Ian Hart: For Johan Cruyff, read Oleksandr Usyk – we’ve seen one of the all-time greats in action
On Wednesday, February 9, 1977 as a fresh-faced 12-year-old, I was lucky enough to be at Wembley to watch the Dutch maestro, Johan Cruyff, destroy Don Revie’s England.
Though I didn’t know it that night, I had been lucky enough to watch the greatest player on the planet at that time.
Fast forward 48 years, the much-loved stadium long rebuilt, I was again fortunate, this time to be there last Saturday night to watch Oleksandr Usyk – like Cruyff all those years ago, the finest exponent of his craft on the planet today.
As I took my seat in Club Wembley I was actually a doubter, I was thinking – wrongly in this case – that Old Father Time eventually catches up with everyone.
On the back of his demolition of Anthony Joshua, I really thought that at 11 years his junior, Dynamite Daniel Dubois would finally inflict the first defeat in Usyk’s career.
How wrong I was, and we were treated to a near 15-minute boxing masterclass in the process.
To compare across the decades is done far too much, but Usyk’s fifth round knockout of DDD, I believe, puts his among the greatest of all time.
We will never truly know how he would have fared against the likes of Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson or our very own Lennox Lewis, but it’s clear he will be forever spoken about in that same illustrious boxing company.
The only downside of an amazing evening of sport on Saturday was the arrival of ‘influencer’ Jake Paul in the Wembley ring.
His apparent face-off with Usyk was laughable, and totally out of place at a legimate contest for the Undisputed World Heavyweight Championship.
Speculation is now that Paul will fight AJ and I actually hope it happens, provided AJ doesn’t have to adhere to a script like Mike Tyson allegedly had to.
For the good of the sport and its credibility I want AJ to fight Paul, I want the first bell to sound and I want AJ to finish the contest inside 30 seconds and expose this boxing journey of Paul’s to be what it is.
As for Usyk, I hope he retires. He’s now beaten the British trio of AJ, Tyson Fury and Dubois a total of six times, two each, he needs to sit back and enjoy his young family.
There’s nothing left to prove – he truly is a boxing legend, a fighter they will still be talking about in 50 years in the same mantle as those other heavyweights I have mentioned.