“You want to go up in weight?” Oleksandr Usyk’s promoter, Alex Krassyuk, asked Tyson Fury during the face-off for the December 21 rematch between the two top heavyweights.
“No, I want to box, like I did before [in the first fight],” Fury replied.
“Speed,” said Fury’s promoter, Frank Warren of Queensberry Promotions.
Believe them at your peril. In a recent interview with BoxNation, Fury said he planned to come in at 21 stone, or 294lbs. He weighed in at 262lbs for his first fight with Usyk.
Ahead of his second fight with Deontay Wilder, Fury promised to walk the puncher down and earn the knockout himself. He was thought to be crazy, only to follow through on his promise.
Fury’s contradictory messaging as the Usyk rematch approaches is a welcome reminder to take everything he says not just with a grain of salt, but with a block of salt.
Psychological warfare has always been an integral part of the Fury experience. Ahead of his 2015 bout with then-longtime champion Wladimir Klitschko, he seemed to visibly perturb Wlad with a simple story of outlasting him in a sauna years earlier. Fury can unleash a fierce stream of trash talk one moment, only to be earnest and even kind the next.
Even after all these years of Fury’s mind games, it’s not easy to tell which one he’s playing now. The prospect of Fury coming in at over 290lbs certainly suggests that he does not want to box.
But during an interview at the Usyk-Fury II press conference, Fury launched into a detailed explanation about why he only needed to make small adjustments for the rematch. He correctly pointed out that men far more aggressive and firmer of fist than himself had tried and failed to walk Usyk down, and that he’d had a lot of success boxing, so why change? Fury appeared to be entirely earnest as he broke down his fighting style.
So, the possibilities: Fury has changed his mind since then; he was straight-up lying; he is lying about his weight now; or, somehow, he really does intend to box despite putting on 30lbs.
Yep, I’m as lost as you are. My theory? Fury has done his best to convince Usyk and the public that he will box again while secretly planning to rough Usyk up, contrary to his testimony at the press conference. Fury also had plenty of success in the first Wilder fight and abandoned his tactic there for the rematch, so this wouldn’t be off-brand for him. But Usyk is a vastly different opponent from Wilder and, more to the point, I have no idea which Fury quotes to trust.
But Fury also seems to want to be unpredictable. He surely knew that no one would believe him when he said he would knock out Wilder, which made the strategy all the more surprising and effective when he really did employ it. And once again, only Fury has any clue of whether or not he’s telling the truth.
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