Eddie Hearn says Oleksandr Usyk must be the favorite to defeat the former WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury in their rematch on December 21st in Riyadh. The Matchroom promoter Hearn states that Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) is “difficult to beat” when he’s already beaten a fighter in the past.
Fury’s Kryptonite: Nonstop Punches
Usyk will be hunting for a knockout, knowing that Fury’s kryptonite is that he cannot handle a barrage of nonstop punches. Fury showed in their previous fight that he reacts slowly when he’s getting hit with a storm of shots, and his only instinct is to try and grab and hold.
Usyk didn’t allow Fury to clinch. The clinching had become Fury’s bread & butter strategy to win fights since teaming up with the Kronk Gym-trained Sugarhill Steward. Usyk solved that simplistic approach immediately, leaving Fury with nothing to fall back on but the limp jabs and slow right hands. It was not nearly enough for him to win.
Oleksandr isn’t going to leave it to the judges for them to pick a winner because that would put him in a position of losing to the behemoth.
Look at it this way: The massive mega-fight between Fury and Anthony Joshua is being targeted for early 2025, which will bring in loads of cash. With all that money on the line, Usyk might need a knockout to guarantee himself a victory.
Hearn knows all too well how the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Usyk is next to impossible to defeat when he beat his flagship Matchroom fighter Anthony Joshua in consecutive fights in 2021 and 2022, resulting in AJ having a mental meltdown inside the ring immediately after the second loss. Joshua went to pieces 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 performed much better than Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) did earlier this year on May 18th in Riyadh. Although the judges scored a 12-round split decision in Usyk’s favor, it should have been a ninth-round knockout win.
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 counts in round nine. The referee stepped in and stopped the action at the exact moment when Usyk was about to knockout Fury 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 out Fury,” said Eddie Hearn to Secondsout, viewing unified three-belt heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk as the favorite in his rematch with Tyson Fury on December 21st.
“The first fight was close. When the final bell went, I felt like Usyk had edged the fight, but I didn’t know who would get it because sometimes it happens in a fight. It was a split decision, but I think Fury will be better in the rematch. It’s just very difficult to beat Oleksandr Usyk when he’s beaten you once already,” said Hearn.
Fury has looked ancient in his last two fights, appearing slow, feeble, and not the fighter he once was many years ago when he was in his prime. Of course, you can argue that Fury was never as good as the naive boxing public had thought he was because his resume was packed with tomato cans.
Is Fury’s Entire Career Just a Sham?
The Gyspy King Fury was more of the outside-of-the-ring fighter who gained his fame by being funny in interviews and yakking it up during press conferences. His best win of his career came against 39-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, who he barely beat in 2015.
Apart from his win over a washed-up Wladimir, Fury never beat solid fighters during his career, and it’s obvious now that fans were fooled by the careful matchmaking that had been done to create his money-making career.
Fury’s Best Wins:
– Wladimir Klitschko
– Deontay Wilder
– Dillian Whyte
– Derek Chisora
Most non-biased fans believe Fury doesn’t have much chance at all in his rematch with Usyk on December 21st, which I agree with.
For the fans that don’t have a dog in the hunt, they see this as a rematch that shouldn’t even be happening in the first place because Usyk clearly won the first fight by knockout if you factor in the weird standing eight count in the ninth that saved Tyson.
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