Stunning win leaves Usyk with barrage of questions

Oleksandr Usyk is not thinking about his future and his place in boxing history.

- STEVE BUNCE

“I’m just Alex, the Ukrainian guy,” he insisted when I spoke to him after midnight at Wembley Stadium. He finally looked tired when he retreated to his dressing room, where religious icons covered the walls and surfaces. “I go home now and spend time with my family and children,” he added. That was all he said about tomorrow’s fights.

An hour earlier, his fists had ruined Daniel Dubois in the fifth round, dropping the British boxer twice before the towel came in; the referee, Michael Griffin, called it off at the same time. Dubois was nearly up but out of his head, and he stood in silence for several minutes trying to process what went wrong. He looked stunned.

The bare stats from a night of raw and savage drama are simple: Usyk retained his WBO, WBA and WBC titles, added the IBF version, and left the ring in glory in front of 90,000 fanatics at Wembley.

There is never any boasting or bragging with Usyk, but he was strangely cold in the ring at the end against Dubois. It looked to me like he ignored him. His lack of sympathy for Dubois was noticeable when the fight was over. Usyk had been ruthless and that part of his brilliance is often overlooked.

When asked about Dubois, there was very little from Usyk. “It’s a sport,” he said with a shrug. The code normally demands praise in defeat, but Usyk was vicious on Saturday - not cruel, just honest.