Oleksandr Usyk’s promoter, Alex Krassyuk, doubts whether Tyson Fury will make it to the ring for the May 18th rescheduled heavyweight undisputed fight in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Krassyuk doesn’t believe WBC heavyweight champion Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) is committed to the fight based on his actions involving his suspicious sparring injury, which is still a question mark in his eyes.
The Saudis still believe in Fury despite his recent performance against Francis Ngannou and his sparring injury, and they still want to go ahead with the fight. If Fury fails to make it this time, he’ll forfeit a lot of dough, $10 million, and be replaced. Whether the Saudis actually do replace Fury is questionable.
“Not Confident At All”
“I’m not confident at all when it comes to Tyson Fury. My confidence will grow when I hear the first bell ring,” said promoter Alex Krassyuk to Secondsout when asked how confident he is that Tyson Fury will make the May 18th date for the rescheduled fight against Oleksandr Usyk.
“I was disappointed because I can’t believe that video shows the exact moment of the cut,” Krassyuk said when asked if he was disappointed at seeing a video of Fury wearing an open shield face mask for his sparring.
If Fury suffers a setback with his eye problem, it won’t be surprising if we see a second rescheduling. How do the Saudis sell a fight between Usyk and a replacement opponent, like Filip Hrgovic? They can’t.
That won’t interest anyone, so the Saudis will likely reschedule repeatedly until it’s a running joke that Fury is too old and reluctant to take the fight.
Until Fury enters the ring, Krassyuk will doubt the 35-year-old, who some feel is at the end of the road. Tyson’s promoters have kept the aging fighter going with bandaids by matching him against these soft touches:
– Otto Wallin
– Deontay Wilder
– Derek Chisora
– Dillian Whyte
– Francis Ngannou
– Sefer Seferi
– Francesco Pianeta
The Curious Case of the Cut
“How does an uppercut end with an elbow right into [the hole in the headgear]? So, it should be a very sharp elbow. Maybe like a knife, a Bruce Lee punch. So, my vision is the cut happened earlier, and some justification was taken on video.
“You come out shouting, ‘Okay, guys. I’m not disciplined. I’m not surprising you. So, I sparred without headgear, and I didn’t put any vaseline on my sparring partner’s gloves. I didn’t put Vaseline on my eyebrows. So, here I go with the cut, unfortunately.
Suspicions about the Narrative
“‘I’ve taken a left hook to my eyebrows. Unfortunately, the fight of the century has to be canceled. I missed this rule. I just skipped it because my team didn’t insist on that.’ It doesn’t sound decent. So you have to justify your injury somehow, but I’m not questioning the injury at all,’ ” Krassyuk said about Fury.
