The Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk ‘Ring of Fire’ promo came out today, and it’s an outstanding one by the Saudis to promote the February 17th undisputed heavyweight championship between the two fighters at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Western Flair with a Modern Twist
WBC champion Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) and IBF, WBA & WBO champ Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs) are dressed up in Western costumes, looking like they’re extras from one of director Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns from the 1960s.
Fury’s brother, Tommy, and dad, John, are part of the promo as well.’ You can tell that the Saudis spent a lot of money putting the thing together because it’s done well.
A Slight Misstep
The only negative where it veers from the Western theme goes into a Romanesque thing and then into cartoons. That ruins it for this writer.
Now, hopefully, the Fury vs. Usyk main event fight lives up to the production the Saudis are putting into it. If not, then it’ll be up to co-feature rematch between former IBF cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia and Mairis Briedis to save the day.
The Defender of Fury’s Legacy
“He’s challenging Tyson Fury’s resume. Anyone that was around the trilogy of fights with Deontay Wilder knows that it was one of the great trilogies of heavyweight boxing,” said Gareth A. Davies to Boxing King Media, reacting to Carl Froch criticizing Tyson Fury’s resume, which is rather barren of quality fighters once one gets past his best career win against 40-year-old Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.
“Fury is about to fight Usyk, and if he defeats Usyk and fights Joshua, he’s pretty much done the entire division. Yes, there’s the [Martin] Bakole fight. If you really wanted to do everyone in the division and mop up everyone, Bakole and [Zhilei] Zhang. Apart from that, who else is there?
“Listen, he [Fury] went to Germany and beat a [40-year-old] guy [Wladimir Klitschko], who had been champion for 9 1/2 years. No one could beat Klitschko [except for Corrie Sanders, Lamon Brewster, and veteran Ross Purtitty].
“When he [Fury] went in with Wilder, no one was beating Wilder at the time. You could argue, did Wilder avoid Klitschko? Did Klitschko avoid Wilder? Why didn’t Joshua and Wilder meet from 2018 onwards?
“Just because Wilder had one poor performance [against Joseph Parker] and Fury had one poor performance [against Francis Ngannou] in his last outing.”
