Tyson Fury is not being given much of a chance by fans on social media for his rematch against WBA, WBC and WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk on December 21.
The fans that Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) will complete the task he started in the ninth round of the first fight against Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) on May 18 when he defeated the Gypsy King on the edge of a knockout.
Barring a referee stepping in to save Fury by giving him a fight-saving standing eight count, Usyk will likely knock him out in the rematch on December 21. Usyk will plan to unload on Fury in the rematch with a barrage of punches and overwhelm the aging fighter with shots.
Fury’s biggest concern is that he is too slow and big to fight Usyk if he lands 20+ straight head shots on him like he did in the ninth round of their first fight.
In fact, Fury is 0-2 in his last two fights and is heading for his third straight loss against Usyk. This is not good as His Excellency Turki Alalshikh has already said that Fury and Anthony Joshua will fight regardless of the outcome of their next fights. Francis Ngannou earned a win over Fury last October in Riyadh but was given a raw treatment by the judges.
We’ve already seen a hapless 34-year-old Joshua get blown out of the water by IBF champion Daniel Dubois on September 21st. It’s Fury’s turn to be destroyed in his rematch with Usyk. The British boxing public probably won’t mind Fury being beaten by Usyk again, but the rest of the world will be put off.
They won’t want to watch some rich, washed-up fighters fight in a PPV fight after knockout losses. If Joshua takes the rematch with Dubois, he will likely be knocked out again, creating a situation where he and Fury will both be on back-to-back defeats when they meet in 2025.
What happened to Fury?
I have to agree with the fans. Fury looks headed for trouble in the second fight, and there’s not much he can do about it without finding the Fountain of Youth before December 21.
Fury seems to have aged a lot in the last few years and no longer looks like the fighter he once was. It is unclear whether he burned the candle between battles on both sides and lived it up with rich food and expensive drink.
What Fury did when he wasn’t fighting did something to him. Sitting on a massive fortune like Fury, it’s understandable why he would want to eat well. Who wouldn’t if they got Fury’s money? If I were as rich as Fury, I too would have eaten high on the hog and been as washed up as he was at his age.
Fury needs to bring back the version of himself that beat Deontay Wilder in their second clash in 2020 as he was his career best for that fight. Even the version of Fury who battered 39-year-old Wladimir Klitschko in 2015 was not at the level he was when he beat Wilder in the second fight in 2020.
