Oleksandr Usyk: 'Zelensky's example makes me want to fight for Ukraine'

In the ring, Oleksandr Usyk cultivates an image of tattooed and terrifying intent. And yet here in a fourth-floor meeting room at Jeddah’s Shangri-La Hotel, he is so in touch with his gentler side that he has brought a soft-toy donkey along for support.

“Loilia, it’s called,” says the man seeking to consign Anthony Joshua to oblivion on Saturday night. “It’s my daughter Yelizaveta’s. She’s 12, and she gave it to me to be my talisman. We bought it when we were at Disneyland Paris. We left Ukraine together, but our roads separated in Europe, so she said, ‘This needs to be right next to you. It’s always close to me. It will be in my dressing room, too.”

For five-and-a-half months, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine compelled Usyk to join his compatriots’ ring of steel around Kyiv, he has been cut off from his three children. That is, he admits, a source of desperation, although the presence in Saudi Arabia of his wife, Yekaterina, is helping to placate him. “I have this diamond watch,” he smiles, switching briefly to English as he shows off a fabulously extravagant timepiece. “It’s a present from my wife. It’s my pride.”

Given he is collecting at least £32 million for this rematch with Joshua, he will soon be able to afford all the jewellery he desires. But this week, Usyk is acutely conscious of his role in a quest far larger than himself.

It is too glib to suggest that he derives any motivation from the conflict ravaging his homeland, but he understands how much joy a successful defence of his world heavyweight title could unleash. It is why, while UK viewers pay a record £26.95 to watch the fight on Sky Sports Box Office, he has arranged for the fight to be shown for free across Ukraine on local channels.

“I am not motivated by money,” he says. “Money is probably the easiest of all the resources to earn. My goal is to live my life to be useful to the world I live in. You can’t just keep putting money in your own pockets and doing everything for yourself. When you die, there are no pockets inside your coffin. When you stand in front of your final judge, only your real deeds will be valued – not how much you earned, but what you really did.”

This is not just grand philosophising. Without hours of Russian forces crossing the border, he enlisted in a territorial defence battalion, carrying a machine gun on his street patrols in Kyiv.

His personal history was already scarred by war: as a native of Simferopol, he saw his hometown in Crimea annexed by Russia in 2014, before finding himself stripped of state honours due to alleged “Russophobia”. There is no prospect of him fighting on the front line. His fame, he acknowledges, will not allow it. But he remains in daily contact with the soldiers who supported him.

“I receive voice and video messages from them that they are praying for my victory,” he explains. “They are the people who motivate me. They are struggling to defend our independence, our freedom and our culture against others who want to demolish and destroy, who don’t want us to exist any more.”

The emblematic figure in the resistance, he argues passionately, is Volodymyr Zelensky. “If the president had left in the first days of the war, it would have left the Ukrainian people without hope. But he didn’t. That is what has driven us to stand strong and fight. I am sure that if we had someone else as president, we would not have moved in the positive direction we have.”

Zelensky is personally invested in Usyk’s latest fight, urging the champion to demonstrate that “Ukraine is the country of serious, strong, developed and spiritual people”. It is a call he appears only too happy to heed. “I know the situation, because I used to be in touch with people who work around Zelensky,” Usyk says. “He accepts his responsibilities. When a difficult situation occurs, many people try to escape from it. But when Russia invaded, he didn’t run away.

“Other forces were saying, ‘We can extract you from Ukraine,’ but he stayed for his country. What do you think people like me, other Ukrainians, thought when we saw him acting like this? Everyone realised that we had to go and fight for our leader.”

Usyk, a former cruiserweight who has been training ferociously in Dubai to gain muscle mass, promises that he will head back to Ukraine as soon as his work in Jeddah is complete.

“When I say anything, my actions and words coincide. I am not a politician, I am a sportsman. I just want to see my kids, who are now all in Europe. I haven’t seen them properly for almost half a year, so I just want to hug them and have dinner with them. And then I will go to Kyiv.”

Should Saturday unfold as he plans, with a second vanquishing of Joshua bringing glory to a benighted land, you can rest assured that Zelensky will be leading the welcome party.