Usyk vs. Gassiev: A Strong Fight of the Year Candidate; Do Not Miss It

Not since 1986 and the legendary war between a young Evander Holyfield and the iron man Dwight Muhammad Qawi has a cruiserweight contest so stirred the imagination of the hardcore boxing fan.

When Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk (14-0 with 11 knockouts) and Russian Murat Gassiev (26-0 with 19 knockouts) meet this Saturday atop a stacked bill in Moscow it will begin a new lineage for the division’s championship, unify the various alphabet straps, and indisputably match the two best cruiserweights on the planet, rocketing one or the other either onto or up the pound-for-pound list depending on your perspective.

A stuck-on fight-of-the-year candidate with fight of the decade potential, it is to be broadcast, in the United States of America, on the unheralded Klowd TV, and has landed on the most minor pay-per-view entity in United Kingdom sports broadcasting, ITV.

The indifference in some quarters has been as extraordinary as it has been inexplicable.

It may be that the market continues to struggle with two men who conduct themselves in a respectful manner; it may that the market continues to struggle with the 200lb limit, which is not quite one thing, nor the other; it may be that Usyk’s admitted failure to show his very best in 2016 and 2017 when he appeared on American television hurt him more than is reasonable. Whatever the detail, this fight, of all fights, is something of a lo-fi event.

Do not miss it.

Nearly lost to us due to injury and a desperate dispute over location, the fight was originally to be staged in the raging heat of Saudi Arabia where business interests have been competing to stage a major fight on middle-eastern soil for some time now. When that fell through the fight was orphaned as the World Boxing Super Series struggled to find it a home.

Moscow was the most interested and Moscow is where it has landed but that location is not without its controversies. Russia is not an easy place for a Ukrainian athlete to compete at this moment in time, and nor has it been since February of 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

Essentially, Usyk is fighting in a country which was at war with his own in the very near past, and the notion that he won’t receive a fair shake is a powerful one. Usyk himself is unconcerned.

“I am an athlete,” he stated recently. “[Fighting in Moscow] doesn’t concern me.”

What concerns him – or the issue he is more alive to – is Gassiev himself.

“A very strong fighter. Dorticos made a mistake to stand with him.”

That is Yunier Dorticos, a Cuban cruiserweight of no little heart and chin who extended Gassiev to nine excellent rounds this February. Dorticus, brave to the point of masochism, stood and traded with perhaps the most vicious body-puncher competing today and paid a withering price before finally being stopped by a brutal cavalcade of punches to the head.

Usyk knows there is a real fight in the offing.

Gassiev knows it too.

“He is a really good fighter,” he told Mexican-American trainer Abel Sanchez as the two watched footage of Usyk together for a recent documentary. “Really good.”

Sanchez and Gassiev have an unlikely rapport. Most famous as trainer to Gennady Golovkin, Sanchez seems genuinely fond of Gassiev who is, by all accounts, refreshingly down to earth and savvy in a sport overrun by prima donnas. From their Big Bear training camp – Gassiev has passed up on home advantage in favor of staging the early part of his camp in the United States – the two have been working up a plan to undo one of the most skilled fighters in boxing today.

“He’s going to box,” Sanchez says with the certitude of a veteran campaigner, before adding the caveat that you never know until you know.

Usyk, meanwhile, has been training in the near perfect surroundings of the Olympic training village in Kiev. “I have set myself on fire,” he recently told Boxing News. “To rebuild, you have to burn yourself.”

There is a sense that Usyk is less than happy with his latest performance against Latvian Mairis Briedis this January. Briedis, quick-handed and armed with a fast, pestering jab made almost every round close on his way to losing a justified but close decision and there was muttering that Usyk was perhaps a little more vulnerable than he had seemed the year before.

He ended that fight more battered than we were used to seeing him.

“Briedis was a poor training camp,” offered the Ukrainian, embracing the most oft-repeated explanation in boxing history. “I should have worked more.”

Trainer Sergei Vantamanyuk was quietly removed. In his place, Usyk eventually installed his existing cutman, Russ Anber.

Anber is an experienced veteran, but he’s an experienced veteran cutman. The move raised eyebrows in the industry. Here’s the single biggest wildcard in the Usyk-Gassiev contest: Usyk is essentially training himself while Anber acts as a kind of “supervisor.”

This is a new language in boxing, and it is a perilous one. Fighters who have fallen off a cliff upon eschewing a trainer include Prince Naseem Hamed and English heavyweight tough Danny Williams. These men left former qualities at the doors of their former masters and barreled down a tunnel clearly marked “failure” with all their might.

Usyk does strike me as something different. There is a breath of the fresh, for a man his size, in the mobility and quickness of the counters he exhibits in the ring. Whether, at 14-0, he is fresh enough to be tasked with devising strategy and tactics to disarm one of the most dangerous cruiserweights in that division’s short history is another matter.

Gassiev’s own excellence, but especially on body-punching, is the fight’s second wildcard. Gassiev hits to the ribcage with absolute murderous intention but his hands are frightening quick when he closes the distances and shortens up those meathook punches.

His route to victory unquestionably runs through Usyk’s torso, but there is more than one way to skin a cat. I can’t think of a fight of this magnitude in recent memory where an early knockdown could be deemed more significant. If Gassiev drops Usyk early, will Usyk panic? He doesn’t have the traditional structure of support in his corner or much experience of adversity. Where will the corrections or reinforcements come from if he requires either or both? We don’t know.

Even if Usyk keeps his head in such circumstances, a knockdown against him could sway ringside judges still further as a partisan Russian crowd bellows its approval every time Gassiev so much as feints. This is the third and final wildcard. Going to Russia is unquestionably brave and in keeping with the fearlessness Usyk exhibits in the ring, but could it also be stupid? Will Russian powerbrokers allow a Ukrainian national hero to bury a local favorite on Russian soil? Given the tremendous spirit with which Russia conducted herself in hosting the recent World Cup, this question may be unfair, but it can be rest assured that Usyk’s people will have asked themselves these questions.

Political intrigue aside, this fight is a monumental clash of styles. Gassiev is a world class stalker who has developed a nice line in defense and strict timing; Usyk is the world’s premier aggressive mover. Two box-punchers, they come from opposite ends of the stylistic scale – Usyk flirts with pure-boxing, while Gassiev flirts with pure pressure-fighting. Both are deluxe models for their respective idioms, both are in their physical primes.

The reasons I’m picking Usyk – and I am, despite the wildcards stacked against him – are essentially twofold. The first is Usyk’s 2016 performance against Krzysztof Glowacki.  Glowacki, one of boxing’s premier thugs if not quite in possession of the depth of skill Gassiev commands, was placed easily and almost entirely under control by Usyk as early as the fourth round. Footwork to be found nowhere else above 168lbs was fueled, in this contest, with the stamina to control the real-estate for twelve rounds.  The Pole did not win a single round after that fourth.

Of course, Glowacki is not as adept as Gassiev, but there is more.

A few short weeks after Usyk crushed Glowacki, Gassiev defeated the veteran Denis Lebedev. The fight was so desperately close that Lebedev managed the short end of a split. Lebedev surprised by box-moving his way through stretches of the contest when he realized what it was Gassiev brought for power punches. I thought Gassiev was good for his win despite the impressive tactical flexibility shown by his opponent and covering that fight for this website wrote that “Gassiev is robotic in the sense that he is unaffected by what happens to him in the ring; he applies himself in the same method regardless. Adaptability may be key to beating Usyk and Gassiev hasn’t shown…such adaptability.”

Gassiev struggled to pin down an old puncher like Lebedev when Lebedev decided to go on the move. Gassiev’s virtual threat was such that Lebedev was outpointed as he spent more time trying to avoid the brutal punishment Gassiev delivers than he did landing shots, but when he rushed his opponent in the twelfth, he did enough to win that round.

The point is that Usyk has the stamina to take as many steps as Gassiev forces upon him, the fluidity and mobility to avoid the worst of what his opponent drops in return, and the speed of hand and thought to land (when Lebedev just had to run). It is starting to feel, to me, like a fight that will be decided by the traditional advantages a boxer holds over a slugger; this is intriguing because Gassiev is so much more than that.

So anything could happen.  And it’s nothing you want to miss.

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