Tyson Fury’s career as a major player will be on the line tonight in his rematch with triple-belt heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh.
Usyk can put the 36-year-old former WBC heavyweight champion Fury on the field as he looks physically done with his looks. Tyson’s behavior was strange, suggesting that his loss to Uyk last May took the best remaining part out of him.
The age has burst
Fury looks exhausted, and it’s not just from hard training. That fight and the mental torture he dealt with for the past seven months left him in a age burst. That’s where one suddenly ages quickly. Fury has clearly undergone one since his loss to Usyk.
Rapid aging usually occurs in the 40s and 60s, but it can start earlier if a person experiences a high level of stress.
Fury’s career survival
The ‘Gypsy King’ needs the win tonight to not only put himself in position for a trilogy with Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) if that’s the direction he chooses to go, but also to garner interest in a mega-money all-British clash against Anthony Joshua.
The worst possible situation would be for Fury to get plowed by Usyk tonight, get knocked out and then sneak into the fight against Joshua, who is coming off a knockout loss. Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) looked terrible, he lost his last fight and had to be saved by the ref in round nine.
What I want to know is who Fury will blame after Usyk does him tonight. An obvious guy would be his coach, SugarHill Stewardwho mastered his win over Deontay Wilder with his game plan. Either way, SugarHill should have been thrown out after Fury’s controversial win over Francis Ngannou last year. Tyson really lost that fight but was saved by the judges in Riyadh.
What was obvious was that SugarHill’s game plan built around splits wasn’t working, and he had no other ideas. He was a one trick pony. I don’t know why Fury kept him after that to dump him on the spot instead.
Fury has looked weak in his fights since his one big win in the last nine years, and it’s clear that SugarHill has no ideas to improve him other than using the tired-leaning strategy he devised for the Deontay clash . Fury has used that strategy repeatedly in his fights against the likes of Dillian Whyte, Dereck Chisora ​​and 0-0 starter Francis Ngannou.
If things don’t work out for Fury tonight, he could give SugarHill and Andy Lee the royal boot. Then he can tell the media he’s going with a whole new team. The fans would buy into that, and Fury’s loss to Usyk tonight would be partially washed clean.
Matchmaking magic
The reality is that Fury is not that good, and he never was. He was always just a fighter who came over with matchmakers, live on his victory over 39-year-old washed-up Wladimir Klitschko. Fury got a LOT of mileage out of beating an old gunshy guy, who had already been knocked out in two rounds by Corrie Sanders before ever fighting him.
Other than that one win, Fury didn’t beat anyone and was always a step above British level, but his promoters carefully matched him to avoid the guys who would have exposed him to being average.
