What we want each time we sit down to watch a main-event prizefight is something historic, something violent, something unforgettable.

With stakes higher than any other bout of the past generation – the undisputed heavyweight title of the world – Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury delivered upon that promise in their first meeting, and that May 18 split-decision triumph by Usyk is BoxingScene’s Fight of the Year.

The value of that victory was seen again last week, when Ukraine’s Usyk 23-0 (14 KOs) topped the May triumph with a more convincing unanimous-decision (116-112 on all three scorecards) against the far heavier, taller and longer Fury.

Usyk, a 37-year-old former undisputed cruiserweight and Olympic heavyweight champion, has spent his career remaining in indefatigable shape while developing a master boxing mind that solved all of the best cruiserweights of his era, set up back-to-back victories over former champion Anthony Joshua and broke the spirit of young lion Daniel DuBois, the new IBF heavyweight champion.

In the “Gypsy King,” Usyk was matching wits against an imposing vagabond who’s spent literally all of his days plotting to get the better of any man thrust into a position of preventing Fury from getting what he wants.

READ MORE;Did Tyson Fury have the wrong plan for Oleksandr Usyk?

Whether tricking, bullying or mocking his adversary, Fury is armed with a diverse set of tactics to win fights. During the first half of the Usyk bout, he restricted it to pure boxing skill, keeping Usyk at distance and piling up points and rounds with his jab and extend-o right hand.

As seen in the Joshua bouts, however, Usyk is blessed with almost a telepathic ability to read the minds of the judges, to know what he needs to do to ensure he has at least one more point than his foe when everything is tallied at the end.

Three of the six cards in the two-fight Joshua series, for instance, were 115-113 in Usyk’s favor.

This is what I wrote about this defining sequence of the first Usyk-Fury fight in May:

“As the seventh round closed Saturday in Saudi Arabia, Usyk had spent the past two rounds having his head jarred, his legs wobbled and his fight plan stunted by a series of heavy handed blows landed at will … it appeared Fury was poised to produce a convincing triumph against the smaller Usyk, especially as the Ukrainian retreated to his corner trailing on all three scorecards – judges Craig Metcalfe and Mike Fitzgerald extended Fury’s lead to 68-65.”

It was then, as the deeply religious Usyk sat on his stool, that he asked a cornerman for a cross to hold.

Few know that Usyk makes regular pre- and post-fight treks to Greece to visit with monks who reside on a mountaintop monastery. There, Usyk worships and absorbs the quiet to embrace peace and inspiration from the purity of the location and those who reside there.

The cross was given to Usyk by the head of that Greek monastery, and he holds it dear when needed, to remind himself of the inner strength he gains from the sacred area and from the higher power.

“Oleksandr is a very religious, spiritual person – in his mind, God means a lot,” Usyk’s manager, Egis Klimas, said. “Many people cross themselves, many people talk about Jesus. What Oleksandr says and does, he means.

“So when he kissed that cross after the seventh round, it helped him mentally. And from that, he gained physical strength.”

In the corner, Usyk bowed his head and sought the resolve to break down this crafty, awkward behemoth who had never been beaten and had risen even from the thunderous right hand of the division’s most lethal puncher, Deontay Wilder.

The eighth round was effectively the 12th to Usyk, and the desperation triggered his onslaught, catching U.K.’s Fury with a power punch that bloodied the giant man’s nose, another that reddened him under the right eye and a lasting right hand that shook up all of those ever-devising thoughts that rage in the return champion’s mind.

Leading on the cards or not, Fury was now in trouble in the worst way.

His legs were withering. He couldn’t escape the pressure. His length meant little. His size was a hindrance. Usyk’s truth had caught up to the scheming Fury.

A damning combination, power punches from both hands and a relentless foe sent Fury reeling. Usyk let go of a hellish left, backing the wounded man to ropes that kept Fury upright but not free of a standing eight-count that may have saved Fury as the bell followed.

Fury revealed himself by making those final three rounds competitive despite the battering he’d been subjected to.

But the knockdown and Usyk’s spirited effort down the stretch transformed judge Fitzgerald’s card to a 114-113 victory while fellow arbiter Manuel Oliver Palomo scored the bout 115-112 for Usyk to grant him the monumental victory.

The fact that it came as his underdog countrymen so valiantly fought against the Russian war machine only added to the meaning of the victory, and former champion Wladimir Klitschko of Ukraine was ringside to observe the performance and capture what it meant.

Usyk “showed that with technique, you can get much further in boxing than just with power,” Klitschko said. “He has the power of a man, but his power is his heart.”

Before the rematch, Klimas just revealed to BoxingScene, Fury’s camp sought to have the cross removed from Usyk’s corner, contending the three-belt champion has been observed kissing and touching it. The Saudi commission allowed Usyk to keep the cross, but retained the right to inspect it afterward and did, saying the cross “was showed to Usyk a few times during the [rematch],” Klimas said.

The inspector signed off on the cross.

“It was very special to beat Fury and climb to the top of all the heavyweights,” Klimas said. “He’s done it two times now. He’s cleaned out all of the British heavyweights.

“He’s a very special boxer. More than that, he’s a very special human being in that he never puts himself among the stars or atop anybody else.”

He also won the Fight of the Year.

Knockout of the Year – Bahdi KOs Sylve

The closest we get to truly understanding a fighter is watching them in the ring. The time before a boxing match is too primed for psychological warfare to really trust anything anybody says. It’s only during the fight that the physiques and styles answer the questions we asked repeatedly beforehand.

This is especially true when it comes to a fighter as mercurial and unpredictable as Tyson Fury. His strategy for his rematch with Oleksandr Usyk was difficult to decipher prior to the fight – first he claimed he would maintain his emphasis on boxing from the first fight, then he weighed in (at least officially) at 281lbs.

READ MORE;Deontay Wilder’s trainer Malik Scott makes new prediction for Tyson Fury vs Anthony Joshua after recent losses to Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois

You could argue that Fury’s strategy for the rematch is hard to outline after the event, too. He never seemed to wholly commit to any one gameplan. He boxed sharply, and on the front foot, for the first couple rounds. He let Usyk walk onto uppercuts in the fifth. He clinched and leaned on Usyk throughout the 10th. He fought off the back foot in the face of a rampaging Usyk in the 11th.

Fury did all these things well, but a cynic might argue that he did a little bit of everything and not enough of anything – too uncertain a tactic to unsettle an operator as skilled as Usyk.

A different theory: Fury’s main priority was to avoid getting knocked out. Fury was uncharacteristically disciplined on defense – Usyk cracked him cleanly a few times, but never managed to hurt him like he did in round nine of their first fight. Fury also took the punches better when Usyk did land solidly. Perhaps the weight gain wasn’t an offensive gambit, but a defensive one – the mass was intended to help him weather Usyk’s blows rather than add power to his own.

Fury did gas out before Usyk, but hey, it’s not like Fury’s stamina is uniquely bad for not matching Usyk’s. “The Cat” outlasted Fury in the first fight too, along with almost all of his professional opponents. Plus, as BoxingScene contributor Stephen “Breadman” Edwards put it on Twitter, “For all of the BIG heavyweight fanatics. No 280lb man will have the endurance of a 220lb man. Period.”

Did Fury have the wrong gameplan, then? I don’t think so. Since Usyk arrived at heavyweight and particularly since he appeared to struggle with Derek Chisora in the early rounds of their fight, people have been clamoring for Usyk opponents to just bumrush him and try to get him out early.

I’m not surprised that no heavyweight has managed it, though. For one thing, Usyk has never been dropped as a pro, much less stopped. For another, that plan requires a boxer to completely abandon the skills that carried them through their whole career. It’s no coincidence that only Chisora really tried to rough Usyk up – that’s Chisora 101. Anthony Joshua isn’t that kind of boxer, at least not since Wladimir Klitschko decked him in 2017, and aside from a single bout with Deontay Wilder in 2020, Tyson Fury certainly is not that kind of boxer.

Considering Usyk’s stamina – and what happened to Chisora when he couldn’t finish Usyk early (or come especially close, let’s be honest) – that strategy is a very hard sell. You’d be telling Fury, who has lost all of one fight and very closely, that he has to take an enormous risk to try to knock out a man who is hard to even hurt. Hardly shocking that he didn’t go for it.

Perhaps Fury knew his limitations, tried to work within them, and didn’t quite have enough to stay with Usyk. Given all the evidence at this point – that fighters gas out quickly against Usyk, that they are so reluctant to throw the kitchen sink at him despite everybody demanding it, that Usyk is so hard to hurt – nitpicking Fury’s strategy seems churlish. After all, he did better than all of Usyk’s other opponents.

Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel, and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.