‘They Just Cheated Out There’

Dubois believes he was robbed of a win after a shot that knocked Usyk to the canvas in the 5th round of their title fight was declared a low blow.

On Saturday night, unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk defeated mandatory challenger Daniel Dubois at Tarczynski Arena in Wroclaw, Poland. Usyk knocked Dubois down in the eighth round and then again in the ninth for a KO victory (watch the highlights), but the bout wasn’t without controversy.

Dubois’ best moments came when he attacked Usyk’s body, and he was perhaps a tad too wild with one of those body shots. In the fifth round he dropped Usyk with a punch that was declared a low blow. Now the Dubois is claiming he was robbed after Usyk was given time to recover from what he says was a legal body shot that could have finished the fight.

“This wrong needs to be corrected,” he told BBC Sports (via BoxingScene). “This needs to go further, it needs to be pushed. I should be a world champion right now. It wasn’t justice. It needs to be called out and go further than living this lie. They just cheated out there.”

“I definitely want a rematch,” he continued. “Get justice, get a rematch, get something to happen. We’ve been working in the gym for weeks and weeks on end on that shot. We pulled it off and that should have been our moment. That should have been a knockout. I’m feeling gutted. It wasn’t a low blow. I felt it land perfectly, smack into his stomach. I know for sure when I land a good shot.”

Usyk’s promoter Alexander Krassyuk doesn’t sound too interested in giving Dubois anything but a tongue lashing.

“What do you mean a lot of controversy? For what? For the low blow?” he told Seconds Out following the fight, showing a picture of Dubois’ glove below Usyk’s belt. “Do we see it? Do we need to talk about it anymore? Do we see the fist, the glove and belt? Do you like my photoshop? It’s a real one.”

“We are not arguing, why should we argue about legal or illegal,” he added. “It was an absolutely dominating performance. [Usyk] won exactly every single round, including the one that’s under discussion for so long. He won, he purely won. And then he knocked the guy the f— out. What else can we add to this?”

The boxing world is abuzz with people debating the punch, sharing different pictures of the punch and analyzing whether Usyk’s protector was unfairly high or not. Would Usyk have answered a count from the ref if it was deemed a legal punch? Would he have been able to survive a follow-up onslaught from Dubois if the fight continued? All questions we’ll never know the answer to.