Wilder: I Wasn’t at All Surprised Usyk Beat Joshua, Usyk Will Have His Number in Rematch

Former heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder was not shocked by last month’s big occurrence, when Anthony Joshua suffered a twelve round unanimous decision loss to Oleksandr Usyk, who walked away with the WBA, WBO, IBF, IBO world titles.

Wilder is facing WBC champion Tyson Fury on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The contest is a rematch of their February 2020 encounter, which saw Fury capture the title with a seven round stoppage.

The once-beaten ‘Bronze Bomber’ was aiming to beat Fury – and then face Joshua in a full division unification in the first half of the upcoming year.

That won’t happen now, as Joshua and Usyk will collide in a rematch in the early months of 2022.

Usyk was able to outbox Joshua over the twelve round contest, with the British star finding himself in serious trouble as the final bout came to a close.

Wilder expects Usyk to come out victorious in the second outing.

“I wasn’t at all surprised, [my trainer] Malik [Scott] always talks about Usyk and how skillful he is,” Wilder told BT Sport Boxing. “Especially coming from a cruiserweight and styles make fights but he has definitely made fights.

“He had his struggles with Witherspoon and Chisora, but as I said style makes fights. And with Joshua he [Usyk] just had his number and I think he will have his number again the next time round. Usyk said he is going to be even faster and I believe he is going to be even faster, but who knows it is boxing at the end of the day we don’t know what happens until it is the time for it to happen.”