By Charles Brun: Oleksandr Usyk will defend his unified three-belt heavyweight championship against his WBA mandatory Daniel Dubois on August 26th in front of a large crowd of expected 43,000 fans, according to his promoter Alex Krassyuk.
Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs) finally gets to fight in front of a large crowd of many of his fellow Ukrainians, who now live in Poland after the country came to their aid.
This is a fight that Uyk must win for him to meet WBC belt holder Tyson Fury or possibly someone else in December in Saudi Arabia.
Dubois (19-1, 18 KOs) will be a tough out for Usyk because the British fighter has steam-rolled his last four opponents since being stopped by Joe Joyce in 2020.
Without a group of supporters cheering him on, the 25-year-old Dubois will be out there pretty much on his own, fighting the talented 2012 Olympic gold medalist Usyk. With Dubois’ power, you can’t rule out an upset victory because he’s a dangerous puncher.
If Dubois wins, we could see him fighting Fury at the end of the year. Whether that would be in Saudi Arabia or the UK will be interesting to see.
“August 24th is the Independence Day of Ukraine. Usyk did not fight as a home fighter since 2015, which is eight years already, and within this time, he became the undisputed cruiserweight champion. He became the unified heavyweight champion, and its high time for him
finally to be the home fighter at least once,” said Alex Krassyuk to iFL TV.
“Unfortunately, we cannot do this in Ukraine for you know the reason, of course, and everyone knows the reason, but Poland is our neighbor country, our brother country, or sister country, or both. At the same time, Poland helped us a lot.
“Just common, normal Ukrainian people, who had to leave Ukraine, after the war started, and there are more than 2 million Ukrainians living in Poland now, and in the region where the [Usyk vs. Dubois] fight is gonna take place.
“We have more than 200, 000 Ukrainians and this will be a real, real celebration for them and the Independence Day of Ukraine, which is
an important uh holiday for all of us. The day of something we are fighting for, so we want to devote this fight to Ukraine to our native land.
“That’s why we want to create a special Festival of Brotherhood between our Nations and to make it in the city of Wrocław to bring this celebration to the people of Ukraine to people of Poland to people around that location to come together and uh celebrate and have this final point of the biggest fight in heavyweight until now.
“43,000,” said Krassyuk when asked how large the expected crowd will be for Usyk vs. Dubois on August 26th.
