No sooner had Oleksandr Usyk finished Daniel Dubois with a left hand in front of 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium last night than I turned to BoxRec.com for confirmation. I wanted confirmation not of the result, for that we knew, but instead other things, such as: How many times has Usyk now beaten opponents in their own backyard? Or: How many British boxers in total has Usyk slayed?
Before getting confirmation, I was forced to wait as a security measure was taken. “Verifying you are human,” it said on screen. “This may take a few seconds.”
This usually requires one to click on as many images of buses as they can see, either that or bridges or crossings, in an effort to prove you are human at a time when it has never been more necessary.
On this occasion, however, all it required was to click a small box and wait. It was then during this brief wait that it dawned on me how fitting it was to be researching the career of Oleksandr Usyk and get reminded of the importance of verifying one is actually human. It also struck me that they were asking for verification from the wrong person. It was not the person searching for Oleksandr Usyk’s record they should have been grilling but instead the question would be better directed at him, the creator of that record.
Because we’ve reached that point now with Usyk, 24-0 (15 KOs). He is otherworldly, hard to fathom, like no one else. You go to places like BoxRec.com for results, names, places, and dates, but that is the extent of the insight it can offer. Beyond that, you still have questions. You still wonder how Usyk does it, time and time again. You still wonder how he defies logic and how he has dominated two weight classes in just 24 fights. You wonder, too, whether he is human; something not even BoxRec.com, or its verification process, can confirm.
The evidence last night, at Wembley, would cast doubt on any belief that he is. For four and a half rounds against Dubois, his next challenger, he was near-faultless and lacked any of the signs we look for when trying to relate to a fellow human being. There was, for instance, no fear on the face or in the body of Usyk, despite the fact he was in a boxing ring with a man 16 pounds heavier than him. There was also no hint of doubt, despite the fact he is now 38 and all week people were suggesting that age was a reason why Dubois, younger by 11 years, might have a chance of doing something he was unable to do in 2023. “Thirty-eight is a young guy, remember,” said Usyk, minutes after knocking Dubois out in round five. “Thirty-eight is only the start.”
That may be true in most walks of life, but in boxing it is seldom the case. Even at heavyweight, where fighters tend to peak later, there is an expectation that a fighter, at 38, will be closer to the end than they are the beginning. With Usyk, too, it is quite natural to assume age will catch up to him quicker than to others on account of (a) the fact he is always undersized as a heavyweight, (b) he relies heavily on speed, and (c) he boxed hundreds of times as an amateur. He still smiles and acts like a young man, but people see the grey in his hair, mostly around the sides, and they are reminded of what happens to human beings after a certain point. They connect the two: the age and the colour. They see it as a flaw, the first sign of weakness.
Of course, to think like that is to presume the Ukrainian ages like the rest of us and is indeed human. Yet there was no indication of either of those things – him ageing, or him being human – in the presence of Dubois: younger, bigger, supposedly stronger. Early on, in fact, it was Usyk, not Dubois, who displayed the impatience of youth, notably in the form of a right jab which steadied Dubois inside 15 seconds. It wasn’t a power shot, no, but its surprise element summoned the impact of one and immediately Dubois was on his heels, guarded. He then started to panic a little when he was unable to respond to this first jab with anything heavier or meaningful of his own. There were swings, particularly of his right hand, but Usyk, the target, was forever on the move – his feet, his hips, his shoulders – and already finding it easy to make Dubois miss. With each miss, of course, Dubois tried only harder and doubted himself more. With each miss, Usyk grew in both confidence and size.
In the final 30 seconds of the opener, Usyk’s level of comfort became clear. He was, for the first time, backed into a corner by Dubois, only never did he tense up, fret, or even attempt to hold. Instead, Usyk trusted both his defence and his opponent’s lack of variety to see what was coming and wriggle his way out of what, to others, would have been a precarious situation.
Once he had done that, there was never any doubt how this one would go. If, after all, Dubois couldn’t exert his size and pressure on a master technician like Usyk, what hope did he have? Certainly, with any distance between them, it was a no-contest. Give Usyk time and space to manoeuvre and he will only use this time and space to walk you on to something you didn’t see coming. He will also out-jab you, which often surprises bigger and rangier opponents, all of whom assume, wrongly, that they will at least be safe if they keep him at arm’s length. Against Dubois, Usyk timed him repeatedly for that right jab. He then cracked him with a hard counter left cross when Dubois got carried away towards the end of round two.
That was the first big breakthrough for Usyk and the shot, which Dubois never anticipated, caused Dubois to wobble ever so slightly as he went back to his stool at the end of the round. His mind was now full of doubt and he was seemingly wary of what might come back at him should he get too gung-ho. Yet the problem was, because he could fight no other way, he had no choice but to continue doing what he knew was never likely to work.
In round three, for instance, Dubois just did the same as he did in round two, only with an increased awareness. This meant that he fired lots of right hands and tried as best he could to ignore whatever Usyk was planning. Not without success, he landed a solid right early and he also whacked a couple of hooks into Usyk’s forearms and around his midriff. These were not scoring shots, but it was clear to any human watching that they were heavy ones. Perhaps even hurtful ones.
Then, of course, you see Usyk smile, shrug, and you reassess your view. You wonder at that stage whether Dubois is having any effect on him at all. You wonder whether Usyk feels pain the way that others feel pain. You wonder if Dubois has any idea who, or what, he is up against.
Some will call it a “poker face” and maybe they’re right, but there is also a sense that a fight to Usyk is something different than it is to anyone else. Rather than something dangerous, or something fraught with tension, to Usyk it appears just fun, almost simple. He is thinking all the time, you can see that, but never does his ability to analyse negatively impact his ability to move and remain fluid. Always plugged in, in round four he happened to be caught low by Dubois and still had enough presence of mind to not only alert the referee but then smile at Dubois as if to say: “Remember how this all started?”
It wasn’t just the low-blow controversy of fight one that brought these two back together, but it had played a key part in the selling of the rematch and Usyk’s smile was no more than an acknowledgement of this. It was a comedian’s callback, that’s all. A reminder of how the piece began. How clever. This time, too, he stayed upright from the blow, refusing to give Dubois any confidence, or his backers any reason to complain. This time he made light of it, which, for Dubois, was arguably more painful than any punch Usyk was to throw.
That said, in the fifth there was a right hook thrown inside by Usyk which clearly hurt Dubois. There was also a second right hook, thrown shortly after the first, which sent the Londoner spiralling towards the canvas for the first time in the fight. That one definitely hurt him. We know that not only because he went down, Dubois, but because from his position on the canvas he then looked towards his corner as though wanting either guidance as to how to get up or permission to stay where he was.
For as cold and detached as he is when winning, there is a helplessness – a very human helplessness – evident when Dubois is either hurt or in trouble. We saw this against Joe Joyce, when he lost for the first time in 2020, and we saw it when Usyk beat him back in 2023. We saw it again last night as well. There was, for Dubois, no way of hiding it. When he feels big and strong, he looks big and strong. But when he feels weak and alone, he looks weak and alone.
Despite this, he still got up. He was, in that moment, a fighter, not a human being, so it was expected of him. It was the done thing. It might not have been sensible, and it might have only prolonged the inevitable, but this was heavyweight boxing and Dubois had won his biggest fight – a fifth-round stoppage of Anthony Joshua last year – just seconds after being rocked by a Joshua right hand.
This, however, was not that. This time Dubois got up only to find himself nailed again by a right hook before then being flattened by a left cross to follow. Utterly conclusive, the two shots delivered the ending the fans inside the stadium wanted and, more importantly, understood. For even if Dubois had, in reality, already accepted defeat by then, now there could be no argument. Not content with just beating Dubois, Usyk demonstrated what truly separates the great from the good by going after the finish and putting a wounded opponent out of his misery. It was, in that sense, almost merciful, the stoppage. The sort of thing a human might do.
Afterwards, as is now customary, the victor was asked more about what is next than what had just happened. That was a shame, but hardly a surprise. It came as no surprise because in a fast-moving, content-driven world what had just happened was already old news, whereas what could happen next might create new news. Names were therefore being thrown at Usyk, one after another. Tyson Fury. Derek Chisora. Anthony Joshua. More Brits, in other words. More Brits Usyk has already beaten and would surely be wasting his time fighting again. Then there were other names like Joseph Parker, a contender more deserving, and even Jake Paul, a novice with whom Usyk, too nice for his own good, ended up posing for a head-to-head.
You could see, though, that throughout the interrogation the fighter had already left the building; left the body. All that remained was the human being and the only place he wanted to be was home, where he would find not opponents but family. He would then, upon seeing them, receive verification; verification that he is human after all.
