On Saturday, September 25th Oleksander Usyk challenged at the time four belt-holder in the heavyweight division (WBA, IBF, WBO, and IBO) Anthony Joshua. The bout took place in Joshua’s homeland as it was the brand new Tottenham Hotspur stadium in London, England. The bout ended with Usyk the victor on a unanimous decision.
Leading up, Joshua ended as the -285 favorite. Joshua came in with a 24-1 record, the only loss being to Andy Ruiz that he later avenged that loss and retained his belts. Usyk came in with a shiny 18-0 record. He is not a natural heavyweight, he fought his whole career at cruiserweight until this fight.
One of the major takeaways post-fight is Joshua wants the rematch and it’s going to happen thanks to the contract that was signed that had a rematch clause. As the champion you don’t necessarily owe anything to the former champion on a rematch as we have seen most recently when Vasyl Lomachenko gave up two of his belts in the lightweight division when he went against Teófimo López who had just the IBF title; the rematch is still to be seen but it is sounding like Lopez isn’t interested, but it is something that the ex-champion always wants and is usually something the fans like to because it gives you that overall closure that it wasn’t a fluke or just a bad night that and overall the person who was supposed to win won twice and that makes sense, now obviously if Joshua were to win you would almost certainly guarantee that there would be a trilogy clause already in the contract.
