Given the years of acrimony between the camps of Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk (the most recent expression of which was an unfortunate headbutt that left Fury's father, John, bloodied and happily enraged), I'm deeply disappointed to find Fury in the best spot. behavior.
He didn't mock three-belt heavyweight champion Usyk as just a middleweight.
I didn't call him “dosser,” which in English means “lazy.” He didn't even promise to knock out Usyk early, as Fury predicted before his second fight with Deontay Wilder in 2020.
“What I am going to do?” Fury said. “I'll do what I always do: go out and figure it out.”
Sorry, but good manners and self-control do not make Fury, the most interesting heavyweight champion since his namesake, Mike Tyson, and the most mercurial since Muhammad Ali. But he's not following the script here.
“He's done his training and I've done mine,” Fury told ESPN on Zoom from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where on Saturday (ESPN+ PPV, noon ET) he will fight Usyk for the chance to become the first undisputed champion. boxing's heavyweight in almost a quarter of a century, and the first in the four-belt era. “We'll find out who's the actor and who's the killer that night. That's it. There's nothing else. There's no trash talk. The contracts are made, the fight goes on. There's nothing more to sell. The fight of the century sells. itself.”
“Fight of the century” is a term of art in boxing. It generally refers to a heavyweight fight that will determine the rightful custody of the so-called lineal title. There have been three such fights in my lifetime, all between undefeated heavyweights: Ali-Frazier (1971), Tyson-Spinks (1988) and now this one. Fury has the WBC belt. Usyk won the others: the IBF, the WBO and the WBA. The winner will become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since April 2000, when Lennox Lewis lost his WBA belt, not in the ring, of course, but (this is boxing, after all) in federal court.
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Fury vs. Usyk: The importance of an undisputed heavyweight champion
It's been 24 years since there was an undisputed heavyweight champion, when Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk fight, that will change with a boxer who will go down in history.
In fact, boxing goes where the heavyweights go. But while every other sport routinely produced undisputed champions, boxing proliferated the feuds themselves, along with a host of forgettable “champions” (John Ruiz, Bermane Stiverne, Samuel Peter, etc.). It is no coincidence that this period of inactivity in boxing coincided with the rise of the UFC from an illegal endeavor to hegemony in the world of combat sports. After all, whatever your preference (boxing or MMA), it's not too much to expect a single champion per division.
Still, Fury-Usyk is the rarest type of fight, and the only type that the UFC still can't replicate. Since 1997, when Mark Coleman won the inaugural UFC heavyweight title, the belt has changed hands 22 times. New champions defend their titles, on average, only once, and many never. Only one heavyweight, Stipe Miocic, has been able to mount three consecutive defenses.
But boxing's undisputed heavyweight champions, the “baddest man” types, are not associated with unique defenses but with a particular decade. They are still considered in dynastic terms. The Roaring '20s, for example, are said to have begun in 1919 when Jack Dempsey knocked out Jess Willard. In that same vein, Ali could only have come of age in the 1960s. Although boxing's great heavyweight champions may have reigned in the previous millennium, their names still resonate: Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Jack Johnson and Sonny Liston.
Not everyone belonged to a different cultural moment. Some were simply great wrestlers (Larry Holmes and Lennox Lewis, both terribly underrated, come to mind).
It can be argued that boxing has declined, or it has certainly changed. The heavyweight division will never again be an American protectorate. But Fury-Usyk offers something never seen before. Not only are they undefeated. They are bigger, more experienced (or older, depending on how you analyze it) and more technically skilled than any previous heavyweight pairing.
Usyk, a 37-year-old southpaw from Ukraine, has gone from an Olympic gold medalist to an undisputed cruiserweight champion to a three-belt heavyweight champion. It is not inaccurate to describe him as a heavyweight version of Vasiliy Lomachenko, his friend and former Olympic teammate. Even as Usyk gained weight, he maintained balletic control of his striking distance.
“He's a good boxer with excellent footwork,” Fury said. “What more does a fighter need?”
Don't call Usyk small either. Standing 6-foot-3 and weighing just over 220 pounds, he's the same size as “Big” George Foreman when he fought Ali in Zaire, and bigger than the version of Evander Holyfield who beat Foreman in 1991. If Usyk is small, he is only compared to today's heavyweights: big, strong guys like Anthony Joshua, whose belts he took without much difficulty.
“Where is it vulnerable?”
“I would say in his mind,” Fury said.
It's a curious answer, since Usyk and Lomachenko, each developed by Loma's father Anatoly, are famous for having a tough mentality. Under the “Papachenko” regime, Usyk's training preparation still includes 10-kilometer swims and underwater breath-holding sessions that have lasted up to 4 minutes and 40 seconds.
Fury, of course, claims to be unimpressed: “All men can be mentally broken.”
This is a topic you are familiar with, having addressed your own mental health. Not long after Fury bested Wladimir Klitschko to win his first three heavyweight titles and recognition as lineal champion in 2015, he began drinking and using drugs. He accelerated his Ferrari to 190 mph and came within seconds of crashing it into a bridge. He attributes to God whatever caused Fury to abort his suicide attempt and overcome his depression. He also became a better and tougher fighter.
Fury was 27 when he beat Klitschko, mostly by pinching and shoving. Like Usyk, he also had good footwork, but at 6-9 and an incredibly long reach of 85 inches, boxing had never seen such a big man move so well. But now, at 35, Fury is heavier, stronger and more powerful. He didn't beat Wilder; he beat him up. And if you're confusing the Fury who will face Usyk with the guy who fought in a close “exhibition” with former UFC champion Francis Ngannou, you're making a big mistake.
Fury comes from a long line of bare knuckle fighters. “It took a thousand years to raise my son,” his father once told me.
But like Mike Tyson, Tyson Fury is also a boxing nerd. “I admire all the champions, all the greats,” he said. “I've seen them all.”
Among the peculiar personality traits of linear champions is an ego so powerful that it demands comparison, not only with their contemporaries, but with those of all time. After all, it was Ali, sick and tired of hearing about Louis and Marciano, who thought about proclaiming himself “the greatest of all time” long before anyone heard of Floyd Mayweather. And it was Tyson, only 18 years old and about to turn professional, who once cried while he watched Liston beat Cleveland Williams.
“I never could beat him,” Tyson said.
“But you'll never have to,” a friend of mine noted. “He is dead.”
“But I do it all the time,” Tyson said, tapping his temple with his index finger. “Up here. All the time.”
Forty years from now, I asked Fury who he compares himself to, what legend he imagines himself fighting against.
“I've never compared myself to other men,” he said. “The only person who can beat Tyson Fury is Tyson Fury.”
