George Groves believes Tyson Fury won’t go through with the fight with Oleksandr Usyk next February because he has “more than enough,” and he won’t want to risk it by rolling the dice again after his last trainwreck match against Francis Ngannou.
George doesn’t spell out entirely why he thinks the Fury-Usyk fight won’t happen, but the general belief that Fury is chicken and afraid of getting humiliated by Usyk in a boxing lesson is a good reason.
Getting beaten by Usyk would be a bitter pill for the Gypsy King to swallow in this late stage of his career, and he’d have to live with the flashbacks of that disgrace for the rest of his life. It would be like an echo that doesn’t go away in Fury’s head.
Groves thinks that if Fury does return to the ring, it’ll be to rematch Ngannou rather than fight IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs).
Fans not interested in Fury-Usyk
There’s more interest in a Fury-Ngannou rematch than in seeing Fury take on Usyk, a fighter that the boxing world thinks deserved a loss in his last fight against Daniel Dubois.
If Fury fights Usyk next, it’ll be seen as two old guys saved from defeats by the referees and/or judges. Fury should have lost and got away with murder with the elbow he brained Ngannou with in the sixth round.
The 35-year-old Fury dodged a bullet against Ngannou, with the judges being kind enough to give him a win that few people believed he deserved.
It was a joke that the fight was called the “baddest”, because neither guy looked anything close to that, but you can argue that Ngannou was less bad than the fumbling, stumbling, old-looking version of Fury on that night last October in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Fury (33-0-1, 24 KOs) has socked away a lot of dough from his fights in the last five years, and he’s got enough to last him for the remainder of his lifetime and then some.
If Fury keeps eating and ballooning up in weight the way he has since 2015, he probably won’t be around for too much longer to enjoy his massive Howard Hughes-like fortune.
Fury knocked off his horse
Denzel Bentley: “Fury couldn’t bully Ngannou because he was the stronger man, and he looked the fresher as well,” said Bentley to the talkSPORT Boxing site.
“Regardless of who won, Fury took the bigger loss that night in general just because he shouldn’t have been able to do that to you if you’re meant to be the best fighter in the heavyweight division. That means the whole division is in trouble if that’s the case.
Gareth A. Davies: “Aren’t we now thinking that we want to see Fury & Usyk because it’s a much closer fight than we ever thought?”
Denzel: “I think Fury-Ngannou 2 is better than Fury-Usyk.”
George Groves: “I don’t think Fury fights again, but if he does fight again, he fights Ngannou. I don’t think he fights Usyk. I thought he was going to fight on December 23rd [against Oleksandr], and then he didn’t do a press conference.
“First of all, people think I bash Fury a lot, and I do tell it like I see it and think it. I am a big Usyk fan, and this is speaking from what I’ve experienced in my career.
“I think Fury has more than enough now, more than enough because does he really need to roll the dice and maybe get a career-defining win against Usyk and a big payday, or does he get beat? How does he tell everyone he’s the baddest man on the planet?
It’ll be interesting to see how Fury weasels out of his fight with Usyk next Fury, but he’ll come up with a good excuse, just like we saw with match being moved off the December 23rd date because he needed a good, long rest.
Gareth: “I reckon they’ll have a split draw in the first fight, and then they’ll fight a second. I think it’ll be so close.”
Groves: “You’re talking about conspiracies now, Gareth. You keep talking about aliens, and now you’re talking about conspiracies.”
Gareth: “No, you’re the alien. I just think it’ll [Fury vs. Usyk] be a very, very close chess match physically, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we find it very hard to score it at the end and it’s a split draw. Remember, they signed a two-fight deal. If you were in his position, is that what you’re talking about, what you’d have thought?”
Tyson hadn’t had a tough fight in years
Groves: “Fury? I’d be questioning a little bit, and only he knows, but is he thinking, ‘Do I really want this anymore? Am I really willing to go all the way?’
“There are times in his career when he’s been written off, and he’s come back to show people, and that’s what his motivation. So maybe that will be the case. But maybe he’s thinking, ‘I boxed Dereck Chisora over a year ago,’ and he didn’t train really hard for that because he was finished.
“Before then, the fight against Dillian Whyte. That was pretty comfortable. He hasn’t been pushed since fighting.”
A lot of boxing fans failed to recognize what they were seeing with Fury, because they didn’t understand that he hadn’t had a tough fight since 2021.
They were like children, fooled by Fury being matched against lesser heavyweights, Dillian Whyte & Dereck Chisora, believing those guys were cutting-edge competition.
If they had any sense, they would have seen what was going on, and realized that Fury was being put in with stiffs to make him look good.
When Fury fought Ngannou, fans finally saw with their own eyes the actual truth for the first time about Tyson.
Gareth: “Before he fought Dillian Whyte, could we have predicted that he would dominate him so easily?”
Groves: “Dillian Whyte had never boxed for a world title before.”
Gareth: “Did you think Fury would win it that easy as he did?”
Groves: “When I watched Fury against Deontay Wilder #2, I thought, ‘This guy is the best in the division. If he fights like this, I don’t see how anyone beats him.'”
Gareth: “Denzel, George has very strong and very salient views on the heavyweight division. How do you see the heavyweight division at the moment?”
Denzel: “It’s in trouble a little bit. There’s a lot going on, and nothing going on at the same time. All these rumors and reports and things, and nothing is really happening. We’re not seeing the fights that we want to see. AJ-Wilder has been in talks for the better part of five years.
“Fury-AJ has been going on for about the same. No one has really fought anyone at this moment in time.”
