By Tim Royner: Tony Bellew (30-2-1, 20 KOs) is talking up his fight against Oleksander Usyk (15-0, 11 KOs) this Saturday night, saying he feels he’s got a good chance of beating the four-belt unified cruiserweight champion at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. The fight will be televised on Sky Box Office PPV this Saturday.
Bellew says he has nothing to lose, but he clearly does. If Usyk beats Bellew as bad as Adonis Stevenson did in 2013, it’ll be a terrible way for the 35-year-old Liverpool native to end his boxing career. At the same time, it’ll make Bellew a less viable option for Hearn to bring out of retirement to mix and match against fighters in his Matchroom stable. Losing badly to Usyk in a one-sided manner on Saturday, will hurt Bellew’s career in a major way, especially if he gets clowned for the entire fight. Bellew’s so-called retirement is likely just a mirage. He’s probably going to take a six-month vacation before Hearn brings him back for a fight against one of his Matchroom stable fighters on Sky Box Office. With the money that Bellew is making on Sky PPV, he’s mot likely to turn down any fight offered to him by Hearn. For the longest time, Bellew has talked about wanting to fight Andre ‘SOG’ Ward. You would have to believe that Hearn will put in a major effort to get Ward to come out of retirement to fight Bellew. The fights a doable one if Hearn offers Ward the right kind of money for him to come over to the UK and take the fight.
Usyk is coming off the biggest win of his career over IBF/WBA Murat Gassiev last July in the World Boxing Super Series cruiserweight final. The win over Gassiev made Usyk the unified cruiserweight chaampion in the division. He now holds all four titles at cruiserweight, and he plans on defending the belts for what will be his first and likely his last time. Usyk plans on moving up to heavyweight after Saturday night to go after IBF/WBA/WBO champion Anthony Joshua’s scalp. For some reason, Joshua, 28, says he hopes Bellew beats Usyk, This gives an indication that Joshua wants Bellew to take care of his problem with the looming threat of Usyk. We saw the same thing with Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn trying hard to setup a fight between his fighter Dillian Whyte and WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder in a move that fans believed was an attempt by Eddie to have the American heavyweight threat removed from the path of AJ. It didn’t work. When Wilder told Hearn and Whyte that he would need to beat Luis Ortiz in order to get a title shot against him, they went in the other direction towards a safer path in taking on Dereck Chisora on December 22.
Bellew believes the advantage that he has in this fight is he has nothing to lose. Bellew, 35, has already lost three times in his career, and some boxing fans feel that he should have an additional two losses on his record from his two fights against Isaac Chilemba in 2013. As the challenger, Bellew has nothing to lose because he’s seen already as someone who is completely out of his league against Usyk. Bellew hasn’t fought any of the talented guys to deserve to share the ring with Usyk, and he’s basically getting the fight based on him being popular in his own country of the UK and being well connected due to his promoter being Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing.
“I have nothing to lose going into this fight, nothing whatsoever,” Bellew said to Sky Sports News. “I just genuinely believe I’m going to get him – I just see I’m going to get to him at some stage.”
Bellew is counting on him being able to knockout Usyk in the same way he did in stopping David Haye and Illunga Makabu. However, those two fighters were never in the same class as Usyk. Haye was a good fighter during the prime of his career 10 years ago, but he was so far past his best by the time that Bellew fought him that it didn’t really matter that he beat him.
Usyk is clearly better than a prime Haye, and that’s bad news for Bellew, since he never would have been able to live with the prime Hayemaker. That’s a believe that most boxing fans have. Bellew is a good fighter, but he’s not in the same talent level as Haye was at a decade ago, and I think he knows that. This is why Bellew is talking in such desperate terms, making it clear that he doesn’t believe that he possesses enough talent to get the job done.
Bellew is more of a blue collar type of fighter, who has done well with using his power against the select opposition that his promoters have picked out for him. On the other side, Usyk is a blue chip talent, a fighter who has been brought up in the amateur system in Ukraine and has accomplished big things. Usyk was always a superb fighter. Things have been far different with Bellew. He’s always been a crude slugger, who would beat the domestic level fighters, but would fail when he would be stepped up against world class fighters. Bellew suffered losses early on to Nathan Cleverly and Adonis Stevenson that showed his limits in the talent department.
In spite of Bellew’s lack of credentials in terms of wins over notable opposition, his career has flourished of late once his promoter Hearn backed him off from facing the best and began to focus on matching him against beatable, flawed fighters at cruiserweight. Bellew has done extremely well since moving up to cruiserweight and heavyweight, thanks to Hearn matching him against fighters like David Haye, BJ Flores, Illunga Makabu, Arturs Kulikauskis, Ivica Bacurin and Mateusz Masternak. What Hearn showed was he could turn a simple blue collar fighter into a star in the UK by matching him against certain fighters with limited ability. Hearn didn’t need to match Bellew againt the talents like Usyk, Mairis Briedis, Yunier Dorticos and Murat Gassiev to make a big name for him. Makabu, Bacurin and Flores was enough. The formula has worked for Anthony Joshua as well, as we’ve seen since he turned pro in 2013. On Saturday night, Hearn is going to put Bellew in with the best, and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when the governor is taken off and a blue collar fighter is put in with the best.
Bellew has been saying that this will be his last fight before retirement, but the boxing public believes that his promoter Eddie Hearn will soon coax him out of retirement to match him against one of his heavyweights or even possibly a light heavyweight like Dmitry Bivol or Artur Beterbiev. Dillian Whyte might need a boost after he faces Anthony Joshua next April and likely loses that fight by knockout. Bellew would be perfect for Whyte in that case.
The fans see the Usyk-Bellew fight as about as evenly matched as one of Anthony Joshua’s typical fights against the likes of Carlos Takam, Eric Molina and Alexander Povetkin. In other words, Bellew is seen as having no chance of beating Usyk.