Is this the end of AJ?

LONDON — The last time heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua lost he was thousands of miles from home, a stranger in a strange land caught by a stray punch that he knew — he absolutely knew — would not land again.

He was able to vanish for a few days in New York afterwards, long after the cameras and the screaming fans had gone home, to reflect on his worst night and what went wrong. This time it feels so different.

This time, it is fundamentally different.

The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium’s long shadow casts over the council estate he is from, the first gym he ever went to, the nightclubs where he would go as an unruly teenager. The scene for the comprehensive conclusion to his second reign as world heavyweight champion is his own back yard, inflicted by a vicious visitor whose menacing smile will haunt Joshua’s dreams for a long time yet.

Oleksandr Usyk’s utterly brilliant display of poise and precision on Saturday night to rock Joshua’s grand plans is nothing like Andy Ruiz Jr’s upset win in 2019.

Usyk is an altogether different breed, and we are still in the process of learning what a genius this maverick with the handlebar moustache really is. There will be no tearful blaming of ‘‘partying”, as Ruiz Jr did, if Usyk’s reign proves to be short. That much is absolutely certain. Which makes Joshua’s task of reclaiming his belts, and his path to boxing’s promised land, altogether more difficult.

In front of him now Joshua has a man who comprehensively defeated him and who even claimed that his trainer advised him not to knock the champion out.

Joshua found himself on the wrong end of the tactical, and alarmingly even a physical, battle. There was always the danger that Usyk was smart, but a more spiteful puncher too? Perhaps the best way to describe what stands in front of Joshua was during his ring-walk. — Sky Sports