By Scott Gilfoid: IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk believes he’s got the talent to hand WBC belt holder Tyson Fury his first loss after he gets through with Anthony Joshua next March.
The undefeated Usyk (19-0, 13 KOs) says Fury is the ONLY one that thinks he’s the King of the heavyweight division, and he feels he’ll defeat the big 6’9″ fighter when they meet up.
Fury is now on cloud nine following his back-to-back victories over former WBC champion Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ Wilder.
Those two wins, which are among the best in Fury’s career, have given him an exalted belief about himself that he can trample underfoot the other top heavyweights in the division.
With Fury’s current trainer SugarHill Steward designing simplistic roughhouse game plans, it’s easy to predict how he’ll attempt to defeat Usyk when the time comes for them to fight.
Usyk puts Fury in his place
Fury will try and mug Usyk on the night and throw out the Marquees of Queensbury rulebook in the process. It’ll be fun to see how Fury’s slash and burn style of fighting will function against Usyk.
Before Fury and Usyk can meet for all the marbles, Oleksandr must send former IBF/WBA/WBO champion Joshua down to a second straight defeat and possibly end his career next March.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn said on Friday that March is when he expects him to face Usyk in the rematch, and get this: Joshua WON’T be giving his longtime trainer Rob McCracken the royal boot, according to Hearn.
AJ won’t be switching out McCracken in favor of one of the American coaches to help save his career. Joshua will stubbornly stick with McCracken to the bitter end, staying with the horse he rode in on. Oh well, Joshua will at least have an excuse if things go wrong for him against Usyk, and he can blame it on his trainer.
“Yes, of course, I do regard this fight as a huge one. He [Fury] talks a lot; he has a tongue,” said Usyk to The Sun about his observations about Tyson Fury.
“He [Fury] claims he’s the King of the kings, but it’s only he who thinks that. That’s what I can say about him,” said Usyk in putting Fury in his place as a fighter with an inflated sense of his worth.
So there it is. Usyk believes he can beat Fury, and Scott Gilfoid thinks he can too. Fury has packed on all this useless weight, and he’s probably going to keep all that tonnage on him when it comes time for him to fight Usyk.
Oleksandr confident of beating Fury
Before then, Fury will need to beat his WBC mandatory Dillian Whyte in early 2022. Whyte’s promoter Eddie Hearn already said last Friday that Fury will be next and that they’re likely won’t be rescheduling the Otto Wallin fight.
If Fury ducks the Whyte fight, it may cost him his WBC strap. Without that belt, Fury will be a mere challenger when it comes time for him to take on Usyk in 2022, which isn’t the ideal position to negotiate a great deal with the talented Ukrainian
I never thought for an instant Whyte was going to fight Wallin. I saw this was a grandstanding move to give Whyte some cheap publicity without him having to risk his backside. But as the saying goes, ‘There’s no such thing as bad press.’
“Before my Joshua fight, everyone was saying that I haven’t got a single chance to win and beat Joshua,” Usyk said.
“I used to hear those types of things throughout my life, but I am capable of beating Fury because I’m not boasting that I can just punish and beat every boxer in the world, but I just go to the gym and do my job.