Shakur Stevenson gives Tyson Fury the edge to defeat unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in their rematch in Saudi Arabia on Saturday night.
Shakur’s prediction
WBC lightweight champion Stevenson says Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) will win if he is “in shape” and “stays focused”. ” Shakur gives Fury a 55-45 chance to defeat WBA, WBC, and WBO champion Usyk.
The bearded Fury looks in shape for him, but that might not make a difference. He was last in form when he fought Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) on May 18, and still lost the fight via a 12-round split decision.
Fury’s problem is not his conditioning. It’s his glass jaw of his three fights with Deontay Wilder. He can no longer punch, and Usyk will expose that weakness on Saturday, just as he did in their previous fight when he had him on his feet in the ninth round in Riyadh.
Usyk so good bro its so hard to go against him over the course of a 12 round fight.. I’m like 55-45 Fury on this one.. All Fury needs to do is get fit and focused stay for the whole fight! !
— Shakur Stevenson (@ShakurStevenson) December 16, 2024
Destructive power?
“I’m looking forward to a fight that I’m going to win and be destructive and hateful,” said Tyson Fury. Queensberry Promotionspredicting a win against Oleksandr Usyk. “I basically landed at will. They said I couldn’t come forward, and then SugarHill (Steward) and I got together, and I became a destructive puncher and start knocking everyone out.”
The opponents Fury has knocked out since teaming up with SugarHill Steward in December 2019 have been nothing special. Since then, Fury has knocked out two British-level heavyweights, and Deontay Wilder, a non-world class fighter, has maneuvered through clever matchups to win his WBC world title.
Fury’s Knockouts Under SugarHill’s Watch
– Derek Chisora: *Traveler
– Dillian Whyte: Ditto
– Deontay Wilder x 2
If Fury knocked out some of the good heavyweights, like Martin Bakole or Daniel Dubois, you could say SugarHill turned him into a “devastating puncher”, but he beat three scrubs.
Rationalizing defeat
“He won this fight last time by one point, by a round,” Fury said of Usyk. “If one of those other rounds, I would have gotten it from one of those rounds from one to twelve. If the rounds were identical in the rounds I won and lost, then it would have been a draw,” Fury said, trying to rationalize.
“If I got any of the other rounds and I didn’t get a 10-8, I would have won it.”