Heavyweight contender Tyson Fury was not surprised that Andy Ruiz pulled off a shocking upset over Anthony Joshua - but he was surprised with the manner that Joshua was unseated.
Joshua was dropped four times, and eventually stopped in the seventh round, last Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
The victory gave Ruiz the WBA, WBO, IBF and IBO world titles.
As the contest played out, Joshua dropped Ruiz in the third round - but then the British boxer was dropped two times in the same round.
Even before the contest began, Fury felt Joshua was mentally distracted and had his mind elsewhere.
“With me being a master at mind games, and the guy who out-thinks psychologists and the guy who took a doctor in psychology to school in Wladimir Klitschko, I saw a weakness in Joshua’s mental makeup. When he walked to the ring, he looked to me as if he wanted to be anywhere else, anywhere but boxing on that night," Fury told Talk Sport.
“He got caught, which anyone can get caught, in round three. No shame in going down, but it’s the way that he sort of accepted defeat. It’s the way in round seven he was going down because he wanted to, rather than because the punches were putting him down. It was like he was jumping to the floor and that’s a true sign of someone that doesn’t want to stand up and fight.”
Fury has been down in several fights, and recovered to fight his way out of trouble. He appeared to be out cold in the final round of last December's clash with Deontay Wilder - but he got up and came back swinging until the final bell.
And that's why Fury saw Joshua as a broken fighter as the contest played out.
“It’s how the defeat has happened,” Fury continued. “When Muhammad Ali lost his first fight to Joe Frazier for the heavyweight championship of the world, he lost a good fight over 15 rounds.
“It’s not the fact of losing a fight, it’s how one loses. And the fact that he didn’t want to fight on, his body language said ‘I’ve had enough’. Andy Ruiz was in the other corner putting his hands up in the air before the referee had even counted him out because he knew. He had spat his gum shield out and he showed all the signs that a fighter should never show.”