IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk sent a message to WBC champ Tyson Fury today, letting him know that he still wants to fight him on December 23rd as part of their original plans.
Fury’s promoters have other plans, wanting to give him time to get himself together after his harder-than-expected fight last weekend against Francis Ngannou. The 35-year-old Fury (34-0-1, 24 KOs) suffered a black eye and scratched forehead in the fight.
What’s essential for Fury is to take off more weight around his midsection and try and add some badly needed muscle because he looks atrophied from his year-layoff.
For Fury to have a chance of winning a non-controversial decision over Usyk (21-0, 14 KOs), he’s going to need to focus on his boxing skills because he’s not going to be able to use the grappling/leaning style taught to him by his trainer SugarHill Steward to use against stationary heavyweights.
As we saw last weekend, that style was totally ineffective against Francis Ngannou, and Fury had nothing else to fall back on but his old style of movement, which he didn’t look good using.
“Tyson Fury, my friend. I’m ready for December. Are you ready?” said Oleksandr Usyk on social media today, letting WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury know that he still wants to face him on the original December 23rd date.
It’s safe to say that Fury won’t be ready, and his promoters have already made it know that they’re moving off the December date. It probably won’t make much of a difference, though, because age is catching up to the 35-year-old Fury. Moreover, he was never that good to begin with, and lived off his only notable wins over an old washed-up Wladimir Klitschko and the spindly-legged Deontay Wilder.
“If Tyson Fury fights this way against Oleksandr Usyk, he’s going to lose,” said Chris Mannix on his YouTube channel. “Usyk is not Ngannou in terms of punching power, but he’s always in great shape; Usyk is a masterful boxer, and Usyk comes in with masterful game plans to beat guys of any size.
“So if you’re Tyson Fury and you just fought, maybe you go back to the drawing board and say, ‘I need another lengthy training camp, more work with SugarHill, my trainer, and get more of my focus back. I need a little bit more before I take on Oleksandr Usyk.’
“There’s a lot of pressure to fight on December 23rd. I think that’s kind of a working date at the moment, but if I’m Fury, I’m going to think long and hard what I’m going to do with this Usyk fight because you’ve got to be a better version of the fighter we saw in the ring on Saturday.
“Now, for Ngannou, you can do whatever you want. We know that Ngannou has a deal waiting for him with the PFL. That’s a league that Jake Paul has gotten behind. It’s a lucrative deal to do a whole bunch of things and make a lot of money on PPV.
“There’s no reason to think that Ngannou can’t be competitive with the other top fighters in the heavyweight division. Ngannou wants to fight Anthony Joshua. What do you think about that fight? Tyson Fury got dropped by Ngannou. There’s no reason to believe that Joshua couldn’t get dropped by him as well.
“What if he [Ngannou] wants to fight Deontay Wilder? That’s another big fight. Wilder is more heavy-handed by Fury, but he’s also been knocked down and knocked out. There’s an opening there for Ngannou to win a fight like that. So, Ngannou will have a whole host of options now.
“I’m sure there will be people in boxing that will want to keep him in boxing for at least one more fight. Obviously, PFL will want to get him back in the cage as soon as humanely possible.
“Ngannou, despite the loss, he was the big winner. He was tremendous from start to finish, and he deserves a lot of credit for that,” said Mannix.
