Journeyman Dillian Whyte has come up with the winning strategy for ‘The Gypsy King’ Tyson Fury to dethrone unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk on December 21.
According to Whyte, Fury’s strategy to beat Usyk boils down to using the same rowhouse tactics he used to defeat former cruiserweight champion Steve Cunningham 11 years ago in 2013. In that fight, the then 25-year-old Fury did a lot of holding, leaning and throwing club shots.
Dirty tactics will not work
To score the knockout, Fury held Cunningham in place with his left forearm, pinned him to the ropes and then nailed him with his right hand. The referee should NOT have stopped the fight because it was a highly illegal and obvious move.
“Usyk showed certain things in the last fight that he only showed in the amateurs. He’s never been shown in the pros,” Dillian Whyte told talkSport Boxing channelrevealing how little he knows about Oleksandr Usyk’s career with his narrow view of how he fights.
“I still think Fury can beat him. He is the much bigger man and has the size advantage. He has to fight him like he fought Steve Cunningham. That’s how he has to fight Usyk. Get dirty and have fun,” Whyte said.
Dillian fails to mention that Cunningham was over the hillhaving lost three of his last four fights going into the fight with Fury. In other words, Cunningham was nowhere near the level Usyk is now and put up a poor fight, allowing Fury to hang on and lean on him all night rather than push him hard to avoid he uses his weight to carry him down. Usyk didn’t allow Fury to use his lean.
When Tyson tried to hold on, Usyk pushed him away with full force, sending the giant backwards. You could tell from that push that Usyk was stronger than him, which is strange because he was so much lighter.
Fury has poor upper body strength. His weight is centered around his waist and his basketball player-like legs. In terms of upper body strength, Fury has the strength of a light heavyweight, not a powerhouse. Artur Beterbiev is a bigger puncher than Fury, and he fights at 175.
The basic problem Fury has with using the same game plan he used against an over-the-hill Cunningham is that Usyk won’t allow him to hold and lean. Plus, there’s no way Fury can use an illegal forearm to shut Usyk down and then pin him with his right hand.
That tactic won’t work against Usyk because he won’t fight with his back against the ropes like Cunningham foolishly did in their fight on April 20, 2013.
Fury’s Age Shows
Another problem facing Fury is that he is much older than when he fought Cunningham. That fight happened BEFORE Fury fought Wladimir Klitschko; he was lighter on his feet then. He was a completely different fighter than the older, 50-something heavyweight he is today.
The years were hard on Fury, and he aged quickly. Some people age slowly, but in Fury’s case he is physically nowhere near the person he was in his mid-20s. As such, the game plan Whyte would like Fury to use against Usyk is physically impossible.
The only way this would have a chance to work is if Usyk stands with his back against the ropes and allows Fury to hold him in place to line him up for a right hand. It’s not going to happen.
Fury’s best chance to win is to stay in the center of the ring and try to nail Usyk with an uppercut to the head or a body shot. It is common knowledge that Usyk’s kryptonite is hitting the body. We saw this in his fight with Daniel Dubois when Usyk was dropped with a body shot in the fifth round of their fight on August 26, 2023.
The referee ruled it was a low blow, but the replays showed it was on the belt line. If Fury wants to win, he needs to focus on going to the body, not illegally holding Usyk in place with a forearm and clubbing him with a free hand like he did against Cunningham.
