WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury believes he’s about to be crowned undisputed heavyweight champion in his fight against Oleksandr Usyk on May 18th. For me, Fury is a little too sure of himself as if he already knows the victory is in the bag. That’s a red flag.
Usyk: Roadblock to the Fury-Joshua Payday
Here’s the deal: I worry about whether Usyk will be given a fair deal if the fight goes to the scorecards. We just saw Fury win a controversial 10-round decision against Francis Ngannou in Riyadh last October, and now he’s returning to the same venue.
It’s the same place as last time, but with the AJ money hanging in the balance, there’s more at stake this time.
With all the money that a fight between Fury and Anthony Joshua would generate, it would be a bad thing for Usyk to defeat the ‘Gypsy King’ on May 18th and spoil all that. I don’t see Usyk as having a prayer of winning if it goes to the scorecards.
There’s too much dough at stake for Fury vs. Joshua for him to win a decision. A win for Usyk would be a financial catastrophe for the higher-ups pulling the strings on these fights. Fury won’t lose out on all that cash.
If you’re Usyk, you know that you need a knockout, and when I say knockout, I mean out cold. We already saw Fury knocked cold in his first fight with Deontay Wilder and the referee incredibly gave a count to him while he was asleep. It looked to some like pure favoritism.
Fury’s New Physique But Still Old
Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) has trimmed off a lot of fat that he’d been carrying around since his fight against Ngannou, and he feels that he’s ready to beat IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs) to capture the last three titles and become the King of the division.
Unfortunately, pictures of the 35-year-old Fury’s transformed physique still do nothing to erase the years, the deterioration of reflexes, and hand speed, not to mention the damage he took from his three fights against Deontay Wilder, in which he was arguably knocked out twice but saved by the referees.
What Fury needs to worry about:
- Skinny Fat: Losing weight ain’t going to make him young or magically bestow him with power that he never had even in his youth.
- Not So Young: Losing weight isn’t the fountain of youth to return Fury to what he was when he defeated Wladimir Klitschko nine years ago in 2015.
- Dirty Tactics: Those dirty tricks that we’ve seen from Fury – rabbit punches, holding & hitting, leaning, and elbows. It’s a given that we’ll see some or all of these things from Fury in the Usyk fight if things aren’t going well for him.g.
Fury’s Premature Celebration: Red Flag?
“It’s been an amazing journey, and here we are now, 16 years later, about to be the undisputed champion of the world,” said Fury to Sky Sports.
“The biggest fight, in the last 25 years, which is an amazing effort.”