“LIKE A SNIPER,” Oleksandr Usyk replied when asked what he thinks when he looks at Tyson Fury. Then pointing to the point between his eyes, he offered both his method and his mentality to the world and Fury, before suggesting that all he would need was one shot, one observation. To get it, he would have to be sneaky. Being a smaller man, he would certainly have to be. Like any good sniper, he will be focused, patient and, finally, brisk. When the time is right, it will start working and that’s it; Task completed.

Preparations had taken place beforehand. Before the first bell, he observed, defined the goal and did not allow himself to be distracted. He watched the target act like a fool, trying to throw him off balance, and stared straight ahead. He didn’t look into the magician’s eyes, but between them, at the target. He then wondered if the target had heard anything he said.

This means that instead of being ambushed in Riyad, Saudi Arabia, or taken from the upper floor of a high building this evening (May 18), Tyson Fury was warned. Really, the only mystery was when. It could be in the first round, it could be in the 12th or it could be any round in between. But this certainly shouldn’t have been a surprise, as this sniper wasn’t hidden, stealthy, or faceless. Instead, he was right in front of Fury. He was smaller than Fury. He was there to control and monitor him, every part of him evident and supposedly weaker than Fury’s.

Indeed, it was this knowledge that left Fury unsuspecting, almost as if he had been blinded. Driven to the limits of arrogance, he ran to the ring to the sounds of “I Need a Hero” and then, after going through the ropes, began punching Usyk in the face. Perhaps confident, or perhaps a display of nervous energy, either way Usyk was unfazed. He stood firm. He licked his lips. He quite happily played the role of the heterosexual clown Fury.

Then came the inevitable stripping and evacuation, with both heavyweights being completely exposed. There can be no surprises or hidden weapons at this stage. In fact, all disguises disappeared and every addict who hid his fear in order to lie to the boxer he wanted to win. Now alone, alone, but together, Fury and Usyk had only each other.

In this position, Fury looked down and Usyk looked up, hoping to find that point between the eyes. As for Usyk’s eyes, if you looked into them properly you could see a lot. You could see images from battles from the past. In their darkness there was a glimpse of what was to come.

Nevertheless, Usyk was aware of the scale of the task ahead of him and there is no doubt about it. If he wasn’t sure at all, he would have seen it for himself the moment the first bell sounded and he went after Fury, with all his weight, the 6-foot-9, firing only left crosses to his body. For now, that seemed to be the only secure punch that Usyk, a 6-foot-3 man, could make. The only part of Fury’s body he could reach. The only part of his body that isn’t moving.

Meanwhile, Fury continued to show plenty of nervous energy in the first round. Perhaps the only difference now was that it showed in his shot selection and footwork, and that Usyk could do something about it instead of just standing there and biting his tongue. For example, in the second round, after finding his footing in the first, Usyk started quickly, catching Fury with his left hand in the first seconds. Like many others, it was a punch that Fury laughed off, but nevertheless Usyk closed the gap for the first time and reached the target upstairs; that alone was a breakthrough for the southpaw.

In response, Fury began to apply his size more in the second round. As he planted his feet, he threw body shots at Usyk, often wild ones, and as soon as those body shots hit, the effect on the Ukrainian was immediately evident. They move him with the sheer force and weight behind them, and Usyk, you could tell, in an ideal world would prefer not to take them.

To create this world, he quickened his pace in the third installment, pacing back and forth and never allowing the Fury to stagnate. He dictated from the center of the ring and then cut the ring off when he felt Fury wanted to take a walk. Fury, on the other hand, sensing that Usyk had become too comfortable, began his first clinch in the third quarter, the purpose of which, based on him, was both to tire him out and remind him.

Needing more and knowing it, Fury started the fourth game with an urgency that had been lacking until then. He seemed to shock Usyk with his work at such a pace, and again he was met with a reaction from his opponent every time he struck him in the body. Soon the sight gave Fury comfort. You could see him relax and unwind. You could see him starting to enjoy it.

Naturally, this slack would allow Furia to move better, frustrate Usyk, and then take his best shot of the fight so far in the sixth throw. The shot, a right chin, staggered Usyk and many suspected that having made a dent, Fury was now about to follow it up and try to inflict further damage. Instead, Fury remained patient. He watched as Usyk tried to escape and hit him with rights to the body, and his long arms, at least to Usyk, somehow became longer.

The sixth was large for Fury, but the seventh round, in which he landed an unconventional right uppercut, was just as good. So far, even when Usyk waved his arms and tried to do something, as he did in the closing moments, it looked ineffective, as if either the punches weren’t challenging enough or Fury was too composed a fighter to get nervous. By now Fury had taken some semblance of control; as much as he could ever have in a fight of this magnitude and as much as he was ever going to get.

You see, by the eighth round Usyk, fearing things were slipping away, was already making compact but crucial changes. For example, a right-left hand combination thrown early caught Fury’s attention, and there were numerous other left hands, one of which caused a slight swelling under Fury’s right eye; an injury that now comes to offset the compact cut above Usyk’s right eye that he suffered earlier.

Now, in this momentum play, the pack was back in Usyk’s hands. He hadn’t been in those hands since the first two or three rounds, but suddenly he had it in his hands again and this time, unlike before, he didn’t want to give up so quickly.

Moreover, Usyk was going to build on it and make something of it, which is exactly what he did in round nine, nailing Fury with a long left hand that was by far the biggest and best punch of the fight. Too hurt to hold, yet seemingly too large to fall, Fury reacted to the blow by rocking back and forth like one of those arm-flailing natives, the one advertising not a product or a store, but his own imminent death. It seemed impossible for him to be awake now, the feeling that Fury and the crowd were caught in a kind of stasis had referee Mark Nelson circling Fury as if wanting him to go down, if only to reconcile himself. his mind for him. Without it, Nelson had to make a call. He either let Fury go to pieces in the last 30 seconds of the round or stopped the fight.

Usyk hits a large left (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

Finally, believing there was sufficient evidence to show that only the ropes were keeping Fury on his feet, Nelson stepped in and performed a recount. But watching the way Fury then returned to his corner only strengthened the argument, already sturdy, that he should have been stopped and not counted out.

Still, Fury has such a regenerative ability that there was never any doubt that he would come back to life. This was even more likely than usual given the fact that Usyk was much smaller than him and therefore couldn’t simply jump on him in the next round or position himself around him in the same way he did against opponents who they didn’t require him to literally jump to throw punches.

Of course he tried, but it didn’t work. To his credit, Fury maneuvered quite well over the next two rounds, the 10th and 11th, protecting himself as opposed to trading and creating enough of a stalemate for the clock to expire and his legs to come back.

It was noticeable that whenever Usyk landed something, Fury no longer saw the comical side. Instead of a smile on his face and instead of sticking his tongue out in response, in the last quarter of the fight you could only see a grimace and an expression of concern on the Englishman’s face. This fear continued in the final round and after the fight, when he was once again surrounded by all the people who built him, told him what to do and how to do it, and assured Oleksandr Usyk that: 22-0 (14), it was definitely too compact for him. By the time Frank Warren, his promoter, informed him that the decision would be turned against him, nothing was as fun for Fury anymore.

“People are on his side because his country is at war,” Fury, 34-1-1 (24), said after the scorecards were announced (115-112 Usyk, 114-113 Usyk and 114-113 Fury). comment neither comical nor nice. “But I thought I won that fight.”

Some will agree, but most will not. For what it’s worth, Usyk was the winner seven rounds to five, and one of those rounds, the ninth, was scored 10-8 due to a knockdown. Watching the fight, I also got the impression that any controversy, if any was needed to sell the rematch, should be directed more towards what happened in the ninth round, when Fury could have been stopped so easily, rather than towards what happened during the fight. 12 rounds in total. After all, it was in this round that we were all shocked; shocked not only by the speed at which everything changed, but also by the extent of the damage Usyk was able to cause, giving us no warning, no countdown, and only one clue to his mission.

It’s like Don DeLillo wrote in his book about Lee Harvey Oswald: “Even when you think you’ve seen all the ways violence can surprise a man, something comes along that you never imagined.”