Tony Bellew has come clean about his fight with Oleksandr Usyk. The former world champion says he couldn't have beaten Usyk even at his best.
Bellew had a solid career in boxing. He traded wins with Nathan Cleverly and fought for a light heavyweight title, but got knocked out in six rounds. He was weight drained for that fight. Later, he won the WBC Cruiserweight Championship by knocking out Ilunga Makabu at Everton FC's home stadium. He also moved up to heavyweight and stopped David Haye twice on big box office shows.
His last fight was against Oleksandr Usyk in November 2018 at Manchester Arena. Usyk was undefeated and the undisputed cruiserweight champion at the time. Bellew started well, but Usyk wore him down and put pressure on him. In the end, Usyk knocked out Bellew with a sharp one-two combination.
In a recent interview with Boxing Scene, Bellew looked back on the fight:
"I was at my best of my career, I was boxing really well and doing okay, but he figured me out."
He talked about how Usyk's style was tough to deal with:
"He's the one who exhausts you to the brink when you can barely breathe. And when I look back at it now, it's purely his judgment of distance and his feet remain so close to you.
It sounds like such a little thing: His front foot is never more than four to five inches away from you, but you think he's in range and he's actually not. He's in and out and in and out, but you feel like he's constantly there and it's so mentally taxing, it's unbelievable. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it is when someone's doing it and controlling it."
Since then, Usyk has gone on to even bigger things. He became the undisputed heavyweight champion, beat Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury, and is now seen as one of the best boxers ever. Usyk has said his fight with Bellew was his toughest.
