Rico was saved by spitting out his mouth guard

IIRC he showed his teeth revealing his mouthguard was out.

 

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Mouthpiece seems to come out on its own. Rico, however, is well aware of this and keeps grinning like a baboon at the ref to try and clue the ref in that he needs his mouthpiece replaced.

Also, notice how Rico uses the ropes to climb to his feet (that's a no-no) and then he doesn't promptly follow the ref's commands. When instructed to walk forward, Rico ignores that and just grins at the ref again. The ref repeats the command and Rico reluctantly starts to step forward, but he's still holding onto the ropes with both hands to steady himself. This is clearly because he knows his legs aren't there and that if he steps forward like normal he'll wobble and the fight might get waved off.

After that, the ref does a half-ass job of wiping his gloves, grabs Rico's mouthpiece, and then signals for Rico to follow him to the corner to get it replaced. Rico then actually steps backwards and then stumbles backwards before getting it together and trudging to his corner.

This dude was cooked and was doing everything he could to buy extra time. The ref ignored a million red flags to try and let the fight continue and gave this dude every chance in the world to recover. Then when all Rico did after the restart was retreat to the corner and get beat up, the ref finally decided to do what he should have done way before and stopped it.

 

All of this is spot on.

People seem to want to ignore all of this to play into some kind of anti Usyk and anti boxing agenda.

 

The rule says a lull in the action which a knockdown is. The ref followed the rules as is standard. Chico spat his guard out twice in the 10th and both times the ref walked him to the corner. Rico also did not spit it out, it flew out when he was knocked down through the ropes. People just making up rules and blind as hell.

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Rico falling through the ropes looks so hilarious anyway.

Rico was spoiling and cheating through the whole fight... Shoving Usyk with the shoulders, elbowing, smothering him, etc.

 

Focussing so much on the knockout no matter if you think it is legit is a serious cope on the part of boxing fans.

It is not that important that usyk knocked him out. He looked really bad all fight. That is the problem. He didn't get knocked down like fury against ngannou but he looked no better. And he should have.

Add to that that he avoided kabayel for that and people are now screaming for a rematch of an undeserved shot that kept kabayel and all heavies waiting and that is what usyk has to answer for.

I hate that these victory laps of great fighters have to be payed by talents having to wait their turn forever.

In my eyes kabayel was the most deserving challenger since the zhang win at least. But dubois dodged parker and somehow got to fight usyk a second time and now half an eternity later he fought rico.

And now rico appeals to get a rematch after 'humbly' acknoledging that kabayel is waiting. Not so humble after all, because i assume in the end it might be a ruse to have a reason to make the more lucrative (and easy for usyk) rematch - saying the wbc had to allow the rematch because of legal proceedings and usyk was obliged to follow. Not unlike the fury joshua negotiations that ended with wilder suing and getting the third fight against fury...

How long should one have to wait their turn as a challenger? champions need to be stripped quicker when they don't defend.

A one-off like rico is obviously ok if you fight a few times a year. Inoue could fight some mma guy and then two more times against serious boxers in a year. But usyk fights once a year and if that is a ridiculous fight, everyone waits two years for a defense. That is like 10-15% of a whole boxing career...

 

Fair

 

A dramatic knockdown is literally the opposite of a lull in the action.

 

Besides, after the final bell, they made Rico sit in his corner for five minutes and waited for him to recover — that’s how badly he was out of it. If it hadn’t been for the extra 20 seconds the referee gave him, Usyk would have sent him to the hospital.

 

Are they fighting during a knockdown? The action is literally STOPPED.

 

Seriously don't understand why this is so difficult for people to understand. This guy got seriously messed up. If you hadn't watched the fight and were just relying on social media to tell you what happened, you'd think Rico beat Usyk to a bloody pulp, never got hit once, and then Usyk just accidentally knocked him down and the ref ran in to stop it immediately.

 

The guy did an outstanding job and surpassed anyones expectations.

If he was “saved by spitting his mouthpiece out”, it doesn’t change the fact that he won more rounds against Usyk than anyone has in several years.