Episode Nineteen: Anthony Joshua's Dancing Shoes
Boxing is the very rare sport where TV coverage hides as much as it reveals. Because fans tune in for the violence, the camera angles often only display the fighters’ upper bodies, to show the impact of punches as clearly as possible. Use of wider-angle shots or overhead cameras is relatively uncommon. Because of this, the TV viewer often can’t see who is winning the most important battle of all: the contest for superior feet positioning.
On Saturday night Anthony Joshua lost the footwork war against Oleksandr Usyk, and with it his three world heavyweight championships belts. Usyk’s staggering achievement will perhaps never get the recognition it deserves. Very rarely do smaller fighters like Usyk come up from cruiserweight and achieve real success against natural heavyweights. Against Joshua, Usyk gave up 3 inches in height, 4 inches in reach, and 20lbs in weight. Only in the heavyweight division do you get this kind of physical mismatch. Nor is Joshua some unskilled lumbering robot: he’s an experienced, battle-hardened boxer-puncher coached by one of the world’s best trainers. He boxed beautifully in this fight, at least for periods of time, and was nevertheless comprehensively beaten by one of the great sporting talents of this generation.
As early as the first round, Usyk’s constant movement put his lead foot outside of Joshua’s, over and over again - like this.
From this position, Usyk can do a lot of things. He can go down a level and throw his left hand straight to the body. He can throw a right hook and pivot around off that lead foot, spinning out to Joshua’s left so the bigger man can’t counterpunch with his own right. Or he can shift up a level and land the straight left on Joshua’s chin. Alert to the danger, and already aware of how Usyk has rapped him on the abs a few times in the round, Joshua steps back and shells up, covering his chin with his gloves and using his elbows to protect his body. Usyk, though, steps off and does nothing. This time it’s just a feint, but one that Joshua is already drastically reacting to.
Just a few seconds later, Usyk once again gets his lead foot on the outside, and this time Joshua doesn’t react, suspecting another feint. Usyk, though, is still in superior position, and takes the opportunity shift up a level, landing a straight left clean on Joshua’s chin.
On this went for the first four rounds, Usyk’s superior footwork constantly generating positional advantages, until the champion began to adapt. Here in the fifth round, although once again Usyk gets to the outside, Joshua reads that that the straight left is coming, and slips it beautifully with a gentle lean to his right, all the while remaining in a balanced posture, ready to counterpunch if Usyk overextends.
Joshua won the fifth and sixth rounds on the back of some vicious body punching - not something he is known for, but clearly a smart adjustment aimed at slowing Usyk down. In this sequence, Usyk steps in once again, but this time he has miscalculated. Joshua is now the man with the lead foot on the outside, and uses his superior positioning to slip Usyk’s attack, stepping back to create space…
…before spearing him to the gut with a straight right as Usyk finds himself caught in no-man’s-land.
Joshua’s adjustments brought him back into the fight, forcing Usyk to reach ever deeper into his bag of tricks. From the ninth round onwards, the Ukrainian master pulled out all the stops, sweeping the last four rounds, leaving the judges with no choice but to award him the victory. As showcased in his knockout of Tony Bellew, one of Usyk’s favourite tricks to start sweeping his left hand around the guard of his opponents towards the end of fights, once they start adapting to the straight left.
Early in the tenth round, Usyk steps in to throw the straight left once again, splitting the guard. Joshua rides it back, taking most of the sting out of the punch, but this is just setting him up for what’s coming later.
Still in the tenth round, as Usyk steps in once more, Joshua now anticipates the straight left, starting to shift down and to his right to slip it. Unfortunately for him, though, this time the punch is swept up and around from Usyk’s waist, the punch now coming from exactly the location that Joshua wants to move towards.
The result is a bomb detonating on Joshua’s face, noticeably buckling his legs. Even at cruiserweight Usyk was not a massive puncher, but his outstanding punch technique and ability to walk his opponents into traps like this create extra leverage on his shots, allowing him to keep far bigger men honest. Time and again in the last three rounds Joshua was tagged with the sweeping left, and almost violently knocked out in the twelfth as the vision in his right eye deteriorated from the accumulation of punches Usyk was landing.
Rarely in sport do you see such artistic mastery of a craft like this, and rarely do fighters elevate themselves in a loss like Joshua did last night. By boxing with Usyk so well he proved himself to be a far smarter and more skilled fighter than many of his critics thought. Those dancing shoes are ones Joshua can wear with pride, knowing that there is no disgrace in losing to the Nijinsky of our time. Usyk transcends the sordid business of boxing in a way almost no others can, beyond perhaps his compatriot Vasili Lomachenko. The violence is almost besides the point. Landing punches is just something you have to do win fights. The elaborate dance of positioning is where the real joy is found.