u/Drewbrees8

While watching the fight live with commentary, I had thought that Rico was pretty handedly winning rounds and the fight. However, after rewatching Usyk-Verhoven without the commentary and without the same pre-fight expectations, it was clear that there were very few clear rounds and that the majority of rounds were swing rounds. Understandably, most people thought this fight was not going to be competitive going into it. The commentary team reflected this and implied several different times that Rico had no chance. Thus, when Rico indeed was being extremely competitive and doing good work, the commentary team over amplified his performance. In reality, few shots were landed by either in most rounds, and the compubox stats tell a much different story than the commentary team was. Usyk outlanded Rico in total punches in 4 of the 10 rounds, Rico outlanded Usyk in 4 of the 10, and they were tied in the other two. In power punches Rico outlanded Usyk in 7/10 rounds, but 5 of these were decided by one punch. Yet, you had people saying right after the fight that Rico “belted Usyk” or “dominated” him. The film and the numbers prove those claims to be absolutely ridiculous. So what happened? Well, given the pre-fight expectations and how well Rico did perform, it’s understandable that the commentary team over amplified Rico’s performance, but it severely deluded people’s perception of the fight. That of course, combined with Coppinger’s scoring, who had it 8-2 for Rico made people think the fight was much more one sided than it was. I had it 7-3 for Rico going into round 11, but like I said the majority of rounds were close and could have reasonably gone either way. The only rounds that I thought were clear were Rounds 1, 6, and 9 for Rico and Round 4 for Usyk. Coppinger’s score was reasonable but so were the judges and you had people acting like it had to be corruption as the only explanation. A perfect snapshot into how terrible the commentary team’s night was when one of them said, “And now Usyk switches to Southpaw! He just can’t figure this guy out!” Absolutely ridiculous. Fortunately, it seems like more people are noticing this as people more closely examine the fight in the days following and a lot of the people who are still saying this was a one-sided whooping are on the anti-boxing tribe and do so in bad faith.

TLDR: The commentary team was shocked by Rico performing way above their expectations and over amplified how well he was doing as a result, leading to terrible and biased commentary, which in turn caused people to see Rico as being dominant in what was in reality a very close and competitive fight, as the film and stats support.