'Now I just want to be normal': Emotional Tony Bellew leaves boxing with head held high

Vale Tony Bellew. The popular Liverpool prizefighter announced his boxing career complete, having more than realised his dreams, amid emotional scenes after defeat by undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in Manchester.

The 35-year-old former WBC 200lb champion from Toxteth produced arguably the best technical performance of his career in spite of an eighth-round stoppage defeat, admittedly against one of the finest fighters in the world, having been ahead on two of three judges’ scorecards before the straight left-left hook finish from the brilliant Ukrainian southpaw.

Bellew’s retirement came without hesitation after the fight. It was open, honest, tearful. “Tony Bellew died tonight, it’s Anthony that’s left. No one who knows me calls me Tony, I’ve always been Anthony to them. Tony Bellew exists for these cameras really...”

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The fighter had been told by his wife, Rachael, with whom he has three sons, that he “will be divorced” if he ever steps into a ring again. “It’s definitely over, you’ll not see me in a ring again. Now I just want to be normal, so please leave me alone.”

Through the tears, Bellew declared his personal triumph. “I have won. I sit here as a loser, heartbroken, but I have won in life. When I left school – or, rather, when I was expelled from school for hitting a kid who had disrespected a teacher – I had nothing, with nowhere to go. Where I’m from, it really means that. Now my family are millionaires. I never dreamed this would be possible.”

Bellew has become a folkloric figure for British boxing fans through his honesty, warrior spirit and authenticity, and has bagged financial success in his thirties, winning the WBC cruiserweight title at Goodison Park, followed by two high-profile, grudge fights with David Haye.

On Saturday night Bellew was, briefly and dramatically, out-thinking and outboxing the master fighter Usyk, also the London 2012 Olympic heavyweight champion, until he fatigued in the seventh round, being poleaxed in the eighth.

“No excuses, I won’t make any,” Bellew said. “I lost to the best fighter I have ever faced. He was awkward, intelligent. He fell for my traps a few times. But ultimately he got me.”

Usyk, having become the undisputed cruiserweight champion on the road in Poland, Latvia, and Russia, but a star in his homeland where his performance was watched live by 15 million compatriots on Ukrainian state television, has a co-promotional deal with Eddie Hearn that could potentially see a move up to the heavyweight division to challenge Anthony Joshua, holder of the WBA, IBF and WBO titles in the sport’s blue riband division.

Usyk will need to build his body mass towards the 220lb mark from the 200lb cruiserweight limit first, and a contest with Joshua may yet be delayed until 2020 if Deontay Wilder, the American who holds the WBC heavyweight crown, is victorious over Briton Tyson Fury in Los Angeles on Dec 1. It is understood that Joshua and Wilder are being lined up to fight twice in 2019, once at Wembley, in April, then back in the United States, in Las Vegas, in November or December.

Usyk said: “I’ve had a really tough year, it’s been the most successful year of my career, but also the most difficult. I need a real break. At the start of this camp, I was staring at the ceiling in bed asking myself, ‘What am I doing here?’. We need to wait a while before discussing the Joshua fight.”

Bellew bows out having been an utterly authentic, working-class prize fighter who gave his all, in and out of the ring.

There was the sense of occasion on the night with Kell Brook and Amir Khan there, Haye and Dereck Chisora, whom he now manages, pictured together, bygones having been by and gone. A generation, a very fine era, is bowing out as British boxing rides the crest of a wave.