Oleksandr Usyk watched Anthony Joshua get dropped twice inside the first round on Saturday and came away more convinced, not less, that Joshua beats Tyson Fury.
Speaking to talkSPORT, the two-time undisputed champion delivered a blunt verdict on a performance that left much of the sport asking questions.
“Anthony Joshua is the next undisputed champion. First round, it is a test, but AJ is back,” Usyk said. “It’s boxing, [the] big uppercut is good, it’s a knockdown. AJ [comes] back and win.”
He then turned to Fury, reviving the nickname he has used for his old rival.
“Greedy Belly [Fury] will speak now and say weak chin, Greedy Belly, get out. AJ wins [against Fury], [he will] knock him out.”
Why His Opinion Carries Weight
Usyk is the only man to have beaten Fury, and he has beaten Joshua twice as well. He has also been working with Joshua in camp, which cuts both ways: nobody has a closer read on what Joshua has fixed, and nobody has more reason to talk him up.
This is not a new position for him either. He picked Joshua over Fury back in April, and he has used the Greedy Belly line before while setting his own price for a Fury trilogy.
The Fights That Set This Up
Joshua’s night in Jeddah nearly went badly wrong. He hit the canvas inside 20 seconds after a right uppercut from Kristian Prenga, went down again before the round was out, then recovered to stop the Albanian in the second. Our full account of how Joshua survived the Prenga scare covers the sequence.
Fury had done his own work 24 hours earlier, banking seven rounds against 46-year-old Mariusz Wach in Pattaya, Thailand.
Both tune-ups are now out of the way, and the all-British fight is expected to be finalised for later this year. Usyk did not put a round number on his prediction, and no date or venue has been announced.
