After the fight, quite a lot of people suggested that Joshua would walk down Usyk, and that Fury would do something similar to what he did against Wilder in February, but would they really? What has to be said is that both of those fighters - Fury and Joshua, I mean - wouldn't adopt the bull-in-a-china-shop mentality that Chisora used against Uysk as that's VERY risky against such a fighter; bearing in mind that Chisora had the lower-height advantage (whilst adopting an intermittent southpaw stance). Joshua learned that the hard way against both Whyte and Ruiz via the left-hook; hence why he'd be gun-shy to swarm compared to usual as he's a calculating fighter, as he never goes in for the kill unless he smells blood - though we'll see if that holds true against Pulev in December. A point that some haven't mentioned is that Joshua struggles with short fighters, as we saw with Takam, Parker, Povetkin and Ruiz; the fact that Parker managed to negate Joshua's right hand for 12-full-rounds too - which is a fact people fail to highlight, so I'm confident Uysk could do the same, as he did against Gassiev's right within close-quarters, mind you - and that was purely using angles and foot-movement against a faster opponent. That's one of the reasons why either Parker or Usyk would beat Wilder, but that's another story entirely. But I hear you say: what about Fury? Well, do you recall what Fury said about Steve Cunningham before the first Wilder fight? Tyson Fury: "Believe it or not, this is going to sound strange, Cunningham was the hardest fight I ever did have in my whole career, amateur or professional. The reason being he was very slippery, I couldn’t pin him down. He was light on his feet, weighing 208lbs, he was a cruiserweight champion and he stepped up into heavyweights. He was a slick, talented boxer and I tried to walk him down, use my size and power, but he was just outboxing me. What I’m good at – boxing, moving, slipping and sliding – I couldn’t do against Steve Cunningham because he was quicker than me. It was like he was a better boxer all round than me, and he’d knocked me over even though he was a light puncher." Does that sound like a certain Ukrainian boxer? Nistor, Medzhidov and Chisora caused Usyk problems as their swarmers, and Usyk requires time to feel-out, so to speak, his opponent. Joshua seems to have problems with shorter opponents (punching downwards), - due to lack of bending at the waist/knees (had to give a nod to Richard Dwyer) as does Fury to an extent - because if I do recall Fury was still getting caught with straight-lefts by Wallin before the cut; so perhaps good southpaws - barring Pianeta and Abel. Heaven help the division when Gassiev moves up the rankings, and Briedis makes his official Heavyweight debut.
