By Charles Brun: Tyson Fury has chosen, for some reason, NOT to mention Oleksandr Usyk’s name in his interviews, and it’s become self-evident that he’s purposefully avoiding discussing him.
The IBF, WBA & WBO heavyweight champion Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs) has become unmentionable for Fury, and one gets the sense that Tyson is heading toward another Derek Chisora-level opponent to sell to his British fans on PPV.
It’s going to be bad for Fury is he fails to seal the deal with Usyk because this would be the second huge fight that he failed to negotiate. Tyson was supposed to fight Anthony Joshua last year, but he ruined the deal by playing A-side, giving the more popular star two deadlines, which was a dumb thing to do.
Whether Fury has been told by his promoters not to answer any questions from the media about Usyk is unclear. It is obvious, and it can be interpreted as a sign that the fight won’t happen and Fury could soon be heading in another direction.
Many fans believe that Fury sabotaged the negotiations with Usyk by asking for too much money from the Saudis, thinking he could demand a king’s ransom for a fight that frankly wasn’t a big deal.
“I believe that I could beat any man born from his mother in any era, in any decade, in any century. In one-on-one combat, I would beat them in a fight. I’ve never met anybody who could beat me yet, and I don’t intend to,” said Tyson Fury to FoxifyTrade about his fanciful belief.
We already saw Fury barely beat past his prime 39-year-old Wladimir Klitschko in 2015, and that was during the zenith of the Gypsy King’s career.
It’s fair to say that if Fury struggled to beat an old Wladimir, who was rudderless after his trainer Emanuel Steward passed away, he wouldn’t beat prime Klitschko, his brother Vitali or other greats from the past like Mike Tyson, Larry Holmes, Lennox Lewis, and George Foreman.
“My most formidable opponent was Deontay Wilder,” said Fury. “All three times, it could’ve been curtains for me at any second. He knocked out every single person that he ever fought, apart from me. I’d back him to beat everybody in the division apart from myself.”
Many fans believe Fury cheated to beat Deontay Wilder twice and that he should have lost all three fights. In the first fight, Wilder had Fury unconscious on the canvas, and the referee didn’t stop the contest. That was clearly a knockout.
In the second clash, Fury hurt Wilder with numerous rabbit punches and was holding & hitting. The shot that incapacitated Wilder in the third round was a rabbit punch. From that point on, Wilder was out of it. In the third fight, many believe Fury was saved from a knockout in the fourth round by a slow count from the referee after he was dropped by Wilder.
Fury is popular, but he’s not a huge star like Anthony Joshua, who has TWICE fought in Saudi Arabia in the last four years. If Fury’s fighting style was more entertaining with less clinching & leaning, he’d likely have a better chance of fighting in Saudi Arabia like Joshua, but he fights ugly. Watching Fury and a regular journeyman, there’s not much difference. Fans want to see knockouts, not clinching, leaning & rabbit punches.
With Fury having seemingly bungled the Saudi deal, the chances of the fight happening in the UK are slim unless Usyk is willing to take less than what he likely would have gotten if the match had taken place in the Middle East.
