Tyson Fury’s manager, Spencer Brown, revealed that Fury must come out victorious in his rematch with WBA/WBC/WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk on December 21st for a fight against Anthony Joshua to happen next year.
If Spencer Brown is correct about Fury needing to win his rematch to get the Joshua money fight, it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen between them because he has little chance of beating Usyk. The improvements Usyk will make in his game will be to ensure that it doesn’t go to the scorecards next time.
It was believed that His Excellency Turki Alalshikh would still green-light the Fury vs. Joshua mega-money fight between the two heavyweights, even if one or both lost their next fights. But according to Brown, Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) must win his rematch against Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) on December 21st for the AJ match to happen.
It’s good that Turki has chosen to change his tune about Fury and Joshua not needing to win their next fights for them to meet next year. There’s been a lot of criticism about the two fighters still fighting in early 2025, regardless of the outcomes of their next fights.
Joshua (28-3, 25 KOs) is challenging IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois on September 21st at Wembley Stadium in London, and there’s an excellent chance he’ll lose that fight against the younger fighter.
“There’s no collision course if he [Fury] doesn’t win the next fight [against Usyk]. So it’s imperative he beats Usyk,” Spencer Brown told Sky Sports about it being critical that Tyson Fury defeats WBA, WBC, and WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in their rematch on December 21st.
That’s not good for Fury, 35, because he’s not likely to win, and he might get knocked out by Usyk this time. Most believe Fury was knocked out in the true sense in his previous fight against Usyk on May 18th but was saved by the referee, who gave a standing eight count in the ninth round.
That was a historic move by the referee, changing Fury’s outcome from a knockout loss to a decision loss. Fury would have been knocked out with a different referee on duty that night, but not this one. It’s a good thing Fury didn’t win the fight by a decision; there would have been a huge cry from fans over the knockout that was taken away from Usyk.
“With the closeness of the fight last time, it could have gone either way,” said Brown of the Fury vs. Usyk fight last May in Riyadh.
If you factor in that Fury should have been knocked out in the ninth round, the fight wasn’t close. If you ignore that Usyk was prevented from knocking out Fury in the ninth due to the referee stopping the action to give Tyson a standing count, yeah, it was close, but not really.
That standing eight counts saved Fury, and it stained the outcome of the fight, making it look like the popular fighter Tyson had been saved.
Fans on social media wonder whether the referee would have made the same move if Fury had been just a no-name fighter with 15 losses on his record, brought in as an opponent. Would the referee have stepped in, saved a journeyman-level fighter, and given him a standing eight count?
“There’ll be changes, not in management or his team; there’ll be some other stuff that he’ll be looking at training-wise,” Brown said about Fury’s team.
That doesn’t sound good for Fury if he’s not changing his team because he clearly needs to. He should ditch his trainers Sugarhill Steward and Andy Lee and replace them with the highest quality coaches money can buy, with Fury’s estimated net worth of $140 million.
With the Fury’s huge J. Paul Getty-esque fortune, he can afford the highest quality trainer on the market. He should replace SugarHill and Lee to give himself the best chance of success in the rematch with Usyk, especially if the Joshua fight depends on him winning the rematch.
“Tyson Fury will be back. He’ll be firing, and we’ll see a new, better, improved Tyson Fury,” said Brown. “At his age, I don’t know how much you can improve, but there was very, very little in the fight between them.”
From Fury’s last five fights, we’ve seen that he’s on the steep decline in his career, and he’s not going to “better” or “improved” as Spencer Brown says. He’s going to be old and just as faded as he has in all of his fights since 2021. He should have lost the first and third fights with Deontay Wilder, but the referees who were working those matches saved him.
The count that was given to Fury when he was unconscious in the 12th round against Wilder, and then the slow count in the third fight after he’d been dropped hard. That’s an additional two losses that should be on Fury’s record. He’s been fading since 2018, and perhaps he was always overrated.
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