Alexander Krassyuk, promoter for unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, says there is no doubt that his boxer was hit with a low blow in the fifth round of his fight with Daniel Dubois.
On Saturday night in Poland, Usyk knocked out Dubois in the ninth round to retain the IBF, IBO, WBA, WBO world titles.
In the aftermath, a mountain of controversy came down with respect to the fifth round.
During the action in the fifth, Dubois connected with a heavily debated body shot – which immediately caused Usyk to go down in pain for several minutes. The referee ruled the punch as a low blow.
The referee’s ruling has generated debate across the entire sport – with a clear divide between observers who felt the punch was legal and those who believe the shot was clearly low.
“Do we have a definition of legal and illegal? The belly button is the line. Anything low of that is a low blow,” Krassyuk said.
While Dubois is demanding a rematch, Krassyuk does not believe he deserves it.
He feels Dubois and his team were calculated with a set game plan to hit Usyk with low blows.
“Everyone wants the rematch after he loses a fight,” Krassyuk said. “With all due respect to Daniel Dubois who is our guest and our opponent, it is difficult to express respect for the way they treated the fight, for the way they wanted to get the victory. Sometimes it happens, you hit someone with an illegal blow, yeah it is normal. But when you keep doing this on purpose, it means you have some sort of dirty plan.
“Boxing is a pure art, a pure sport and it has to stay pure. That is why the guy has to deserve his rematch. The dirty performance means that you don’t care about what happens if you have some kind of strategy to use this as a leverage to develop your success. But how can we say now if this was a strategy or not. We saw several low blows.”