His Excellency Turki Alalshikh revealed that the Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk event has been completely canceled entirely for the February 17th date, and it’ll be rescheduled later for a new date. Tickets will be refunded.
This move makes sense because the event wouldn’t work without WBC heavyweight champion Fury, its only star.
If they had replaced Fury with Filip Hgovic as Usyk’s opponent, it wouldn’t sell on PPV. Hrgovic isn’t well known worldwide, and the fans who do know of him are not going to be excited at purchasing a fight between him and Usyk on PPV.
It’s believed that Fury will need several months for the cut over his right eye to heal before he’s ready to fight again, assuming he doesn’t get hurt again. He needed 15 stitches to close up the cut.
“The evidence is there. He cut his eye. The sparring has been going really well, and the camp has been going well,” said Gareth A. Davies to Boxing King Media, creating a rosy picture of how Tyson Fury had been doing before suffering an eye injury, causing the postponement for the Oleksandr Usyk fight.
“You’ve got the adverse group who say it isn’t going well, but the people I speak to that are over there. But it looks like we’re not going to get this for a few months now, this fight,” Gareth said.
“You’ve got a group that will always do that [question Fury’s actions], just like you’ve got a group that will always be on his side. If no pictures were put out on this. If no evidence was put out, you’d have a right to question it.
“You might question Fury’s mindset going into this. People will always speculate. It’s part of the drama and the sport that we’re part of. I don’t see any reason in my logical mind why he would just pull out of a two-fight deal with Usyk, where if you lost one, you could win one anyway,” said Davies.
