Fury was boxing like he had won the fight - Lewis

Lennox Lewis criticised Tyson Fury’s gameplan against Oleksandr Usyk after the Briton suffered a split-decision loss to the Ukrainian.

Fury, 35, lost his WBC title and his perfect record to Usyk in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as his rival became the first undisputed heavyweight champion in the four-belt era.

Usyk staged a late comeback to edge the fight, and legend Lewis - the last undisputed champion before Saturday’s contest - said Fury got his tactics wrong.

“Fury was boxing like he won the fight,” Lewis said on DAZN.

“No boxer can judge and say they won the fight.

“Every time a round was close they should look at it like a loss.”

Two judges scored the fight for Usyk, while a third scored it 114-113 to Fury.

All three officials gave rounds eight, nine and 10 to Usyk as momentum swung in his favour after a strong opening for Fury.

Fury was taunting Usyk from the opening rounds, hurting his opponent in the sixth before suffering a standing count in the ninth round.

Fury said he believed he was clearly ahead on the scorecards going into the final round.

“I was having fun in there. I was playing around. I was loving it. I thought I was bossing the fight,” he said of the showboating.

“If my corner would have said in the final round, go out and finish it, I would have - but we all thought we were up.

“In the first six rounds he maybe nicked one of them. It was close and I tried my best. I came up short.”

Heavyweight Derek Chisora says Fury was given a “slow” standing count in round nine of his encounter with Usyk.

The Ukrainian landed a succession of overhand lefts to send Fury tumbling backwards into one of the corners of the ring.

Referee Mark Nelson called a knockdown as Fury appeared to be only kept up by a corner post.

Ringside officials began the eight count, but Chisora feels it was too long.

"We need to talk about the slow count. That destroys boxing," Chisora said on 5 Live Boxing with Steve Bunce.

"If we keep doing this silliness of slow counting and trying to disrupt the rhythm of the game, people will fall out of love with boxing."

Speaking on TNT Sports, former heavyweight world champion David Haye also took issue with the amount of time Fury was given to recover.

Fury has a history of recovering from heavy knockdowns having previously climbed off the canvas against heavy hitters Deontay Wilder and Francis Ngannou.

The Gypsy King was dazed for several rounds, but all three judges awarded Fury the final round.

"If you look at the replay again, the ref stopped counting, he looked at Tyson and asked 'are you OK?', then he carried on counting," Chisora said.

"It was a bit of a misunderstanding from the ref, but that needs to stop."