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Mike Coppinger, ESPN Boxing Insider
TYSON FURY ABSORBED 14 unanswered punches as Oleksandr Usyk threatened to finish “The Gypsy King” in Round 9 of their May meeting for the undisputed heavyweight championship in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Usyk’s laser-point lead rights and overhand lefts sent Fury reeling around the ring in one of the most stunning moments in the glamour division’s history. Finally, Fury crashed into the ropes as the 14th of those shots connected flush on his head.
Fury was the far bigger man at 6-foot-9, 260-plus pounds — Usyk at 6-3, 233 pounds, was formerly the undisputed cruiserweight champion — but that mattered little in this moment. The bout was deadlocked on one scorecard as it entered that pivotal ninth round while Fury was ahead in the view of the other two judges 77-75.
The ref halted the action and rightfully started his count (the rules call for a knockdown when the ropes are deemed to prevent a fighter from touching the canvas from a punch).
“I didn’t want to damage him,” Usyk, ESPN’s No. 1 pound-for-pound boxer, said in Ukrainian during a TNT Sports faceoff with Fury last month. “I know the game of boxing. After the fight, he would go back to his family. For this reason, there’s no reason to hurt him.”
That was the eighth knockdown of Fury’s career but ultimately the only one that cost him.
Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) was undefeated in 35 previous fights. The most indelible moment of his career remains the 12th round of his first meeting with Deontay Wilder. That’s when Fury returned from a 3½ year hiatus where he battled massive weight gain (over 400 pounds), substance abuse and depression to pull out a split draw with the then heavyweight champion.
Fury brutalized Wilder in the rematch, doling out a busted eardrum as he stopped Wilder in Round 7 to reclaim the heavyweight championship he surrendered during the hiatus that followed his 2015 upset victory over Wladimir Klitschko.
Against Usyk, Fury will look to make the proper adjustments as the underdog in his biggest fight in Saturday’s rematch in Riyadh (2 p.m. ET, DAZN PPV).
“You’ve got to be a smart boxer,” Fury, 36, told ESPN last week from his camp house in Malta. “And like I did before, I was landing lead right uppercuts, lead right hands on him. I was hitting him at will. I was lighting him up.
“So I got to be smart, light him up again and just not get a 10-8 round. … If I didn’t switch off for a minute, then I’d have won the fight comfortably on the scorecards. And that would’ve been it.”
FURY’S FAMILIAR FACE, the one that’s largely responsible for revitalizing boxing’s glamour division, is partially hidden between a burly lumberjack beard.
A black baseball hat shields his bald head while a hoodie promoting Saturday’s rematch with Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) covers his upper body.
The usual jovial antics that helped Fury reach the sport’s pinnacle aren’t present. An uncharacteristic stoicism has replaced them. Fury, eschewing the usual boxing clichés, is adamant this camp has taken on a far more serious tone for one simple reason: He’s coming off the first loss of his career.
This is uncharted territory for one of boxing’s top stars. So he secluded himself from his family and left the confines of his lavish estate in Morecambe, England, for Malta, where he’s been training in the 12 weeks leading up to the fight.
Fury said that for the past three months, he hasn’t had any contact with his wife, Paris, nor his seven children or even his outspoken father, John, who will be in his corner on fight night.
“I think it’s distractions and stuff outside of boxing that can interfere with people’s camps and stuff,” said Fury, ESPN’s No. 2 heavyweight. “But this time it’s been good. I’ve not had any distractions. … I’ve got a big task. I’ve got a big fight with a man trying to take my brains out and take everything I have away from me; faculties, everything. … I’ve not been on the mobile phone at all.
“I’ve just been keeping myself to myself. I’m trying. I’ve not even on the shave, look at the beard. I’ve been like a wild man, honestly.”
A typical day for Fury in Malta includes two training sessions per day. If it’s a sparring day — there are four per week — he focuses on boxing technique in the morning and sparring at night. There are two strength and conditioning sessions a week as well along with a couple of roadwork days where he goes for runs.
On Sundays, Fury goes to church (he’s a devout Christian), has fun and relaxes. And then there’s the camp chef/nutritionist who makes all of his meals.
“It’s not a holiday,” Fury said. “It’s not like a five-star all-inclusive in Mexico or something. It’s not stuff that I enjoy. It’s like vegetables and rice and chicken and s— like that. It’s not like burgers and nachos and wraps and stuff. It’s all like healthy stuff. … No ice creams, no cakes, nothing like that.
“I’m pretty lean. Other than the big beard, I’m doing well. I’m in good shape and I’m fit as a fiddle. I’ll be ready for Saturday night.”
Usyk will be ready, too. He’s always in peak condition and is well-regarded for his incredible mental toughness that carried him to the peak in the amateurs (an Olympic gold medal in 2012) and now the pros.
And it’s Usyk who is coming off the best win of his career in large part to that seminal Round 9 that was the difference on the scorecards. If Fury had lost Round 9 by just 10-9, the fight would have been a draw. If Fury had won the round, he would have won the fight. Instead, he dropped a split decision in the front-runner for ESPN’s Fight of the Year.
“You have to be Tyson Fury for sure,” Fury said. “But this is a serious game, what we’re in next Saturday, so I’m going to be serious. They’re going to see a serious ‘Gypsy King.’ And I’m on a mission. There’s plenty of time for fun games after the fight, but for this one fight, first time in my life, this is a serious job.”
FURY WILL HAVE to make adjustments. He claims he’s rewatched the first meeting with Usyk “hundreds of times.” His takeaway from all that film study: “I just gotta hit him more times in the face. That’s by layman’s terms hitting more times in the face than he hits me and I’ll win. That’s it.”
What Fury doesn’t believe he needs to adjust, despite what many observers have opined, is to apply more pressure and try to make the fight on the inside. That’s what he did in the second fight with Wilder in February 2020, as he attacked in seek-and-destroy mode compared to the first meeting, where he outboxed the American from the outside. Fury elected to box Usyk with his quick feet and jab, too.
“If it was easy just to walk down Usyk, if you’re just a big man just walking down and bullying him, then Anthony Joshua would’ve done it who’s 6-6 and like 260 [pounds],” said Fury, referring to two Usyk wins over Joshua in heavyweight title fights. “And Daniel Dubois [whom Usyk KO’d last year]. These are massive punching guys, big, strong men. They didn’t walk him down. So I don’t think it’s as easy as just walking into somebody with your hands up.”
Usyk is widely considered the top pound-for-pound boxer for good reason. He possesses some of the best footwork in boxing and is exceptional at changing the trajectory of his shots to land accurate punches.
His movement, punch placement and elite ring smarts have carried him to undisputed championships at cruiserweight and heavyweight. But Fury knows what needs to be done to extract a different result seven months later.
He’s buoyed by the confidence built in his most serious training camp to date, preparation that’s especially different from what he did ahead of the first meeting earlier this year. He had just five weeks to train for Usyk after a scheduled February date was postponed following a severe gash suffered above his right eye while sparring. That meant fewer rounds for sparring ahead of their May date during an abbreviated camp.
“It took seven weeks for the cut to heal … and I was trying not to get punched in the face as well in that training camp just in case the cut opened,” Fury said. “… It wasn’t ideal going into the biggest fight in my life. … Someone in the right mind, someone sensible, not me, will have said, ‘You know what? I need more time for the cut to heal and I’m going to have to postpone.’ But I didn’t. I put the fight on, I entertained and we had a good fight and that was it.”
Fury said he will be very focused “and do a good job on him [Usyk] — a demolition job.”
A “demolition job” is surely how Fury’s rematch with Wilder could be described.
That’s not Fury’s only success in a return bout. Besides a spectacular 11th-round KO of Wilder in their trilogy fight that was named ESPN’s 2021 Fight of the Year and Knockout of the Year, there’s Fury’s trilogy with fellow Englishman Derek Chisora.
Fury outpointed Chisora in 2011 before he scored a 10th-round stoppage three years later. In a third meeting in 2022, Fury delivered another 10th-round TKO of Chisora.
“I’ve been in this position before,” Fury said.
INTERNATIONAL BOXING HALL of Fame inductee Timothy Bradley Jr. is no stranger to rematches at the pinnacle of the sport. The ESPN boxing analyst scored a controversial decision victory over recently elected Hall of Famer Manny Pacquiao in 2012, then dropped competitive decisions in the rematch and trilogy bouts.
Bradley wants to see Fury “assert himself” from the opening bell to “prevent the quick-starting 37-year-old Usyk from dictating the pace and gaining physical and mental control.
“Fury won some rounds decisively, particularly by boxing effectively out at long range, jabbing, moving, and countering with uppercuts and right crosses, winning most of the middle rounds,” Bradley told ESPN via text. “In spots, Fury looked like the vintage Tyson Fury that fought Wladimir Klitschko years ago, sparingly.”
Clearly, Bradley believes it’s important for Fury to not be totally serious in the ring, to not move away from what makes Fury an all-time great heavyweight.
“Establishing control from the outset could help disrupt Usyk’s rhythm,” Bradley said. “Usyk’s offense is better delivered moving forward than backward, and when under attack, his primary defense is the use of the high guard [both hands up].
“This could boost Fury’s confidence and set the tone for the fight, letting Usyk know right away this time will be different. … Fury’s stamina must be at an all-time high. And any lack of confidence from Fury will only amplify Usyk’s intensity and desire to win.”
Antonio Tarver also faced a legend in a trilogy. After a controversial decision defeat to Roy Jones Jr. in 2003, Tarver delivered a second-round KO for the ages in the rematch six months later for the lineal light heavyweight championship. Tarver won a unanimous decision in their third fight a year later.
The former three-division champion would hold training camp away from the comfort of home in Tampa, Florida, anytime he had a “real serious opponent in front of me” and would instead prepare four hours away in Vero Beach. Fury is going the extra step with no communication with his family in an attempt to have the best, most focused preparation possible.
“He’s trying to do something that’ll be talked about forever and a day,” Tarver told ESPN. “He’s trying to get back something that he feels he lost and belongs to him. This is the fight that will define Tyson Fury.
“As a fighter, as a champion, he’s giving it everything he has. He’s coming and leaving no room for error, and he’s giving himself the best chance to win if he’s made that type of sacrifice. And it really indicates that he still loves the game and he still sees himself as the best.”
Fury is a slight underdog (+125 per ESPN BET as of Wednesday), but has had success in rematches, and he seems to be at his best when he’s counted out.
He was a decided underdog when he upset Klitschko for the lineal heavyweight championship nearly 10 years ago.
He was counted out once again when he met Wilder for the first time. And when he entered the ring to fight Usyk, he was months removed from a shocking struggle with former UFC star Francis Ngannou, who floored Fury but lost by split decision.
Despite the hundreds of millions Fury has earned over the years, the desire remains strong to train hard and take on the toughest challenges. Marvelous Marvin Hagler famously said, “It’s tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5 a.m. when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas.”
“I found it easy to get up in silk pajamas,” Fury said. “I’m motivated to keep going and keep earning money and keep entertaining and putting on shows. And if people are not motivated by earning lots of money and putting on shows and entertaining, then they’re in the wrong game, that’s for sure.”
That’s quite the departure from 2½ years ago when Fury claimed he was retired following a sixth-round TKO win over Dillian Whyte. Now, Fury is looking ahead to an expected trilogy fight with Usyk if he can even the score Saturday. He’s even looking beyond that.
“I want to be active next year,” Fury said. “I want to have at least three fights next year. … What else is there? Get fat, drink beer, eat s—. There’s not much else that we can do other than venturing off into stuff that don’t really concern us.”
