Promoter Eddie Hearn agrees with the referee’s decision not to stop the fight last Saturday night when Tyson Fury was out on his feet, looking getting hammered by nonstop punches in round nine from unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
At that moment in the fight, Hearn felt the referee, Mark Nelson, made the right move to give WBC heavyweight champion Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) a standing eight count because the ropes were holding him up while he was being shelled by Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs).
Critics Disagree with Hearn’s Assessment
People feel that the issue wasn’t that the ropes were holding Fury up. The reason why the fight should have been stopped is for these reasons:
- Fury was badly hurt: He was getting shelled and looking close to being knocked unconscious. His eyes were rolling around in his head, and he appeared to be looking in the sky for UFOs, completely out of it.
- No longer capable of defending himself: The Gypsy King needed to be saved by having the fight stopped..
You can argue that Hearn isn’t the guy to be asking about the Fury-Usyk fight, as it’s in his best interest for Fury not to have been knocked out because he wants to match a match between him and Anthony Joshua. It’s in Hearn’s best interest that Fury lost the fight to Usyk by a close decision rather than by knockout.
Hearn’s Defense of the Referee’s Call
“The amount of people and fighters that don’t know the rules about the ropes holding you up,” said promoter Eddie Hearn to BoxNation, defending the referee’s decision not to stop the fight in the ninth round when Tyson Fury was getting the daylights beaten out of him by Oleksandr Usyk, looking 100% out on his feet and gone.
“I saw so many fighters saying, ‘It’s ridiculous. You can’t. He didn’t go down and you still gave him a count.’ When the ropes prevent you from going down, the ref can give an eight count. It’s not a standing eight count.
“It’s effectively a knockdown because the ropes have stopped you from falling over, which he went all around the ring, Fury. I can’t believe he actually didn’t go over. I believe in the UK, there’s a lot of refs that would have jumped in, but I think they made the right decision not to jump in.
“In an undisputed heavyweight championship fight, I actually think the ref did a good job. I think it was a bit slow around the count and ‘Over there,’ but then the bell went. I thought Fury recovered so well. I give Fury a lot of credit. People are saying, ‘Oh, you’re only saying that because you want him to fight Joshua.’ No, I’m just being honest with you.
“I think he deserves credit because he showed a lot of bottle and I think Usyk is an absolute generational great,” said Hearn.
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