Oleksandr Usyk picks Anthony Joshua to defeat Tyson Fury when the pair meet in 2025 for their two fights. It’s not a total shock that Usyk (23-0, 12 KOs) would pick AJ to defeat Fury, as he has a huge advantage in strength, speed and athletic ability over Tyson.
Unified heavyweight champion Usyk beat Fury (34-2-1, 24 KOs) for the second time last Saturday night in Riyadh, and he has already defeated Joshua twice in 2021 and 2022 (28-4, 25 KOs). From those fights, Usyk got a good gauge of who will come out on top after a clash between AJ and ‘The Gypsy King’ Fury.
Usyk’s Pick
“Maybe it’s Anthony Joshua,” Usyk said Boxing King Media when asked who would win a fight between Joshua and Fury.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s points. I don’t know,” Usyk said about how AJ is going to Defeat the Gypsy King.
Fury was stunned several times by Usyk, losing a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 116-112 x 3. After the fight, instead of Fury being gracious in defeat, he insisted that he should have won and sounded like a sore loser. He has shown that he is one of those types of fighters who will never admit when he is beaten. I still don’t know what Turki Alalshikh sees in him.
Out of Form
Fury looked fat around the waist, with his trunks pulled high past his navel and the referee choosing not to insist that he pull his trunks lower. Did the referee not notice how high Fury’s trunks were for that fight?
There was almost no area for Usyk to direct his punches to Fury’s midsection given how high his trunks were. If this fight had taken place in the USA, a referee would have insisted that Fury wear his trunk lower.
Fury’s weight was too high at 281, and I couldn’t believe that he supposedly lived like a monk during his three-month training camp, and didn’t talk to his family because he supposedly trained so hard.
What did Fury eat during camp? How does he get through camp and look so fat? I couldn’t understand, and it doesn’t seem like Fury is committed enough at this point to work hard to get in decent shape for his fights.
Turn a loss
“There’s only one fight for Tyson Fury and that’s Anthony Joshua,” Eddie Hearn told DAZN Boxing last Saturday night. “This is the biggest fight in the history of British boxing and everyone will want to see it. It wasn’t a Tyson Fury that looked finished.
“It was not a flat performanceit was not a poor performance. He didn’t look gun-shy or like his punch resistance was in question,” Hearn said, trying hard to paint a positive picture of Fury’s loss to Usyk.
“Tyson Fury is still at the peak of his powers. AJ vs. Fury is the one. One at Wembley and then out here again for the Riyadh season,” Hearn said he wanted to do two fights between Joshua and Fury in 2025.
Who is Hearn trying to make here? Fury looked absolutely awful last weekend. If Hearn is serious about Fury still beating at his “peak” powers, it could mean he never rated him in the first place because he never really looked good during his career.
Even during Fury’s best win against a washed-up 39-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, he mostly threw punches in the air, leaned against the ropes and invited the gun-shy Wlad to throw.
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