At four o’clock on Sunday morning, Oleksandr Usyk walked away from the ambulance, having had his jaw scanned and cleared of a possible fracture, after he had beaten Tyson Fury in a masterful display of audacity and courage to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. The cut and swollen skin above his right eye had been stitched shut and, as he strolled into a crammed room in the basement of the Kingdom Arena, he raised his left arm in greeting.
Applause broke out for this would be no ordinary press conference. Usyk wore a stone‑coloured T‑shirt, emblazoned with a boxing glove on the front. He carried a Ukrainian flag and Eeyore, his eldest daughter’s favourite cuddly toy, under his right arm.
“Hello, everybody,” he said amiably.
Usyk draped the flag over the back of his chair with tender delicacy, then placed the toy in front of him. Poor old Eeyore, looking depressed, keeled over face down on the desk. Usyk also seemed suddenly depleted and, as he took his seat, a breathless groan slipped from him. In that muted exclamation, all the brutality of his monumental fight with Fury rose up again.
Fury is a very different man to Usyk even if they are great dance partners in the ring, and had responded in his characteristic way 40 minutes earlier. Usyk was still in hospital when Fury spoke to us in this same room. “We just had a fight,” Fury said with his gravel‑voiced veracity.
“Have you seen my face? It’s pretty busted up and he’s just gone to the hospital with a broken jaw and he’s busted too. We’ve punched the fuck out of each other for 12 rounds. So we’re going to go home, eat some food, drink a few beers, spend some family time, walk my dog, go to the tip, and me and Frank Warren [his promoter] will talk about the future.”
Usky had more profound emotions churning through him but, before the tears came, he focused on Eeyore. He made sure the little old donkey sat upright again.
The boxing questions came first. Had he been concerned when Fury was announced as an unjustified winner on the second scorecard? “No, I don’t worry,” Usyk said. “I believe I won.”
He was asked if he felt a knockout had been stolen from him because, in the unforgettable ninth round, a reeling Fury had been held up only by the sagging ropes as the referee gave him a count that lasted much longer than eight seconds. Usyk’s face split into his familiar gap-toothed smile. “I don’t think about it because we have a winner. No knockout, no problem, but for 12 rounds it’s a big drama.”
Would Fury avoid their contracted rematch and accept an easier bout against Anthony Joshua? Usyk started to reply, only for the room to darken.
“Oh,” Usyk said in puzzlement, before realising that someone had accidently leaned against the light switch. Picking out the culprit he said, jokingly: “Don’t play, please.” He kept going above the laughter. “I don’t think about boxing now, please, because my [training camp] start was September 2023.” Usyk began to count the months. “September, November, December.” His promoter, Alex Krassyuk, politely reminded him that he had forgotten October. Krassyuk listed the months correctly, snapping out a finger for each one.
“Yes, nine months I work,” Usyk agreed, as he explained how he had missed the birthdays of each of his three eldest children as well as the birth of his youngest daughter. “All the time, training, training, training,” Usyk said. “My focus was only this fight. Now I am happy. I want to go back home, go to my church, pray and say: ‘Jesus thank you,’ because for me and my country it’s a big opportunity.”
Usyk then thanked his team and, pointing at his canny old trainer, Yuri Tkachenko, he had the room rocking again with mirth. He acted out the way Tkaschenko had driven him and how, as a disgruntled boxer, he had pulled secret faces behind the trainer’s back.
“Eight months, all he did was talk,” Usyk said of Tkachenko. “Do this. Do this. Do this. Work. Run. Boxing. Eat. Sleep. Blah, blah, blah, blah.’ Listen, I’m not a child.” He smiled. “Yuri, you’re an unbelievable man. We win. You are magic.”
We then reached the moments that mattered most. Usyk had lost his father just days after he became the Olympic heavyweight champion at London 2012. He had explained recently that he’d felt the presence of his father in a dream. We knew that he had reached deep inside himself to find the will to beat Fury, a previously undefeated world champion who stood six inches taller and weighed two stone more than him. Had the dream returned and helped him?
“No,” Usyk began, only to pause and say: “I miss my father.” Usyk looked out at the room as he remembered that dream. “I say to my father,” Usyk murmured. “‘Hey listen, you live there …’”
The fighter stretched his arm skywards as if reaching towards the unknowable afterlife. And then Usyk began to cry as, speaking again to his father, he said: “I live here. Please, no coming for me. I love you.”
He tried to smile but his face crumpled. “For me it’s hard when my father is coming for me because I remember how my life …”
Briefly, it sounded like he was choking back laughter. But, instead, Usyk cried with quiet persistence. Krassyuk squeezed his shoulder. That same grimace of a smile crossed Usyk’s battered face. A last solitary tear slid from his wounded eye and trickled down his cheek. In a broken voice, Usyk said: “I know … he is here.”
He rose to his feet, bunched his arms in a fighting salute and then, with glistening eyes, glanced down at Eeyore. He picked up the soft toy, placed him under his arm and brought his hands together in a prayer of gratitude.
“How do you feel?” someone shouted. “I feel,” Usyk said, turning an overused word into a stark statement of fact. His knuckles looked raw and bruised but he smiled when I asked him about Eeyore. I was surprised that he had accompanied Usyk to the ring and that the toy was still cradled in his arms. “My daughter said: ‘Papa please take it with you. It gives you power.’” Usyk stretched over to introduce his daughter’s favourite toy to me. “This is Leeloo,” he said.
I thought of all the conversations I’d had with Usyk over the years and how he had spoken about the war against Russia and the death of some of his closest friends. He had found the words to talk about devastation, and how he sometimes felt as if he might never joke or dance again.
And yet, with dawn about to break across Riyadh he had made us laugh, before he cried. He had shown us that, at its best, there is nothing quite like boxing. He had just become the first undisputed world heavyweight champion this century but the IBF, one of the four main sanctioning bodies, will soon strip him of their belt for not immediately agreeing to fight Filip Hrgovic, their mandatory challenger.
Usyk, a remarkable man in and outside the ring, will pay more attention to his family, and even to Leeloo, than to such chicanery. He was exhausted, but serene, as he slipped away with the look of a man who has faced both death and glory and learned to savour life above all else.
