An argument for open scoring?

On Saturday night on the sport’s grandest stage, Oleksandr Usyk enshrined himself on a very short list of the finest heavyweight boxers to have ever lived. The undefeated Ukrainian’s split decision win against Tyson Fury in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, means that he is the first man to unify boxing’s major heavyweight titles in the four-belt era and the first undisputed champion since Lennox Lewis in 1999 — accolades to be added to his undisputed cruiserweight titles, a world amateur championship, an Olympic gold media and… well, you get the idea.

But despite the majority of fans and analysts alike considering the bout as a fairly easy one to score in Usyk’s favour (even if the bout was an especially close one), Tyson Fury along with his corner, including Andy Lee, SugarHill Steward and others, entered the twelfth round believing that they were in control of the fight — despite a ninth round in which Usyk came closer than anyone before him to scoring a knockout win on the giant ‘Gypsy King.’

And speaking to the media, including The Mac Life, soon after the bout, Fury said that he was making no excuses but would have changed things up a little had he been made aware of what the judges had been thinking.

“I thank Oleksandr for the good fight. It was a close fight, you know? I believe I thought I did enough, but I’m not a judge. I can’t judge a fight while I’m boxing it,” Fury said, flanked by his promoter Frank Warren.

“If they would have said to me in the last round or whatever, ‘You’re down, go out and try and finish him,’ I would have done that. But everyone in the corner believed we were up. All I had to do was just keep boxing, do what I was doing, and I thought we were getting it. But it was what it was. I’m not going to cry about spilled milk.

“I’ve had plenty of victories and I gave God the glory,” Fury added. “I’ve had this one loss in a close, close fight with a good man like Usyk, and it was what it was. I tried my best in there. I was having a lot of fun actually. I don’t know if it looked like it, but I was playing around, hands behind my back, and I was enjoying it. He’s a good fighter, Oleksandr, I was catching him and he was catching me, and it was a good fight, so I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did getting punched in the face.

“Say I won five of the first six, and then the next six I won a few as well,” Fury said. “It was close, I don’t know. I tried my best and it was what it was, coming up short. One of the judges had me winning and the other two didn’t, so I can’t complain about it.”