he and Fury have faced.

Tyson Fury? A man who got carved up by Otto Wallin? A man who peaked 9 years ago after not disclosing a failed drugs test? A man who twice delayed The Big Fight but still could not get in shape? This is who people were talking about as the new greatest of all time? I always disputed it. And now there is no doubt.

Such a man simply did not deserve to be undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

Why Usyk?

I'd spent years after the Klitschko fight contending that Fury would re-emerge as the top heavyweight on the planet. That was then and this is now. Fury was up against someone of great amateur pedigree and someone who, irrespective of the division's strength or lack thereof, was king of the cruiserweights.

The wins over Anthony Joshua weren't the most convincing to me because Joshua's ability is annoying to pin down. I felt that the second fight was winnable for him in those final rounds. Maybe a third fight would be too. And then there was the sorry sight of Usyk kvetching on the floor for several minutes after a beltline shot from Daniel DuBois.

These factors circled my mind before reaching the only sensible conclusion that I could make. He won all those contests. It's like after a football match when someone brings up all manner of stats to stay why a team should or shouldn't have lost - they miss that the only statistic which matters is the scoreline. When push comes to shove, Usyk tinkers and delivers.

The tinkerer made adjustments in this fight too. The rhythm to his fights is familiar. Opponents try to suss him out, they seemingly adapt to his style and grow in confidence around the middle rounds, all for that renewed confidence to be steadily stripped away across the remainder of the fight. They're unable to compute as quickly as he does.

Fury got caught at the end of the first with a left hand to the face that left him pawing at his nose for the next 11 rounds and increasingly devastating left hands followed throughout the evening. Yet every punch was evitable. Tyson Fury was taller and had the longer reach, he had the means to avoid those punches. He merely lacked the will to evade them. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make to showboat or land shots of his own. But Usyk took those shots well when asked if he was up to the challenge, especially when he was rocked by an uppercut in the sixth. It was Fury who faltered when confronted by a return salvo in the ninth after Usyk upped the tempo in the eighth.

Like every classic heavyweight contest, this was a back-and-forth affair. Usyk may have looked vulnerable and for the taking at times, but the true mark of greatness is to succeed even when the likely outcome appears to be failure. There's no need to eulogise his career yet. He is the undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Hip, hip, hoorah!

Should you believe me?

Boxing fans are fickle when it comes to judging men braver than themselves. One win and they're top of the world. One loss and they were always overrated bums.

The commentators took this to new extremes during the fight as they flip-flopped in their estimations of Fury and Usyk every other round. After reaching an opinion, I'm always receptive to new data, however that doesn't mean constantly changing your opinion. It means considering if the process you used to reach that opinion would change with the new data factored in. Is the math mathing?

There aren't many boxing corners you can turn to for objectivity. Broadcasters aren't interested in maths, they're selling you an entertainment product. And if they're fronted by British presenters, expect them to favour the Brit. The same goes for managers. Same goes for promoters. And the same goes for other nationalities judging their countrymen too. All the while boxing's nu-media are vying to be influencers. Their entire M.O. is building a following. This manifests itself through caps-lock clickbait titles and """exclusive""" immediate reactions. You'll get more exclusives if you have access, and the best way to get access is to be a lickspittle.

Boxing's powers-that-be disincentivise objectivity. They disincentivise truth. Why wouldn't they? Myths help sell the product. Objectivity and truth are a slippery slope towards scrutiny and criticism. The inevitable relitigation after a big fight contributes too. Would I be writing so scathingly about Fury or so praisefully about Usyk had the fight gone differently? I don't know. This isn't a traditional media outlet where I prepare parallel narratives and then publish whichever one suits me.

All I know is the facts of what they accomplished before the fight are unchanged. Fury would have no serious claim to being the greatest ever heavyweight even if he were undisputed. I don't care what Bob Arum says. The facts of what happened in the fight are now established. It remains to be seen what Usyk's victory lap will look like. As far as I'm concerned, the hypotheticals are irrelevant and the new data against Fury's legacy is almost insurmountable. He's not a bum for having lost this one fight. The legitimate questions are "was he ever worth all that hype to begin with?" and "can he come back from this?"

Bear in mind, this was not a shut-out.

What happens next?

Unfortunately, it's probably going to be a rematch. Unless it isn't. Originally said to be in October and already rescheduled for December 21st. Happy new year!

BONUS! - Petty nitpicks and pontifications

• The postfight situation was an unruly mess with dozens of people, including no fewer than nine cameramen and even more photographers, swarming the ring. None of the broadcasters were sure what was going on as the decision was delayed.
  • DAZN's Ade Oladipo got the honours of the first interview with the champ and he carried on the tradition of modern """journalists""" simply making a statement and hoping the interviewee forms a response. It went so poorly he had to turn his attention to the loser and then the promoter. Ridiculous. Larry Merchant was great at asking specific questions pertaining to the fight itself instead of generic "how do you feel?" or "what went right/wrong?" questions that a child could come up with.
  • It was incredibly disappointing to see a momentous fight so quickly glossed over as both Usyk and Fury were immediately bombarded by questions about their rematch clause. Not by baying fans on social media, but by paid media personalities in the ring and journalists in the post-fight conference. These people have no sense of occasion. Live in the moment for Jah's sake!
• The British Broadcasting Corporation, for whatever reason, were unable to secure radio commentary rights for the fight. Given how integral radio was to boxing's popularity in the 20th-century, no live English radio commentary for a fight of this magnitude has to be extremely rare. Every(*) undisputed heavyweight championship heavyweight title fight that happened outside America since the invention of commercial radio featured either George Foreman, Muhammad Ali, or Mike Tyson - so it's safe to assume radio commentators were present at all of those.
  • In the internet age, some amateurs take to commentating fights online from television feeds. But that can never be the same as calling it live from an uninterrupted in-person perspective. Unless someone in Riyadh recorded their own live commentary for personal use, this gives Ring of Fire a rather sad 'first' from a historical perspective.
  • I specify English-language radio commentary because I cannot discount the possibility that there may have been radio commentary in Ukrainian, Arabic, or another language.
• I've long said Compubox is bad. Ring of Fire debuted something worse in jabbr.ai, an AI-powered punch stats generator. Or "history in the making, first time ever running AI live stats on boxing and in combat sports" as they call it. The problem with Compubox is that the people paid to count are not at the fight themselves, and they're prone to making mistakes (missing punches, double counting others, counting a blocked punch as landing, counting a push as a punch, counting an illegal shot as valid etc). jabbr.ai, which like Compubox works from video footage, will make all those mistakes in addition to making new ones a human would never think to make.
• The record books will all say the date this fight took place was May 18th but the main event started in the early hours of May 19th, local time.
• It hit me during the postfight interview that Usyk is only the fourth non-native English speaker to be undisputed heavyweight champion after Max Schmeling (Germany) & Primo Carnera (Italy) in the early 1930s and the brief 1-year reign of Ingo Johansson (Sweden).
  • As far as I can tell, the only other multilingual undisputed heavyweights champion were Ezzard Charles, who learned Spanish and Italian during his time in the military, Rocky Marciano, who was made to "attend twice-a-week lessons in Italian language and grammar at the Novelli Club" by his mother, and Jack Johnson, who reportedly spoke Yaqui, Spanish, and mangled French. There's also the possibility that Joe Frazier may have spoken gullah as a child.
• None of this would have been possible without Turki Alalshikh, the man who should be credited for kickstarting a new boxing golden age with the backing of King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And credit to them for putting on a historic card.
  • In another welcome ripping-up of the rule book, the entire main event was made available for free on YouTube just three days after the fight. Most boxing fans will watch live, which is why it makes sense to provide the option as quickly as possible to anyone who missed it. New fans are essential to the survival of any sport.
    • An Arabic-commentary version was made available for free as well.
  • On the charge of sportswashing I do not wish to be a hypocrite because I believe the greatest fight of all time to be the Thrilla in Manila, a fight which only happened in Manila thanks to Filipino strongman Ferdinand Marcos.
    • One thing I will say that's overlooked is that Saudi Arabia is looking to diversify its economy away from oil. It's what the UAE has successfully done in the past few decades (and past 15 years in particular), now other Gulf states are looking to emulate them. If you're like me and think climate change is a bad thing, this change in attitudes should be welcomed or at the very least acknowledged as a positive.
• I thought it may have been too presumptuous when I said there would be "9 (nine!) titles on the line" because I wasn't sure the WBC would bring two belts. Then I remembered that it's the WBC. And sure enough, both the green belt and flagged versions were there.
  • It appears that the WBO made a """special""" undisputed belt in addition to their regular belt too. So a grand total of 9 physical belts, and 10 titles if you include the ethereal lineal championship. The title of undisputed was made corporeal for this match.
• Fury's legs looked a lot skinnier than I remembered. Now that I think about, his legs were only slightly bigger than Deontay Wilder's notoriously skinny legs. It's only an observation but Usyk and Joshua aren't as top-heavy.
• A lot of people seem to think the referee should've stopped Fury in the 9th round or was wrong to even give the count despite Fury not touching the canvas. I blame the commentators who don't explain these matters and referees for not consistently applying the rules ("if a fighter is prevented from going down by the ropes then it should be called as a knockdown")
  • Everyone seems to have missed that the referee gave no admonishment to Fury for leaving his left extended to push Usyk away or for holding onto the top rope while throwing punches, which is against the rules because you can use it for balance and leverage.
• Fury wore green gloves and green shorts. Not a huge deal. He's worn green gloves and shorts before, though usually separately. Usyk unsurprisingly wore Ukranian colours for the biggest fight of his boxing life. Don't make the mistake of thinking that Fury's get-up was in honour of The Emerald Isle though, it was almost certainly to do with this payday being courtesy of Saudi Arabia's Riyadh season.
• It didn't make a huge impression on me when during the promotion of Knockout Chaos, Anthony Joshua was asked about Francis Ngannou knocking down Fury and responded "who hasn't knocked Fury down?". A few weeks ago before the fight it was revealed to me in a dream: Anthony Joshua made a damn good point.
• What was the attendance for the Usyk-Fury fight? We know that Riyadh's Kingdom Arena has 26,000 seats (around the same as Selhurst Park and Craven Cottage) and that it was reported as sold out. But it's traditionally used as a soccer stadium, meaning that there were additional floor seats. No official number has been given as far as I can tell, in any case it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out from the seating plan.
  • Why not give the official attendance? I have two theories:
    • Uno: The arena "accommodates more than 40,000 people", which is double the crowd at either Lewis-Holyfield fight but roughly half a sold-out Wembley Stadium or World Cup final. It's a big number, the issue could be that we're used to bigger numbers in sport.
    • Dos: Saudi crowds share characteristics with Japanese crowds in that they aren't as vocal, the loudest they tend to get is during the national anthem, when someone is on the verge of being knocked out, or applauding the winner. Granted, they don't have alcohol coursing through their veins like rowdy British or American crowds often do. But the narrative against holding events in Saudi Arabia (though not Japan) is the "dead atmosphere". And publicising a big attendance when people are fixated on how quiet it sounds for TV audiences could be a juxtaposition they want to prevent.
• I was already working on a separate post that touches on this but post-fight promotion is as important as pre-fight promotion imo. After the World Cup final or Olympics, there's a good week or two of interviews and news discussions on mainstream outlets about the big event that just happened. It's almost a fortnight since the biggest possible fight in boxing; Usyk has made a few social media posts and Fury is still in hiding. Who should take charge? The fight promoters? Or the fighters themselves? Nobody is fussed either way so both end up abdicating responsibility.
• A few reports said that the temperature in the arena was chilly, as many indoor spaces in the Middle East and North Africa tend to be. I've read that Las Vegas venues do the same given the surrounding Nevada sahara. I'm not advocating for desert conditions in the ring, but we know that cold air slows the body and the tempo of fights was higher in hot-blooded bouts of the previous century.
• The traditional way to write about a fight is to give a round-by-round summary. This made sense when fight footage was something most only saw once, either live, on a repeat, or in news highlights. When home video became an option, the offerings were almost exclusively from the archives of long since past. Now, the live footage is ever-accessible from a super-computer that sits in the palm of your hand. As are the repeats and highlights. Who does the post-fight round-by-round summary serve? It helps with comparing rationale for scorecards but not much else. Fights should be recalled in prose.
• Behind-the-scenes videos were uploaded to YouTube by Matchroom Boxing and TNT Sports. The Matchroom one thankfully has no commentary over the fight proper, but the TNT one has some great corner footage and the much better view of the 9th round knockdown (as well as the clearest shot of Fury snarling at Usyk as the round ends).
  • DAZN is presumably working on a Ring of Fire documentary, not unlike the one they did for the Day of Reckoning.
  • Queensberry and/or Team Fury probably had somebody recording as well but their man lost. If it does exist, don't expect to see it until there's a Last Dance documentary of some sort.
• Fury is a fool for alleging that pro-Ukrainian bias tilted the scorecards. Does he not read the news? Frank Warren had enough sense to immediately try and downplay the comments in the post-fight press conference, but it can't be unsaid. "I thought I won the fight" reminded me so much of Pacquiao's feeble claim to victory after the Hype of The Century
  • On the way to the post-fight press conference, he said he thought he was up by four or five rounds and in the press conference he said his team told him he was up in the corner. In reality, they were begging him to win both of the final two rounds. The "you have to win this round" message was more forceful before the bell for 12th, which Fury did win on the all 3 scorecards. But if Mike Fitzgerald (who had it 6 rounds apiece) has scored Round 11 for Fury, it would've been a split decision win for Fury. It was a close round and Usyk may well have stolen it with a left hand just before the bell to end the 11th. The fight was that close.
• The official scoring was by Spain's Manuel Oliver Palermo (7-5, 115-112 Usyk), Canada's Craig Metcalfe (7-5, 114-113 Fury) and USA's Mike Fitzgerald (6-6, 114-113, Usyk). The only rounds they all scored the same way were rounds 1, 8, 9, & 10 for Usyk and rounds 5, 6, 7, & 12 for Fury. Leaving rounds 2, 3, 4, & 11 as toss-ups in their eyes.
  • If Fury had not been knocked down in the 9th or had knocked Usyk down at any point, he would still be an undefeated heavyweight champion.
• The old expression goes "if you chase a boxer, you get the crown; if you chase a puncher, you get knocked down". Usyk did most of the chasing. And he did not get knocked down. Despite getting hit by the same right uppercut that floored Chisora and despite getting hit with multiple right hand body shots not unlike the one that gave him pause against DuBois. Is Fury's knockout power not all it was cracked up to be?
• Why did so many people get it so wrong? A lot of the predictions, especially from Blighty, heavily favoured Fury to win. Much of it is bias, stemming from a personal relationship with a fighter or a shared national identity. Many of the people who were wrong about this fight were also convinced Artur Beterbiev would lose to Callum Smith.
  • My baseless speculation though is that many people couldn't picture the big guy losing to the little guy. "A good big 'un beats a good little 'un" and all that jazz. Fury looks like a heavyweight. And he spent years telling everyone that Usyk (same height/weight as Ali) was a jumped-up middleweight.
• The cheapest ticket price was 70 Saudi Riyals. Inflation-adjusted, these were almost certainly the cheapest undisputed heavyweight title fight tickets since Don King toured the global south with Foreman and Ali in the 1970s.
• The PPV prices were as follows:
  • DAZN (worldwide): 69.99 USD (USA), 21.99 USD (ROW), 20 EUR (Europe), 24.99 GBP (UK) - note: required separate DAZN subscription
• Sky Sports Box Office (UK/Ireland): 24.95 GBP, 27.95 EUR
• TNT Box Office (UK): 24.99 GBP
• Megogo (Ukraine/worldwide): 1 UAH / 0.02 USD / 0.02 GBP / 0.02 EUR - note: introductory 14-day offer
  • My two cents is that this was the best value for money.
• The capitalist illusion of choice tried to pull a fast one with the option to purchase the PPV on ESPN+ or Amazon/Discovery+, but these were just frontends for the identically-priced DAZN and TNT streams, respectively.
  • note: PPV on ESPN+ required separate ESPN+ subscription
• I believe the camera angles made this fight annoying to score so I don't have a scorecard of my own to share. The problem was compounded by all broadcasters using the same director. It's one of the topics I was already writing about for part 2 of my articles on Boxing Broadcasts.
  • The pre-fight part where the referee points out where punches would be considered low or on the belt was completely missed by the cameras that remained focused on close-ups of the two fighters
  • The descending overhead shot at the start of the 10th was good. The surprise was slightly spoiled by a similar shot appearing during Dreamville rapper J.I.D's performance earlier in the evening. But I do like that they're experimenting a little.
• The BBC Sport live text coverage published my message but I forgot to plug my site 🥲
  • I don't know why I was thinking of Jimmy Young. Naming all undisputed heavyweight champions just felt like it would be boring to type out and most people would probably cheat, so my mind drifted to paying homage to guys who never get a paragraph in those history books or a mention on nights like that.
• A report by the unsettlingly named company, Yield Sec, claimed that 19,791,009 people streamed the fight online for free "costing rights holders £95m"
  • This makes the faulty supposition that anti-piracy activists often do, which is that if legal means were the only ones available then every single interested person would instead pay for the content. Not true. Many would simply choose not to pay under any circumstances.
    • The total figure is also open to spin. If everyone who saw the fight online for free paid the two cents that Megogo was charging, then the "lost revenue" figure would be closer to $400,000.
  • Yield Sec is a product of Atropos Intelligence, a gambling industry consultant. Founder & CEO (derogatory) Ismail Vali is an Oxford-graduate (derogatory), former investment banker (derogatory), and former marketing executive (derogatory) for UK high-street gambling firm Ladbrokes and online poker firms. Oh won't someone please think of the honest crooks!?
    • It's unsurprising that he believes gambling (with places that pay him) is good and black-market gambling (with places that don't pay him) is bad. "My view of the gaming industry [sic] is that if you run this business right there is a river of unalloyed good that can come from it. And you only need to look at the brick-and-mortar example of Las Vegas". I can agree with the notion of prohibition being an ineffective or counterproductive approach when it comes to fighting some social ills like alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs. But gambling really should be discouraged to the utmost degree. This nonsense destroys lives, kills people, and the genie is not getting back in its bottle, much to the delight of parasites in the gambling industry.
• Culture vulture, gambling addict, and freaky ass ninja, Aubrey Graham (AKA BBL Drizzy), wagered over half a million dollars on Tyson Fury winning this fight - his long track record of bad picks spawned a popular internet meme known as 'the Drake curse'
• A picture is worth a thousand words. Yet there aren't too many great photos of this fight in a lot of articles despite there being at least a dozen photographers ringside. In a perfect world, all photos of a fight would be easily-accessible in one place. This next picture, the best one I could find of the knockdown, was taken by the official Queensberry Promotions photographer. It wasn't widely shared as far as I can tell, because why would Queensberry want to show how badly their man got beat?

• I rewatched the fight a few times since seeing it live. Mainly to see if I'd spot anything new but also to compare the three broadcasters that carried it. Here are the remarkable moments from each.
  • DAZN - commentary by Todd Grisham, Mike Costello, Barry Jones, and Darren Barker, with Chris Mannix and Joseph Parker
• The live broadcast constantly cut to ads for the new Bad Boys movie, even in between rounds. I'm never going to watch the movie and I feel bad for anyone who paid for their terrible service. Mr. Alalshikh uploaded this broadcast for free onto his Youtube channel but thankfully without the ad breaks.
• Four commentators is too many. I don't know why they didn't split the team for separate American and British feeds since they're paying them all already.
• Round 1, TG: "Nice jabs to the stomach by Usyk and there's plenty of real estate to work with"
• Barry Jones said "this might be a 2-round fight yknow?" at the start of the 11th and "we've come to Riyadh to see a 1-round fight!" at the start of the 12th. Come on, man...
• The whole world was waiting for Michael Buffer but Todd Grisham, who regularly flubs his lines, told the world that "Thomas Treiber has the decision" before noticing his error
• Mannix's scorecard: 115-112 Usyk. Fury winning rounds 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; Usyk winning rounds 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
• TNT Sports (formerly BT Sports) - commentary by Darren Fletcher and Richard Woodhall, with Steve Bunce
  • Very biased in favour of Fury. The punches he threw were talked about even if they didn't land, the punches Usyk landed weren't worthy of remarking on. I'm not sure where they were sat but they couldn't see how bloody Fury's nose was at the end of the 8th until the replays.
• Round 3, DF: "Fury's got the ability, if he wants to, to just tie [Usyk] up. He's like an octopus when he wraps those big arms around you." - Octopodes are of course notorious for their bear hugs.
• Round 5, DF: "Body shot goes in, little pat of his own side by Usyk. What message did that send I wonder?" - I think it sent the message that the punch was low.
• These guys have the gall to claim Fury was "fully fit"
• Woodhall's scorecard: 114-114 draw. Fury winning 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12; Usyk winning 1, 3, 8, 9, 11; with round 10 even/drawn (note: the official scorecards all gave round 10 to Usyk)
• The broadcast team at the TNT table in the arena consisted of Becky Ives alongside Carl Frampton, David Haye, and Steve Bunce; JayDee Dyer was their postfight interviewer. The table had replicas of the WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO belts under it and if you're a perceptive person, you might have noticed the WBC replica belt was the classic design that ends with the Japanese flag instead of the modern design that has tagged the Ukrainian flag on for the past couple of years. It's not a big error but it's one heck of a night for accidental Ukraine erasure.
• Sky Sports Box Office - Commentary by Andy Clarke, Frazer Clarke (no relation), and Matthew Macklin
• In between rounds 6 and 7, John Fury and Javan SugarHill continue to yell over each other in contrast to the calm and direct words to Usyk from Yurii Tkachenko. According to Sky, the urgency was from Usyk's corner. Also it's only here that I noticed Fury almost walks to the wrong corner at the end of the 6th after playing to the crowd.
• Saying "Usyk feeling that one might have strayed a little bit low there, the referee didn't have too much to say about it" is straight gaslighting when the referee audibly says "keep 'em up" twice and gestures as he does it in the 8th
• Credit to Sky for being the only broadcast to inform viewers that the referee was right to call a knockdown because the ropes held Fury up
• There was no designated scorer or official scorecard for Sky, the commentators just shared their thoughts occasionally. They had it 1-3 Usyk, 4-6 Fury, 7 as a draw or Fury round, 8-11 Usyk, 12 Fury – resulting in a 115-112 win for Usyk (116 if you believe 7 was a draw).
• Unlike the wonderful HBO broadcasts of old, there were no corner translators for this fight to tell us what was being said in Usyk's corner on any of the broadcasts. I wonder if this is because most people who speak Ukrainian were more concerned with a different fight. More likely it's that most broadcasters don't think it's a worthwhile expense.
  • The Ukrainian-language broadcast on Megogo did not have a translator for the English-speaking Fury corner either.
• Having seen the fight several times now, the 'too many cooks' problem becomes clearer each time. John Fury and Javan SugarHill do not stop speaking over each other. Mark Nelson (the referee), Andy Lee, and even cutman Frank Hopkins had words for Fury during his one-minute rests too. That's a lot of information to parse even when you're not getting punched in the head by the baddest man on the planet.
  • Interestingly, John Fury was not in the corner between rounds 1 and 2.
• In between the 11th and 12th round, there's a replay of Frank Warren and Turki Alalshikh sitting ringside and having a... discussion of some sort. They seem to have a similar discussion at the start of the 8th as well. It wasn't smiles and handshakes immediately after the fight ended either. Hopefully a future documentary won't skip over these exchanges.
• It's very easy to miss but when Usyk landed the big left at the end of the first, Anthony Joshua had a huge smile on his face and applauded Usyk after being completely stone-faced when Fury was joking around in the corner.

Housekeeping

• On the TNT Sports commentary, Darren Fletcher claimed "Lennox Lewis - who's ringside tonight - the last undisputed heavyweight champion. Jack Dempsey was the first back in the 1920s". I'll allow myself a rare written curse word here; what the actual fuck?
  • I made the mistake of looking into how someone can say something so patently untrue and I came across a DAZN article from 2020 (back when there had "not yet been a four-belt undisptued [sic] champ in the heavyweight division") which claimed Jack Dempsey's reign as the first undisputed champion began on "July 24, 1922". TalkSPORT agrees. Whereas Wikipedia says 1921, but an old version of the page used to say "July 24, 1922."
    • Why that date? With an educated guess you might suppose that it was because Ring Magazine was founded in 1922, but their first issue came out in February of that year. July 24th 1922 was actually the date of some random 4-round exhibition Dempsey took part in.
    • That random date was added by Wikipedia user 'Juandope' in April 2009. He seemed to have made numerous incorrect contributions and was banned for a few years for vandalism and disruptive editing. We can blame him for erasing John Sullivan, Gentleman Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jim Jeffries, Marvin Hart, Canadian Tommy Burns, Jack Johnson, and Jess Willard from the heavyweight canon. Before Juandope's edit, the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world began in 1964 with Muhammad Ali.
      • The arbitrary date 'July 24th 1922' remained unchanged for over 12 years until Wikipedia user 'Blizzythesnowman' went on an editing spree in July 2021, first listing the date as '2 July 1921' (the date of Dempsey-Carpentier) before changing it to 'January 1921' (when the National Boxing Association was formed).
• My view on Dempsey is uncomplicated: he hid behind the colour line to avoid top black contenders, that makes it very easy to dispute him and every heavyweight titlist until Joe Louis. And if you want to exclude the mob and blatant cowardice, the first serious/legitimate modern heavyweight title fight should Patterson-Liston I.
• The BBC live page I mentioned earlier did eventually list the answer to 'every undisputed heavyweight champion'. At the time, I thought some silly intern at the BBC just mispelled Jersey Joe Walcott when they gave his name as "Jersey Joe Wollacott". It's just occured to me that the silly intern at the BBC just lazily copied their list from TalkSPORT. Complete with the spelling mistake and the lie that boxing did not exist before Jack Dempsey.

I didn't expect to cover this much or to take this long doing so. But I'm glad I did. It seems a shame to so quickly move on from a monumental event in a sport that doesn't see them very often. I hope you found it interesting or that it's a valuable resource in the future. Here's to The Next Big Fight not taking another quarter century.