Review by AllTheBestFights.com: 2017-04-08, great performance by both boxers: Oleksandr Usyk vs Michael Hunter gets three stars.Both undefeated, the 2012 Olympic heavyweight gold medalist and current Wbo champion Oleksandr Usyk entered this fight with a perfect record of 11-0-0 (10 KOs=91%) and he is ranked as the No.1 cruiserweight in the world while his opponent, Michael Hunter, has a boxing record of 12-0-0 (8 knockouts) and he entered as the No.18 in the same weight class. Both boxers fought twice last year: Usyk beat Krzysztof Glowacki (=Glowacki vs Usyk) and Thabiso Mchunu (=Usyk vs Mchunu) while Hunter won over Phil Williams and Isiah Thomas (=Hunter vs Thomas). Oleksandr Usyk vs Michael Hunter is valid for the WBO World cruiserweight title (Usyk’s second defense); undercard of Vasyl Lomachenko vs Jason Sosa. Watch the video and rate this fight!
Date: 2017-04-08
Where: MGM National Harbor, Oxon Hill, Maryland, USA
Division: cruiserweight (200 lbs, 90.7 kg)
Title: WBO World cruiserweight title
Usyk’s previous fight: Oleksandr Usyk vs Thabiso Mchunu
Hunter’s previous fight: Michael Hunter vs Isiah Thomas
Usyk’s next fight: Oleksandr Usyk vs Marco Huck
Usyk vs Hunter Fight Video:
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(Free embeddable video hosted on Youtube and not uploaded by AllTheBestFights)
Official video
Official highlights
I had it exact as Merchant.
For me it was10-2 in rounds.
Really good fight.
Hunter didnt just show up for the money. He tried.
When Usyk vs Briedis happens that should be a good fight.
Plus there are 2-3 other possible good fights at CW. All 50-50 fights
Exciting fight, with Hunter giving Usyk plenty of challenge. The official score of 117-110 makes it seem a dominant win; it wasn’t that wide a margin in my eyes. I gave Hunter at least four, maybe five rounds. His hand speed and in-and-out style — he’s the poor man’s Danny Jacobs — had Usyk covering up a lot more than usual. But Hunter’s wide punching and imbalance left him open to the Ukrainian’s sharper, more telling blows. The tenth round was a debacle, as Hunter’s diehard corner let their fighter take a smashing.
While Usyk looks like an impossible mountain to climb at cruiserweight, his preference for starting slow might make his plans for moving up to heavyweight problematic. This was a hard-won victory. Wear and tear is going to be an issue.
A very difficult fight for both boxers since their qualifications,fighting styles and boxing capabilities are pretty good which in fact produced a quite interesting and entertaining fight. Sad to see one of them loosing the undefeated record but the best of both was quite evident. Anyhow, Hunter came to the fight with a very good plan and put Usyk in trouble in the beginning rounds but his main weakness was fighting against a southpaw rival, he did right with everything else. Since Usyk is a slow starter in top of that it took some time for him to figure out how to fight Hunter however, once he find the way was unstoppable combining his punches perfectly and shooting them from incredible angles. His body work on the later rounds was outstanding.