Olympic gold medallist and undefeated pro, Andre Ward, gave his thoughts on Anthony Joshua’s performance against Oleksandr Usyk.
Speaking to ESNEWS, Ward observed that while Joshua gave a better account of himself in the rematch, his fighting style still hadn’t changed enough to beat the Ukrainian.
“You fight a certain type of style for a long time, you build up all that muscle, and you can look like an all-time great against certain guys. You don’t work on your game. You don’t evolve. It’s the same stuff.”
“He’s [Joshua] got an awesome right hand – it comes off like a rocket. But you take him out of that element, you take him into some deep waters and make him think, you see the mental fatigue that comes over.”
“He doesn’t know what to do sometimes, and then the body starts to fatigue and it just goes from there. Usyk just had too much flavour.”
Ward went onto say that the addition of trainer Robert Garcia to AJ’s team was a positive one, mentioning an improved game plan.
“I think it had to [have helped]. Garcia wasn’t there before and I saw Joshua [in the rematch] hitting to the body. He didn’t have perfect form with it but he was hitting to the body. You saw him trying to hold his ground early in the fight and be the big man. It’s just hard to keep that going. People don’t get it.”
Finally, when asked about a potential undisputed fight between Usyk and Fury, Ward was convinced both men want it and is excited as many fans are.
“What I love about it is that, when I see both guys, you know Usyk said ‘I don’t want to fight anybody else.’ We knew Tyson Fury wasn’t retired – he wants to fight Usyk it looks like. That’s shades of like the 80s, 90, early 2000s.”
“That’s what time it is right now and that’s what you get from these guys. That’s why I love it.”