Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua vs. Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Usyk - IB's standalone RBR scorecard

I agree. Joshua despite having won 2 rounds clear, did not have a single dominant round. So if you were a judge looking to do the absolute most you could have had it 120-108 for Usyk. It would have been a terrible card, but if you were say a bribed judge you could have at least defended 120-108.

Usyk had 5 or 6 completely dominant rounds. Hell the last round was getting into 10-8 territory. Even a bribed judge couldnt give Joshua those rounds.

See the key with bribed judges is plausible deniability. When one guy spends the round bashing the other mans face in you just cant give him the round and maintain plausible deniability.

 

We're simpatico. Same total, same rounds awarded.

Like you said, the only two rounds that I considered to be frames that could swing to AJ were the second and fourth. Might rewatch the tenth since Compubox has AJ outlanding Usyk in that frame. Still, Usyk had as strong case for taking the 5th, and the 8th as AJ did for taking the other rounds mentioned. Either way, it unfolded as a clear Usyk victory.

 

Anotherwords, there were 6 or 7 rounds that were "close enough" for a judge to rob Usyk and award the fight to AJ or score it a draw if the judges were "paid off" or otherwise inclined to score it for AJ.

 

I think that while they're business partners and obviously have a lot in common, there is a rift between LOMUS and the Klitsckho brothers. Probably political as Vitali and Vlad are pro euro-Ukraine and Loma is decidedly not. I imagine Usyk and Loma are on the same page, but Usyk has been in promotional dealings with them for a long time now.

It kind of looked like Usyk thought Vits was there for political/business purposes and not much else. It certainly wasn't how Fury embraced Sugar Hill after his big win, that's for sure...

Who knows, would be interested to hear from someone who knows more.

 

The Bottom line is: AJ was so bad that even the rigged judges who were promised a gang bang with Hearns’ missus couldn’t score the fight for the bodybuilder. That’s how bad Joshua’s performance was. Let that sink in!

 

A guess I had was that they (Joshua's team, Eddie's pals) were fully expecting Usyk to come out slow as he often does so that Joshua gets an early lead on the cards, and then nicks it narrowly due to harder punches in the later rounds even if he doesn't get the stoppage.

I think this is why Foster scored the first two rounds for Joshua ... probably noticed Usyk was outperforming in the early rounds but stuck with the plan anyway. When it became clear that Joshua wasn't winning the fight he was more keen to give rounds to Usyk just to make the final score look semi-plausible.

 

Or maybe, just maybe, it took him 2 rounds to adjust to what Usyk was doing and after that, he scored the remainder of the bout accurately.

 

I’m guessing the reason being he didn’t want to lose his judging license. You can only go so far before you will be barred from judging a boxing fight ever again. I think he was hoping the other judges would play the ball and have it closer as well, maybe even a split decision, but for his displeasure they didn’t comply, therefor Foster was the only one who stood out. Ouch!

 

So after the first 2 rounds, Foster's card was identical to yours. I think my theory rings true IB. It just took him 2 rounds to adjust to what Usyk was doing early on. Due to the awkwardness of Usyk, due to a low output round 1 where Usyk landed the harder shots but overall punches landed appeared to be pretty even. Then you had round 2 which many people said was close and arguable for AJ.

So he saw those first 2 rounds as toss-up rounds and gave them to AJ, then came to his senses and scored the next 10 rounds flawlessly. Not terrible really. By the way, Foster scored Round 4 to Usyk, a round that Ukrainian judge Viktor Fesechenko gave to AJ. Also if I'm not mistaken the unofficial DAZN scorer gave Round 4 to AJ as well. So in a way Foster's round 1 score is offset by his round 4 score, a round which more people were willing to give to AJ than Round 1 that he scored for Usyk.

I think we should applaud Foster for getting his act together after the first 2 rounds and scoring the rest of the match just like you did IB.