Ignore for a moment Tyson Fury’s insistence that he deserved the decision over Oleksandr Usyk on May 18 — that he’s watched the fight a hundred times, and every time, he sees himself racking up the points. Fury is perhaps a wee bit of a biased observer. It was not a controversial fight.
But it was a close fight. It’s easy to forget because the lasting image is of a 262-pound man teetering and tottering, on the brink of a knockout defeat for an extended stretch of round nine, but Usyk didn’t win by much.
In the official scoring, it came down to a single point on one card. The CompuBox stats were close too. They had Usyk outlanding Fury by just 13 punches over 12 rounds. Take away the ninth round battering/knockdown, and it was basically a dead-even fight on the scorecards, in the punch stats, and in our collective minds. Of course, we don’t take away any chunk of any round — it all counts — but the point is, there wasn’t a whole lot separating Usyk from Fury. Any time these two heavyweights face off against each other, every little edge either one of them possesses over the other could make the difference between victory and defeat.
Some of the edges are obvious. For example: Fury is a much larger man. (You’re welcome. This is why they pay me the big bucks.) Some are more subtle. Some are downright counterintuitive. But any of them could be the slim difference that decides Saturday’s rematch.
I spoke recently to world-class trainer and Boxing Scene contributor Stephen “Breadman” Edwards about this fight, and he pointed out a major, under-discussed, perhaps-not-even-discussed-at-all advantage that Usyk appears to have. One edge the Ukrainian southpaw has over Fury — his “secret weapon,” if you will — is his chin.
Usyk was outweighed by nearly 40 pounds in the first Fury fight, and has on average hit the scales 26 pounds lighter than his heavyweight opponents, and the human brain is conditioned to assume, at least until presented with evidence to the contrary, that the bigger fighter will take the smaller fighter’s punch better than the smaller fighter takes the bigger fighter’s.
Oleksandr Usyk has presented evidence to the contrary.
“In his fights with Anthony Joshua and Fury,” Breadman said, “it came down to something very simple: He can take their punches better than they can take his, even though he’s smaller. I mean, both guys are much bigger than him, but his punches have a much bigger effect on them than their punches do on him and that’s why he’s been able to separate himself from them. Usyk has a really good chin.”
Usyk has never been officially knocked down in 22 pro fights. He’s appeared buzzed now and then, but has never done a full-on baby-deer’s-first-steps stumble or palm-tree-in-a-breeze swoon. But he did manage to batter Fury from rope to rope until a knockdown was ruled, and he put Daniel Dubois down for the count in a win that just keeps looking better and better.
And Dubois is a tremendous puncher, as is Joshua, as is (to a slightly lesser degree) Derek Chisora, and Usyk managed to take their best shots — at least to the head.
With Usyk, the body is another story. For the rest of the time, whether it was a low blow or a body shot from Dubois that dropped him will be the “Yanny or Laurel?” of boxing. Joshua froze Usyk a time or two with body punches. Fury was clearly affecting him by going downstairs until Usyk seized control.
Breadman, though, thinks it’s “a little bit overstated” to say Usyk can’t take it to the body.
“I don’t look at it as so much of a weakness,” Edwards said. “Usyk holds his hands up really high. The body is pretty much the only thing he gives you. He fights like he’s still in the amateur system where he’s trying to protect himself from the other guy scoring points. He never fights with his hands down. Both of his hands are really, really high. So the body is the one thing that he gives you, but until he gets knocked down or knocked out with a body shot, I’m not going to consider that so much of a weakness. Nobody likes it to the body. I haven’t seen anybody with an iron liver or iron kidneys.”
So if Usyk’s under-reported edge is his punch resistance, what about a key factor on the flip side? What weapon or shortcoming of Fury’s could make the distance Saturday?
This isn’t a big secret, but Fury can be something of a clown — and is all too willing to bring that aspect of his personality into the ring with him. And against a smaller man who has a distinct edge in stamina, wasted energy could be how Fury turns victory into defeat.
“Big heavyweights can’t keep up with Usyk,” Edwards said. “Like, Fury has good cardio — it’s definitely better than Deontay Wilder’s — but it ain’t better than Usyk’s. Usyk runs at a certain, steady pace throughout a fight, and then the next thing you know, he shifts into a gear that the other heavyweights just can’t go to. So Fury has to find a way to not try to keep up with Usyk, because he’s not going to have the cardio of a 220-pound man. He has to find a way to slow Usyk down instead of trying to keep up with him.
“But Fury uses a lot of wasted motion. He’s doing gyrations and all that stuff, and maybe it’s OK against bigger guys, but he can’t afford to do that against somebody with the agility and the dexterity of Usyk. He has to use his energy intelligently and find a way to slow Usyk down instead of trying to keep up with him.”
Based on quotes Fury recently gave the Associated Press, it seems he’s partially on the same page as Breadman … and partially in another library entirely.
“I did more clowning [in the first Usyk fight] than anybody in any high-level fight’s ever done,” Fury said. “It’s taken my focus away as well, so maybe a little less clowning and more focus on the actual victory. I was messing around too much in there.”
OK, sounds good so far. Go on, Tyson.
“It wasn’t so much what he did right. It was me more fatigued than anything else, getting lackadaisical, you know what I mean? Throwing punches while I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing. It wasn’t for what he did was so great, it’s what I did that was a mistake really.”
We love what we’re hearing. Bring it home, Gypsy King.
“I’ll just throw more this time. Keep hitting him in the face more often than I did last time.”
Oh well. The second sentence is a statement of a desired result without any particular plan to make it happen, and the first sentence is directly contrary to what Breadman thinks Fury needs to do.
In a fight at this level, between opponents so competitively matched, every punch counts. Every punch Fury throws that misses will be to his detriment, and even the ones that land — at least to the head — are a long shot to have the desired effect on the surprisingly sturdy former cruiserweight.
What does Fury actually have to do to even the score? As you’ll recall, he made an all-time brilliant adjustment against Wilder in their second fight, aggressively smothering the pure puncher and defying conventional wisdom by outslugging the slugger. I think he needs to defy conventional wisdom similarly against Usyk. Pressure doesn’t much bother the defending champ. Fury should be looking to outbox the boxer (as he was doing, at a variety of ranges, in rounds five, six, and seven of the first fight). Can he do so without wasting energy, without burning himself out, and stay on his toes, using his fast hands and versatile offensive arsenal for all 12 rounds?
It’s a big ask. Combine the evidence of the first fight, which narrowly went Usyk’s way, with the sense that if either man is approaching “last legs” territory in the aftermath of their May battle it’s Fury, and you can see why the sportsbooks all list Usyk as the favorite.
When they step in the ring on Saturday, it may again come down to one small edge, or one landed punch, or one key round.
Fury says he’s learned lessons from their first fight — but is it too late for an old clown to learn new tricks?
And does it even matter if your opponent possesses the one thing that can’t be taught — the ability to take whatever you can dish out?
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].
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