Usyk wants to put a smile on the face of his war-torn home
It is a fight for Anthony Joshua. For Oleksandr Usyk it is war. Quite literally. From the Zaporozhian Cossack costumes to the patriotic Ukrainian folk songs, the backdrop to today’s heavyweight title defence is impossible to ignore.
sport and sports people are certainly not shielded from the horrors back home. this week, the mother of Ukrainian high jumper Kateryna tabashnyk was killed in a Russian airstrike on Kharkiv. Amid the rubble were pitiful souvenirs, including her daughter’s old competition bibs, kept as mementoes by a proud parent.
‘My mommy, i love you very much,’ wrote tabashnyk on social media. ‘the Russian world took my mother’s life. they “liberated” me from my home and my whole life. How i hate you.’
so when Usyk fights in Jeddah tonight it will be for more than belts, the purse, or mere personal glory. He is here at the instruction of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, who believed he could do more for morale as a warrior in the ring than as a soldier protecting Kyiv.
Usyk enlisted, and says he will return to the capital, but was kept clear of the front line. to lose such a prominent Ukrainian would be a desperate setback for the country and simply not worth the risk.
Better to see him successfully defend his claim to be the baddest man on the planet. Usyk has negotiated for the fight to be shown free-to-air in his own country. Even amid a battle for Ukraine’s very existence, this sporting contest is considered a matter of great national importance.
As Usyk demonstrated in Jeddah this week, he likes singing. At the end of Wednesday’s press conference he turned to those gathered at the shangri-La Hotel and led them in the nationalist song, Oi u luzi chervona kalyna.
Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow was written in 1875 as Ukraine fought for independence. During the soviet occupation from 1919 to 1991 its performance was banned and punishable with jail, beatings or exile. For obvious reasons, it has re-emerged as the rallying cry for a nation again seeking to repel Russian invaders.
Usyk naturally fears for his family, friends and countrymen. ‘sometimes, i just force myself to bring a smile,’ he said earlier this year. ‘sometimes, i force myself to sing. i don’t know how to explain it.’
But that does explain it. How he behaves, why he fights, now, in this time of great crisis. He wants to force Ukraine to sing, even as the missiles fall. He wants to make Ukraine smile, even as it picks a path through rubble.
it seems trite to equate the two perils. that in a ring, for entertainment, and the peril of war. Yet Zelensky recognised the importance of tonight’s occasion. Usyk does, too. His actions this week have always had one eye on the message to home.
At the weigh-in yesterday, while Joshua’s appearance was perfunctory, all business, on and off the scales with barely a word, Usyk appeared to be revelling in every moment, affording every aside, every movement and gesture meaning.
His clothes were Cossack-casual, baggy white shirt, vivid red trousers, and when he recorded his weight — 15st 11lb, virtually the
He hopes to force Ukraine to sing, even as the missiles fall
same as the first Joshua fight, meaning rumours of significant bulking were exaggerated — he lingered long on the stage, talking with his admirers, laughing with his entourage.
He received an additional belt in honour of unifying the heavyweight and cruiserweight divisions, which seemed to be more an excuse to get local dignitaries in the frame with him, but he pulled a happy face for the camera as he posed with it, adding the prize to the three belts that accompanied him everywhere, the spoils of his previous victory over Joshua.
these were held aloft, as a reminder, as if any was needed. Equally, Usyk’s ease put one in mind of a film scene in which the main man walks through the town, joking with the awe- struck little folk, an acknowledgement here, a smile and a handshake there, plucking a free orange from the greengrocer’s stall. One imagines it was the same back home before everybody became a conscript.
One of the reasons Usyk is not on the front line is that a massive celebrity in the ranks is a distraction when there is fighting to be done; and the claim to be the world’s hardest man makes him his country’s most important citizen, its biggest hero after Zelensky; certainly for propaganda purposes. Putin poses barechested on horseback. Usyk is the real deal.
Outside the auditorium, in the corridors beneath the King Abdullah sports City Arena, Usyk met a little boy draped in the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag. Luka is the son of a Ukrainian media worker covering the fight and he looked a little starstruck as Usyk by turns cajoled, sang and made merry around him.
His father was excited, too. it doesn’t take much for the few Ukrainians here to bond over entrenched patriotism and shared hope. At the end of this little show, Luka fell into his mother’s arms for a big cuddle.
then again, if the inspiration of the battlefield was all that was required, Ukraine’s footballers wouldn’t have lost to Wales in June and would be going to the World Cup later this year.
Usyk needs more than mere nationalistic fervour to retain his titles tonight. Joshua, taller and heavier, is up from the weight at which he last fought and is coming here, he hopes, with a smarter strategy.
As the two men faced off — a deadpan moment that went on long enough to remind of Big Train’s wonderful staring Competition sketches — Joshua broke with a parting murmur.
‘How’s your body?’ he asked Usyk, confirmation that tonight’s strategy will be to punish the champion’s upper torso in the hope of wearing him down.
Usyk, technically superior, will want to get in close, again, and hope — if Joshua’s strategy does not work — that he will run out of ideas like the last time.
Certainly, if the intention was to rattle Usyk with the warning, his demeanour suggested he didn’t care or understand.
He continued joshing his way around the stage, pursued by his belts and a posse of blue-andyellow-shirted well-wishers.
in Jeddah tonight, despite the terror, despite the horrors back home, Usyk once again plans to force his country to sing.
And we’ll take that red kalyna and we will raise it up, and we shall cheer up our glorious Ukraine, hey — hey!