His Excellency Turki Alalshikh appears to be sending a strong message to Tyson Fury by introducing a $10 million penalty clause for any fighter that pulls out of his heavyweight clash with Oleksandr Usyk in their rescheduled May 18th contest in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The fact that His Excellency Alalshikh brought the 35-year-old Fury to sit beside him while he was lecturing about the $10M penalty seemed to be his way of letting the aging heavyweight know that he will not put up with him getting hurt again.
It would have been better if Alalshikh had turned to face Fury during his interview, pointed the finger at him, and warned him about not getting injured again. If you ask this writer, Fury needed a good tongue-lashing from His Excellency.
WBC heavyweight champion Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) pulled out of his February 17th undisputed championship fight against IBF/WBA/WBO champ Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs) with an eye injury, and the boxing public sees it as fishy.
$10 Million Deterrence Clause
“What they’re saying is that fight is definitely going ahead. A fight of that magnitude is going ahead on May 18th, so that’s great news,” said Gareth A. Davies to iFL TV, talking about the $10 million forfeit penalty if one of the fighters pulls out of the May 18th rescheduled clash between heavyweight champions Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk.
“If both of them are injured, they’ll get someone else on there. What he’s [His Excellency Turki Alalshikh] saying is, ‘We’re going to make sure events like this happen. We can’t leave it to one person getting injured the week before,'” said Davies.
Backup Plans
“I think it’s all progress. There are things in boxing that we accept that need changing, and that’s where this paradigm is being shifted right now,” said Gareth. “If Fury’s eye is opened in sparring, we’ll get another opponent.
“They’re suggesting Anthony Joshua, which is great. Hrgovic is being brought back into the mix as well. People will have their conspiracy theories. Yes, it has been delayed and delayed for different reasons over time,” said Gareth.
It won’t work if Joshua is the backup for Usyk to face if Fury suffers another injury in training camp because he’s already beaten him twice with ease, and fans don’t want to see a third schooling. Usyk needs a better opponent than Joshua, someone like Zhilei Zhang.
