Who did you have winning before the stoppage: Rico Verhoeven or Oleksandr Usyk?

People say it's not the ref's job to keep track of time. He heard tge 10 second noise ffs. Poor stoppage.

 

I didn't score the fight round by round, but the punch statistics are very even. A closer look at the number of strikes landed in each round is warranted.

The overall narrative and commentary may have also slightly confused the reception of the fight – people expected an easy dominance, but it turned out to be a close fight, with Usyk giving up more ground than usual, which the commentators raved about throughout the entire fight.

Afterwards, every move by Rico was met with rapturous praise, while Usyk's own actions went unnoticed.

Furthermore, Rico began to weaken significantly from round 10 onwards, and he took a solid beating in the 10th.

We know what happened in the 11th.
In the 12th, the Ukrainian would most likely have completely dominated, and it's unclear whether Verhoven would have recovered enough to survive and put up a good show.

It was somewhat similar with Tony Bellew. The fight didn't go in Usyk's favor there either, but he still managed to pull it out. That's something worth appreciating, not just saying Oleksandr isn't that good. People are getting too emotional about judging this fight.

 

7-3 Verhoeven.

 

I had Rico one up (think I had round 5 even as then both did very little), but the fight was a LOT closer than the running narrative - I think this was because it was supposed to be a humongous mismatch, so the fact that Rico was so competetive and putting Usyk off his game and rythym probably had many folks thinking he was winning rounds based on a couple of decent shots / spurts of success. Usyk looked out of sorts, was flat couldn't establish his lead hand or rythym, but he was still scoring (and the fact those scoring shots had little effect on rico at times probably made it even harder to observe) and I think folks will have a different view watching it back a bit more objectively.

I think Rico up by 2 to even Usyk up by one going into the 11th is ok in my book, there was some REALLY close hard to score rounds, and I think most folks were just giving 'em to Rico due to surprise factor.

 

Spot on, very much what I was seeing. The commentary was awful throughout!

 

Here was mine after a rewatch:


1 - Rico (swing)

2 - Usyk (swing)

3 - Rico

4 - Usyk

5 - Usyk

6 - Usyk

7 - Rico

8 - Rico

9 - Rico

10 - Usyk

11 - Usyk [+ Rico knocked down]


105 - 104 Usyk at the time of the stoppage. Could’ve had Rico in a slight lead but the fight was razor thin. Mike Coppinger’s scorecard was abysmal and might’ve clouded some peoples’ perceptions of the fight. The fact he gave the 5th and 6th rounds to RV tells me his scorecard is worthless.

 

Haven't even watched the fight yet but I'll still comment on it hehe

 

Usyk: 4, 5, 10, 11
Rico: the rest

It was 5 - 5 draw. (2 knockdowns in 11)

 

8-2 Rico.

 

Nah. Most people could simply score the fight more objectively without being biased towards the A side.

 

Verhoeven 2 or 3 points ahead

 

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Del Boy is nobody’s friend he seems to randomly switch on anyone at any second then the next minute he’s laughing and joking, I would trust him as far as I could throw him which wouldn’t be very far since he is a unit.

 

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