Tyson Fury will battle Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed heavyweight championship with the IBF, WBA, WBC & WBO belts on the line on February 17th in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Mike Coppinger reports the WBC heavyweight champion Fury (33-0-1, 24 KOs) & IBF/WBA/WBO champ Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs) will meet in three months from now in February.
Fury, 34, needs more time to rest from his war with Francis Ngannou last October, so the original date of December 23rd for the Usyk fight needed to be moved to February 17th.
If push came to shove, Fury, being the fighting man that he is, would take the December 23rd date without complaints and put it on the line, but his management felt it would be better that he be given additional time to test.
Having the Fury-Usyk fight moved to February gives the 6’9″ Fury time to burn off the stubborn belly & back fat that has deposited itself around his waist since last December.
A good liposuction procedure would remove that fat, but Fury will need conditioning to deal with the movement of Usyk, who won’t be standing there like a bump on a log, waiting to be leaned on and mauled.
Fury must lose that spare tire around his waist before meeting with speedy, fleet-of-foot Usyk because he won’t do well lugging that extra weight around.
Fury weighed a career-high 277 lbs for his fight with former UFC champion Francis Ngannou on October 28th, and he looked like he was carrying around 30+ lbs of useless fatty tissue around his waist that failed to time off in training camp.
Although Tyson insisted that he’d been working hard during the last ten months, it was clear from his physical appearance that he’d done enough training.
“Probably, Tyson [Fury] lost his respect for boxing for a little while and thought he could do it easy. He [looked like] never trained the way he was supposed to do. He thought it was going to be easy. It’s a good lesson,” said former light welterweight unified world champion Kostya Tszyu to Fight Hub TV, reacting to an out-of-shape, ring-rusty-looking Tyson Fury’s recent abysmal performance against Francis Ngannou last October in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“I’m sure he’s going to learn his lesson, and it’s going to help him. If he’s going to be prepared, it’s not going to be an easy fight for Usyk,” said Tszyu when asked about how Fury will do against IBF/WBA/WNO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.
“Usyk is great, I love him, and Usyk did great in his last fights, fighting against big fellows. He’s not getting hit. That’s important. If he’s [Fury] going to prepare like he did in his last fight, he’s going to lose. He has to learn this. Maybe it’s a good lesson for him,” said Kostya about Fury.
