Promoter Frank Warren commented today on the many people who view former WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury as having been destroyed when he fought Oleksandr Usyk on May 18th.
Warren points out that it was a close fight, ending in a “split decision,” and that Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) still feels he deserved the victory. He says all Fury, 36, must do to win the December 21st rematch against WBA, WBC, and WBO heavyweight champion Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) is fighting the way he did in the earlier rounds.
Recapturing Early Success
“People talk like he was slaughtered or something in that first fight. There was nothing in it; it was a split decision,” said promoter Frank Warren on his YouTube channel about the fight between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk last May.
Fans focus on how Fury was battered from pillar to post in the ninth round and looked like a fat mess the entire fight. If Usyk had a better gas tank, he would have finished Fury in the 10th or 11th rounds. He looked tired after working Fury over in the 9th round and didn’t have the engine to finish the vulnerable, out-of-shape-looking fighter in the final three rounds.
“All he’s got to do is do what he did in the earlier rounds and stay focused,” Warren continued about Fury. “He genuinely feels he should have won it, and I’m not talking about the decision; I’m talking about he should have won it, and he could have won it. And he knows what he’s got to do next time to make that happen.”
Fury was far from great in the early rounds against Usyk, and the only reason he wasn’t worked over then, too, is because Oleksandr was fighting cautiously. If he’d stepped on the gas, he would have worked Fury over and likely knocked him out.
Usyk wasn’t allowing Fury to maul like he’d been accustomed to doing to win his fights, and without that, he was helpless against the talented Ukrainian.
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