Boxing legend Roy Jones Jr. can’t see the smaller IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk defeat WBC champ Tyson Fury unless he improves his punching power by May 18th, when the two battle for the undisputed championship in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Jones Jr. thinks Usyk needs a Hulk-like transformation in the power department to defeat the mammoth Fury.
Roy Jr. feels that the former undisputed cruiserweight champion Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs), who weighed in at 221 lbs for his last contest against Daniel Dubois, doesn’t have enough size to beat the 6’9″, 270+ lb Goliath, Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs).
Fury’s Grappling Game: A Sign of Weakness
The real question is, will Fury be able to grab and wrestle Usyk to keep from getting picked apart from him? Without Fury holding & leaning, he doesn’t stand a chance against Usyk because he’s too slow.
Jones Jr. maintains that the 6’3″ southpaw Usyk would have a shot at defeating the 35-year-old Fury if he had explosive power, but he doesn’t and hasn’t improved in that area since moving up from cruiserweight to heavyweight in 2019.
“Usyk is a great tactician, but he’s not all that explosive,” Roy Jones Jr. told Talksport.
“If he was explosive, it would be a problem. When you are smaller coming up to the big guys, you’ve got to bring explosives to the ring, or they won’t respect you.
“If he can’t find those explosives before that fight takes place, he will not beat Tyson Fury; I don’t care what they say.”
Usyk’s Weapons Go Beyond Brute Force
What Jones Jr. could be overlooking is Usyk’s superior speed, mobility, athleticism, and ring IQ in this contest. He’s a much better boxer than the slow-footed Fury, who, at this point in his career, has turned into a grappler.
Usyk’s Tools to Defeat Fury
- Speed
- Ring IQ
- Athleticism: Olympic pedigree
Fury is slow, throws weak shots, and then falls forward to grab his opponents to begin mauling them. He does a lot of holding & hitting, wrestling with occasional rabbit punches and elbows. In other words, Fury has morphed into a simple roughouse fighter.
In Fury’s last fight against novice Francis Ngannou, he was beaten to the punch all night, knocked down, and outclassed by the former UFC champion. Fury looked far older than his 35 years, closer to 50, and had zero mobility.
The movement that the Gypsy King Fury once had nine years ago when he upset 40-year-old Wladimir Klitschko by a razor-close 12-round decision was gone.
Some fans attribute Fury’s lost mobility and hand speed to him coming in at a career-high of 277 against Ngannou, but he’s been showing the deterioration long before that fight. Age kicked in years ago with Fury, and that’s one of the reasons he’s become a mauler.
