By Charles Brun: Promoter Frank Warren says WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury will need to rest his body after his fight with Francis Ngannou last night, and he won’t be able to return to camp for what would be six weeks of preparation time to face IBF/WBA/WBO champ Oleksandr Usyk on December 23rd.
It’s hard for boxing fans to understand why the 35-year-old wealthy beyond belief Fury would need rest after his fight with Ngannou because he’d already been out of the ring for close to a year since his last fight against his old buddy Derek Chisora last December.
Why would Fury need another rest break? In war, are soldiers allowed to rest when they’ve been in one battle? No, they’re expected to stay in the trenches, deal with fatigue, little sleep, and injuries, and suffer through it to continue to wage war.
Why should Fury need a rest? If anything, he needs to fight even before December so he can lose that spare tire that he was lugging around the ring last night against Ngannou because he looked like it was slowing him down.
The scores were 95-94 for Ngannou, 96-93, and 95-94 for Fury. Fans overwhelmingly had Ngannou winning, so Fury’s victory was bittersweet, to say the least.
After the flabby, out-of-shape-looking Fury’s inept performance against Usyk, the Saudis may lose interest in Tyson, and they could pull the rug out from under him & wash their hands of him.
The Saudis got to be looking at the woeful condition that Fury came into the fight in and thinking to themselves, ‘Why did we give this tub of lard so much of our dough?’
“I don’t get that at all,” said Frank Warren to iFL TV when asked about his thoughts on the judge that scored the fight 95-94 to Francis Ngannou last Saturday night over Tyson Fury.
Warren may not understand why the judge scored it for Ngannou, but the boxing public does. Ngannou beat the brakes out of Fury, dropping him in the third, coming close to knocking him out in the eighth and sending him fleeing from the battlefield with the white flag of surrender tailing behind him.
“I doubt very much that Tyson will fight on the 23rd [of December]. He’s had a tough fight; it’s eight weeks away. He needs to rest his body,” said Warren. Remember, he’s been in camp for twelve weeks. He’s been training stop-start fight training for the last eleven months, and fights didn’t take place because you know what happened with Usyk.
“He needs his body to rest. He’s coming out of a twelve-week camp, so he won’t be ready. He can’t go into a camp for six weeks to fight Usyk. That’s ridiculous.”
Fury looked like he hadn’t missed many meals in the last ten months since his last fight against aging 39-year-old journeyman Dereck Chisora last December.
Warren isn’t saying when the Fury vs. Usyk fight will take place in 2024, but he did confirm that it will occur early next year.
Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) needs rest after his tougher-than-expected clash with the 37-year-old former UFC heavyweight champion Ngannou (0-1) last Saturday night at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Looking flabby, slow & vulnerable in the chin department, Fury barely got through with a win by the skin of his feet, given an unpopular ten-round split decision over Ngannou.
Moreover, the disputed nature of the fight makes Fury look bad in the eyes of the Saudi money-men, who paid him a ton of money for his fight with Ngannou and had planned on giving him a bunch more loot for the undisputed heavyweight championship against Usyk on December 23rd.
What Fury needs to do to redeem himself and look classy is offer an immediate rematch with Ngannou in January and stage the fight in the UK if the Saudis don’t want to pay for it.
If you’re Fury, it’s crucial that you make an effort to show the Saudis that he at least is willing to get back in there with Ngannou and beat him for real this time and not depend on the judges to save his backside with a gift decision.
Understandably, they might not want to do another Fury-Ngannou fight in Saudi Arabia after what happened last night, but the match-up would still do well in the UK or the U.S.
Fury likely wouldn’t get as much dough the second time around, but at least he would prove to the fans & the Saudis that he just had an off night the first time around.
Of course, if the 35-year-old loses to Ngannou or looks just as bad, it would confirm that he deserved a loss the first time, and that was never that good to begin with.
“That fights signed. It will happen,” said Warren when asked if the Fury-Usyk fight will happen in January, February, or March next year.
“Why wouldn’t you? He’s just gone in there with the lineal champion [Fury] and given him his toughest fight that he’s had in his last three fights,” said Warren in reacting to being told that WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said that his organization is going to give Ngannou a top 10 ranking after his performance against Fury.
Ngannou took full advantage of Fury’s mauling style that he uses 24/7 in his fights at the late stage of his career and battered him at close range.
Fury is too old to dance around like twinkle toes like he did back when he edged Wladimir Klitschko many moons ago in 2015.
That version of young 27-year-old Fury is gone forever. In its place is fat and prematurely aged 35-year-old Fury, who now relies on leaning his 270+ weight on his opponents to tire out their legs, making them vulnerable.
Fury couldn’t use that style of fighting against Ngannou because he was too powerful and could hold his immense weight in the clinch and batter him with short punches to the head that he was not keen on taking.
“People are entitled to their opinion, and I can’t keep banging on about that. A lot of people said that, but the one person who is a boxing man who was in his camp was Mike Tyson, and he said that Tyson Fury won the fight,” said Frank when told that fans feel that Ngannou was robbed.
