Eddie Hearn says Oleksandr Usyk should be the favorite to defeat former WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury in their December 21 rematch in Riyadh. Matchroom promoter Hearn says that Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) is “tough to beat” when he has already beaten a fighter in the past.
Fury’s Kryptonite: Nonstop Punches
Usyk will be looking for a knockout, knowing that Fury’s kryptonite is that he cannot handle a barrage of non-stop punches. Fury showed in their previous fight that he is slow to react when hit with a flurry of shots, and his only instinct is to try to grab and hold.
Usyk didn’t allow Fury to close. The clinch has become Fury’s bread-and-butter strategy for winning fights since teaming up with the Kronk Gym-trained Sugarhill Steward. Usyk immediately dismantled that simplistic approach, leaving Fury with nothing to fall back on except the limp jabs and slow right hands. It wasn’t nearly enough for him to win.
Oleksandr is not going to leave it up to the judges to pick a winner because that would put him in a position to lose to the giant.
Look at it this way: The massive mega-fight between Fury and Anthony Joshua is targeted for early 2025, which will bring in loads of cash. With all that money on the line, Usyk may need a knockout to secure himself a win.
Hearn knows all too well how 2012 Olympic gold medalist Usyk is almost impossible to beat as he beat his flagship Matchroom fighter Anthony Joshua in back-to-back fights in 2021 and 2022, leading to AJ having a mental breakdown in the ring immediately after the second defeat. . Joshua went broke after Usyk’s hand was raised, and he hasn’t been the same fighter since.
As bad as Joshua looked in his second fight with Usyk, he fared much better than Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) did earlier this year on May 18 in Riyadh. Although the judges scored a 12-round split decision in Usyk’s favor, it should have been a ninth-round knockout victory.
You might as well put an asterisk next to the result in the record books with a footnote revealing that the referee saved Fury from a knockout by giving him an inexplicable standing eight count in round nine. The referee stepped in and stopped the action at the exact moment Usyk was about to knock Fury out in the round.
Hearn Favors Usyk To Do The Job
“I think you have to favor Usyk, but at the same time you can never rule Fury out,” said Eddie Hearn. Second saltand views unified triple-belt heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk as the favorite in his rematch with Tyson Fury on December 21.
“The first fight was close. When the final bell rang, I felt like Usyk attacked the fight, but I didn’t know who would get it, because sometimes that happens in a fight. It was a split decision, but I think Fury will be better in the rematch. It’s just very hard to beat Oleksandr Usyk when he’s already beaten you once,” Hearn said.
Fury has looked old in his last two fights, looking slow, weak, and not the fighter he once was many years ago when he was in his prime. Of course, you could argue that Fury was never as good as the naive boxing public thought he was because his resume was littered with tomato cans.
Is Fury’s entire career just a sham?
The Gyspy King Fury was more of the out-of-the-ring fighter who gained notoriety by being funny in interviews and ranting it during press conferences. His best win of his career came against 39-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, who he barely beat in 2015.
Aside from his win over a washed-up Wladimir, Fury never beat solid fighters during his career, and it’s clear now that fans were fooled by the careful matchmaking that was done to create his money-making career.
Fury’s best wins:
– Wladimir Klitschko
– Deontay Wilder
– Dillian Whyte
– Derek Chisora
Most unbiased fans believe Fury has no chance at all in his rematch with Usyk on December 21st, which I agree with.
For the fans who don’t have a dog in the hunt, they see this as a rematch that shouldn’t even happen in the first place because Usyk clearly won the first fight by knockout when you consider that the odd standing eight count. the ninth that Tyson saved.
