Finally. Today in London, rival heavyweight champions Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk came face-to-face at the official press conference to announce the February 17 fight dubbed “Ring of Fire.” It was basically the same old Tyson Fury show, with the reigning WBC heavyweight champ using foul language and being sometimes funny, sometimes not.
Usyk was pretty quiet, sometime speaking in English, sometimes using the aid of an interpreter. Fury did seam to be genuinely angry when Usyk said that the when the Lord “delivers” Fury to him he will “do my job.”
Fury, a religious person, said there is no way God would ever deliver him to Usyk. “Impossible,” Fury said, “He’d never deliver me to you.” Fury stated how he will knock Usyk “clean out” in the fight, that he will show what a heavyweight does to “a middleweight.”
“You’re fighting the greatest British heavyweight that’s ever been,” Fury said to Usyk. “You’ve beat all the rest of them but you haven’t met Tyson Fury yet, you sausage! Ugly little man. You know what’s coming, you’re getting smashed.”
Usyk smiled at most of Fury’s comments, but Tyson might just have hit a nerve when he stated that Usyk “quit” in his fight with Daniel Dubois back in August. The shot that sent Usyk down was, Fury said, a legit body shot, not a low blow.
“I think he got hit in the body, off a good body shot, and he didn’t want to get up for five minutes,” Fury said of Usyk in the Dubois fight.
“I absolutely don’t care what Tyson thinks of that,” Usyk said in response.
“Well, here’s a question then – did you get hit low or not?” Fury continued. “Did he get hit low? I’ve watched boxing all my life, and it didn’t look like a low blow, it was on the belt. So there you are, [he was] crying around on the floor like a little b***h, crying. That’s what he did, that’s what he’ll do again, February 17th, when he gets busted up, blood all over the ring. He’ll be crawling on his hands on the floor, like a little sausage.”
The two then engaged in a head-to-head, with Fury using his dome to dangerous effect, Fury shoving his shaven head into Usyk’s forehead. Security separated the two men before things could get out of hand.
Later, Fury spoke with Queensbury, and the 35 year old said that “even if he [Usyk] had a baseball bat in one hand and a meat-cleaver in the other, he couldn’t really do much to him, I’d still beat him,” Fury said.
“For me, it’s [a] big opportunity, for undisputed, for my family, for my country, for my people,” Usyk said. “I know Tyson Fury, in the next fight [with me] will be different (from the showing he gave against Ngannou). He will be different against me. There is no destiny, God gives me the opportunity and I’m using this opportunity. Thanks to God for everything.”
With Fury today, it was like the Francis Ngannou embarrassment never happened, with Fury back to his bluster, declaring his greatness and his assured win on February 17th. The experts and fans, however, are pretty much split down the middle as far as who walks away with all four belts in a little over three month’s time.
Above all, let’s hope the fight goes ahead as scheduled, with neither man pulling out!
