Usyk Turned Away Joshua Again When His Inner Taras Bulba Emerged in Round 10

Usyk Turned Away Joshua Again When His Inner Taras Bulba Emerged in Round 10

Few people are apt to remember the 1962 film Taras Bulba, starring Yul Brynner in the title role as a fearless Cossack chieftain in war-torn 16^th-century Ukraine. Virtually no one these days, at least non-Ukrainians, has any knowledge of Nikolai Gogol’s 1835 introduction of the composite character in a collection of his short stories, or the fleshed-out 1842 novella that became the basis of the moviemakers’ decision 120 years later that the Ukrainian steppes would make a dandy setting for an epic adventure with the standard cast of thousands.

In the estimation of Victor Erlich, an early 20^th-century scholar of Russian literature, the first version of Taras Bulba was “distinctly Cossack jingoism” while the lengthier treatment presented Bulba as a “paragon of civic virtue and a force of patriotic edification.” Now it appears that Gogol’s unconquerable leader has been updated, in both forms, in the person of unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, 35, whose feats of derring-do in the ring and with padded gloves on his hands are in the finest tradition of past generations’ Cossack heroes who defeated their enemies while on horseback and clutching swords.

A strange but not entirely unexpected twist in Usyk’s closer-than-expected but hardly shocking split-decision victory over two-time former titlist Anthony Joshua came following the ninth round of the DAZN-televised rematch in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in which the much larger Briton had seemingly seized control of a fight that could go either way. AJ, a slight underdog who at 6’6”, 244.5 pounds and with an 82-inch reach to Usyk’s 6’3”, 221.5 pounds and 78-inch reach, had returned to his corner no doubt feeling justifiably confident after he’d out-thrown and out-landed Usyk by a wide margin, connecting on 28 (twice his highest total of his best preceding round) of 67 shots, several of which clearly had a damaging effect on the champion.

“In the ninth round, I ran over,” said Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s promoter. “I thought we had it. But the 10^th round was one of the best rounds I’ve seen. What Usyk did in the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th was incredible. That was the difference tonight. AJ hurt Usyk badly in the ninth and I felt he was going to come on strong, but Usyk came out like a (runaway) train and that 10^th round was the moment that he decided to regain the fight. He’s just too good. That 10^th round, 11^th round and 12^th round are why this guy is pound-for-pound No. 1.”

It would not be presumptuous to suggest that Usyk, when he needed it most, dug deep inside himself to summon his inner Taras Bulba, and so what if he is unaware or only vaguely so of the mostly fictional Cossack who never found himself in a tight spot on the battlefield that he couldn’t turn to his advantage if only by the dint of his indomitable will. Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs) – whose preparation for this fight included wearing his hair in a Taras Bulba-like top-knot that was the height of Ukrainian fashion in the 16^th century, as well as being seen for all public events in Cossack-style clothing – closed with a proper flourish over the final three rounds, finding the range on 78 punches to just 29 for the gassed Joshua (24-3, 22 KOs).

It was almost as if Joshua’s own words in the lead-up to the fight were coming back to haunt him. “It’s a fight,” Joshua had offered. “Whoever throws the most punches and lands the most wins.”

In no small part because of his three-round late blitz, Usyk finished his night’s work by finding the mark on 170 of 712 (23.9%) to 124 of 492 (25.2%) for Joshua, demonstrating yet again that he is a larger and maybe even better prototype at this stage of their respective careers than former three-division world champion and fellow Ukrainian Vasiliy Lomachenko. Both are proponents of the tried-and-true philosophy that hitting and not getting hit back much goes a long way toward securing victories, as well as being devotees of less-conventional training methods designed to take fighters to the outer limits of human endurance.

Joshua, 32, who likely is facing a significant career rebuild if he is to claw back to elite status, had bragged of subjecting himself to the toughest training camp of his career. It very well might be that he wanted to get sweet revenge that would presumably mollify Queen Elizabeth II and all Englishmen as well as himself for his titles-yielding, unanimous-decision loss to Usyk on Sept. 25, 2021, in London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Fighters of all nationalities want to do well on fight night to stay on good terms with their countrymen, but current events and historical perspective heightened Usyk’s resolve to drive himself almost to the verge of death, if necessary, to give Ukraine a jolt of much-needed pride. His desert training regimen for the rematch with AJ included swimming 6.2 miles in an Olympic-sized pool in a five-hour session; bicycling 62.1 miles in 110-degree heat on a desert trek outside Dubai and holding his breath underwater for a personal-record 4 minutes, 40 seconds. How tough could Joshua be when measured against potential heat prostration and near-drowning?

Large swaths of Ukraine have been decimated since Russia invaded its neighboring and former Soviet satellite country on Feb. 24 of this year, which prompted Usyk, a married father of three, to risk much, maybe even his own life, to return to his homeland from London and join his local militia. He only returned to boxing after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky persuaded him he could do more good as a world champion whose successes inside the ropes are a point of pride for modern-day Cossacks who took up arms and have continued to do so as their cultural predecessors often did centuries ago.

“It was extremely important for my country, for my team, and personally for me because I did box for my whole country, and half the world,” Usyk said at the postfight press conference.

And at no point in a tight fight he believed he had to win for a cause bigger than himself or even his family was the necessity for total commitment more obvious than after Joshua had seemingly gained the upper hand with that dominant ninth round.

“I’m not sure whether I’m right or not, but I saw in round nine in AJ’s eyes that he was feeling victorious already,” Usyk said. “I kept telling myself, `I cannot stop.’ Some big things were at stake. Thank God, the (WBA, IBF and WBO) belts are coming back to Ukraine. The victory is with us. Ukraine won … Now the whole world knows Ukraine as the country that is defending itself from the second-biggest army in the world. We stand strong.”

A former undisputed cruiserweight champion, all that remains for Usyk is to duplicate full unification as a heavyweight. To do that, he will have to meet and defeat WBC champion Tyson “The Gypsy King” Fury (32-0-1, 23 KOs), who at 6’9” and 270 or so pounds makes even Joshua seem relatively small. But if you are in the business of slaying giants, maybe it is best to believe that the old adage that the bigger they are, the harder they’ll fall can come true. In the ring after announcer Michael Buffer revealed him as the winner, by scores of 115-113 and 116-112, on the scorecards submitted respectively by judges Steve Gray and Victor Fesechko (Glenn Feldman was the contrarian, seeing Joshua as the winner by 115-113), Usyk said he didn’t believe Fury’s latest declaration that he was retired and would stay that way.

“I’m sure that Tyson Fury is not retired yet,” Usyk said. “I’m convinced he wants to fight me. I want to fight him. And if I’m not fighting Tyson Fury, I’m not fighting at all.”

For his part, Fury’s recent pledge to quit the ring forever appears to have been written in wet sand on a beach just as the tide is rolling in. In an Instagram video released shortly after Usyk had reprised his earlier conquest of Joshua, Fury vowed that “I will annihilate both of them (Usyk and Joshua) on the same night. Get your f—— checkbook out because `The Gypsy King’ is here to stay forever!’”

But as boxing history has so frequently demonstrated, megafights that everyone wants to see can be lost in the haze of protracted contract negotiations. Fury’s promoter, Bob Arum, optimistically told ESPN’s Mark Kriegel that a Fury-Usyk pairing “won’t be a hard fight to make,” if both sides are amenable to a 50-50 purse split. To some, such an agreement might seem little more than a speed bump, but to fighters whose opinions of themselves owes in large part to their snagging a larger share of the take, settling on the way the financial pie is sliced can be treacherous as an attempted scaling of Mount Everest.

Perhaps it all will come down to just how badly Oleksandr Usyk wishes to test himself against the Himalayan likes of Fury. Hey, Taras Bulba didn’t back away from a conflict with numerically superior forces because that was not the Cossack way in the 1500s. Some traditions might go underground for a time, but they tend to come back around again if circumstances are just right.

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Bernard Fernandez, named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category with the Class of 2020, was the recipient of numerous awards for writing excellence during his 28-year career as a sports writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. Fernandez’s first book, “Championship Rounds,” a compendium of previously published material, was released in May of last year. The sequel, “Championship Rounds, Round 2,” with a foreword by Jim Lampley, is currently out. The anthology can be ordered through Amazon.com and other book-selling websites and outlets.