Tyson Luke Fury vs. Deontay Leshun Wilder III & Efetobore Ajagba vs. Frank Sánchez Faure RBR

...alright, with the benefit of 10½ hours of hindsight and the sobriety of a good night's (er, morning's) sleep - are cooler heads now able to prevail in recognizing that

1. It had fun moments but was ENTIRELY too sloppy, with a) long stretches of both men taking massive swings and missing in humiliating fashion (especially Wilder) or landing shots that each hit less than 50% clean on target, b) a ridiculous amount of clinching from both the disgustingly chunky-gutted ostensible 'boxer' who fought more like an inside brawler on this occasion and the souped-up puncher who sacrificed his leanness (taking a hit to his mobility & stamina) for a boost in power that ultimately brought him close, but no cigar...while somehow also despite his added brawn up top still managed to have skinny little chicken legs. They both were responsible for initiating and prolonging clinches in almost every minute of every round, and Mora, though I don't much respect his work, faced an impossible task of keeping their combined 515lbs from melting into each other, and speaking of the ref c) an insane number of fouls gotten away with, to a degree almost unheard of in a world championship match (putting Loma vs. Salido to shame, actually). You may be screwing up your eyes right now thinking "but there weren't many headbutts or low blows" and no there weren't, but the no less illegal rabbit punches and elbows outnumbered the clean punches by at least 2:1 and yet there were barely any warnings all night from Mora.
2. Not a defensive performance to write home about for either man. Wilder's lapses are hardly news, and while his ability to recover after being rocked halfway to lala-land by overhand rights literally dozens of times in the course of the fight speaks to his chin & courage, it speaks just as much to his absolutely porous D and his ring IQ being the square root of potato. The bigger headline is how easily he caught Fury, supposedly the division's master boxer of this generation, with the same old predictable 1-2, repeatedly, even though Fury had already logged 19 rounds of flight time against this same opponent to scout him and learn to avoid it. Fury's defense, at least when he's made himself too fat to rely on his legs and skip around the ring airiliy, was revealed to be shockingly bad. He's lucky Wilder began to gas a few rounds in, because if there was consistently more zip on that 1-2 he could well have faced additional knockdowns after that near-catastrophic 4th.
3. Usyk and Joshua put on a superior boxing match. It didn't have the knockdowns and dramatic twists, but strip away that window dressing and that fight >>>> this one, if you're looking at high-level skill. Even what Joshua showed in defeat was less sloppy and disheveled than what either Fury or Wilder showed in their finale (he used feints, his footwork stayed composed and disciplined, he actually slipped many of Usyk's southpaw jabs, he threw straight crisp punches all the way through), and Usyk was several levels above the lot of them.

...?

I think last night there was a lot of heat-of-the-moment recency bias, as well as people imbuing the fight with more big event preeminence than it honestly ever deserved on paper (remember the huge collective groan when it was announced that Wilder had invoked a second rematch to scupper the already-signed Fury vs. Joshua match? And the vast majority of fans going "uh, why? There's no rematch necessary there, as Fury has essentially beaten him twice"). As someone that isn't really a fan of either competitor and had no emotional investment or dog in the race (in other words, as the rare objective party where this match-up is concerned) - I can attest that it was indeed entertaining beyond what I expected (whilst it was happening, not sure I need to add it to my frequent re-watch list, though) and both of them indeed showed admirable heart. That said, it was hardly a lock for 2021 FOTY, and neither man put in a top-2 heavyweight performance, nor one to suggest they could "squash Usyk like a little bug" like people in the aftermath said of Fury on Twitter (do you really think he'd just sit there and let Fury lay on him as Wilder did? Or sit there and receive 1-2s on the chin from Wilder like Fury did?) - and if you got swept up in either sentiment and haven't come down from that cloud after having slept on it - sort yourselves out.

 

Not that any of those overreactions from this forum are surprising, really - hell we saw a thread pop up last night asking if Frank Sánchez Faure should be considered a top-10 heavyweight based on the very low bar of taking a boring pot-shot decision over Ajagba, who can not cut the ring off to save his life and makes Wilder seem like Pernell Whitaker in strategic depth and intelligence.