Is this your GOAT ?

He was sniffing around the top 15, agreed. He will have to come back with a good performance to erase some of this, fair.

Bwahahahaha! It does leave a foul taste in the laughing gear indeed. If it was Canelo the place would have imploded.

This content is protected

 

All this thread shows me is that if social media was around in the time of Ali, you all would have thought he was garbage.

Could you imagine what the troll brigade here would have been saying after 7 win Spinks smoked him? Jay-sus. It would be brutal. Probably would say Ali was always a bum and that he was never fit to lace Joe Louis' boots. That the Foreman win was a fluke and that Joe Frazier was just a short guy with one punch that Ali also lost to which makes him even more of a bum.

 

And the ref got it wrong, as dozens have before him. If the reverse happened and Usyk got tonight in identical fashion you would be hitting the roof. This is undeniable.

 

No, because the rule is, "Protect yourself at all time."

Rico was not protecting himself after the knockdown.

I'll say that if I were the ref I would have let it go, but no, there is no crime here. The ref had every right to make the decision he made.

 

You trying to support the ref as well as saying Usyk was winning because of punch stats says it all sorry. The stoppage is world wide news, and they are all singing from the same songbook. Even Australia is on top of it. Jake Paul is blowing up. Almost everyone is blowing up. It is ridiculous. It will go down in history as one of the worst stoppages of all time. There is a meltdown over it.

“I mean that’s the most insane sh** I’ve ever seen,” Paul wrote on X.

“Rico winning every round and the moment the paid off ref sees to end it then he ends it. Are you kidding

“I’m the biggest Usyk fan but bro you lost that sh**. Shoutout to rico for beating his ass every round and getting jipped. Damnnnnnn.”

 

I don't care. I, personally, know the rules of the sport. I have delineated it for those that don't. That was well within the realm of a good stoppage.

 

Of course you care, you care enormously, to put it mildly. Below are two quotes of your own. "the entire world was outraged", well, that's the scenario right now. Go and have a look around. "and the announcers were going nuts", well, they were today as well. The announcer went nuts and i have never seen so much online rage over a stoppage in my life.You've embraced these facts previously, but now suddenly they mean nothing.....because it's Usyk who you are enormously invested in. It was a dud stoppage no matter what one may think would have happened in round 12, or not.

2. The Lewis fight was a Don King stoppage. I watched it at the time and the announcers were going nuts, as was I.

For one thing, I don't really accept McCall as a legit stoppage. I watched that on TV live, and the entire world was outraged. The narrative has solidified with time that it wasn't so bad, but it was.

 

I'd bet my bottom dollar he was envisioning lining up Rico for a title shot

 

Uh, 100% different situation. Lewis suffered the knockdown, got up, was fine, and the ref stopped it before the action continued. THAT is a screwjob.

Rico when down, got up, was given extra time to get his mouthpiece in order, and could not defend himself. Good stoppage.

There are bad stoppages. This just wasn't one of them.

 

In general

 

I'm not gonna do the whole 'Usyk suddenly got old' excuse. Although, and I'm not contradicting myself here... I will say, facially, Usyk seems to be looking a lot older suddenly... I've been thinking this for a few months now, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. His country is at war though, so I guess stress can do that. Again, I'm only talking about his face, not about it having an impact on his body.

Everyone can have a bad day at the office, and with the added weight... I think Usyk just didn't prepare or take the challenge seriously enough. I've always said he's the ultimate professional, so I really am surprised that he'd do that, but hey, I guess he is human.

Verhoeven was completely robbed of a chance to get to the 12th round though. Referee couldn't wait to get in there. Makes you laugh when you consider how much sickening damage Wardley was allowed to take.

 

The situation where the "the entire world was outraged" and "the announcers were going nuts" is exactly the same. Rightly so on both counts. I wholeheartedly agree the Lewis stoppage was bogus.

Keep telling yourself that. He was anything but defenseless. His gloves were still up, his feet still working. People have eyes. You've made multiple threads since the fight trying to defend Usyk. I know how emotionally invested you are in Usyk, it might be time to have a day off and avoid media for a bit. Barely any of it is going to make pretty reading.

 

Usyk is fat. So was Fury.