A better performance from Joshua. He made adjustments, had a different plan and it was working for nine rounds. Forget the 'you're winning every round' bollocks from Joshua's corner early on, he wasn't, but he was in the fight and probably where he wanted to be going into the tenth. He got his instructions to turn the heat up in the ninth and responded by putting it on Usyk for a sustained period. At that point I thought he was going to go on and win the fight. He'd sussed out that up close, Usyk doesn't really throw back. A few well timed sustained attacks per round at that point might have been enough to get the job done.

Usyk showed his class at that point. Fully ware of what was going on and how Joshua was playing it he took the play back immediately with his own high energy attack in the tenth that essentially pulled the rug from under Joshua and his best laid plans and won the fight at that point. He cantered away with it in the final two rounds. Brilliant stuff.

It's hard to be too critical of what Joshua did (during the actual fight). It was in the balance after nine rounds, he fought well and fought differently. But to suggest he did something wrong detracts from just how brilliant and resilient Usyk is. Whilst it's a bitter pill to swallow, he got pipped at the post by the 2/3 P4P finest boxer on the planet.

It'll be interesting to see where both go from here. Obviously there's only really one fight for Usyk, but he'll have obligations coming his way. Joshua is still one of the four best heavyweights out there and even whilst he's in this mental limbo I'd still fancy him to beat all but the other three quite strongly. How he goes about it is another matter.