"What will I say to them?" Usyk was offered $300,000 to deliberately lose the World Championship final

During his amateur career, unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk (23-0, 14 KOs) received an offer to lose in the world championship final. At the tournament in Baku in 2011, the tournament hosts were ready to pay our compatriot 300 thousand dollars.

This was reported by the Champion newspaper, to which the details of this incident were told by the then-coach of the Ukrainian national team Dmytro Sosnovskyi. According to him, Usyk received the offer to surrender the final just before entering the ring. Oleksandr was asked to withdraw from the fight due to injury so that the award would go to Azerbaijani Teymur Mammadov.

"The offer came when Usyk had already put on his boxing gloves and was preparing to enter the ring. Usyk decisively refused the offer. And he explained his refusal with great dignity. At that time, Sashko did not have any sons. Kirill was born in 2013, and Mykhailo in 2015. But Oleksandr said: "If I withdraw from the final now and take second place, in many years my children will ask me, Dad, what happened in the World Cup final? What will I tell them?" Sosnovskyi said.

In the end, Usyk confidently won the World Cup final against Mamedov, taking all five rounds – 25:15. In a year, the Ukrainian will become the Olympic champion of London, and the Azerbaijani will win bronze.

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