Tyson Fury isn’t being given much of a chance by fans on social media for his rematch against WBA, WBC and WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk on December 21st.
The fans that Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) will finish the job that he began in the ninth round of the first fight against Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) on May 18th when he had the Gypsy King on the brink of a knockout.
If there isn’t a referee that steps in to save Fury by giving him a fight-saving standing eight count, Usyk will likely knock him out in the rematch on December 21st. Usyk will be planning to unload on Fury with an avalanche of punches in the rematch and overwhelm the aging fighter with shots.
Fury’s biggest worry is that he’s too slow and big to fight off Usyk if he unloads on him with 20+ consecutive headshots like he did in the ninth round of their first fight.
In reality, Fury is 0-2 in his last two fights and is heading toward his third consecutive defeat against Usyk. That’s not good, considering that His Excellency Turki Alalshikh has already said that Fury and Anthony Joshua will be fighting regardless of the outcomes of their next fights. Francis Ngannou deserved a win over Fury last October in Riyadh but was given a raw treatment by the judges.
We already saw a hapless-looking 34-year-old Joshua get blown out of the water by IBF champion Daniel Dubois on September 21st. It’s Fury’s turn to get destroyed in his rematch with Usyk. The UK boxing public probably won’t care that Fury is beaten by Usyk again, but the rest of the world will be put off.
They won’t want to watch a couple of wealthy, washed up fighters backing into a PPV fight off the back of knockout losses. If Joshua takes the rematch with Dubois, he’ll likely get knocked out again, setting up a situation where he and Fury will both have consecutive defeats when they meet in 2025.
What Happened to Fury?
I must agree with the fans. Fury looks like he’s heading for trouble in the second fight, and there’s not much he can do about it without finding the Fountain of Youth before December 21st.
Fury looks like he’s aged badly in the last few years and no longer resembles the fighter he once was. It’s unclear if he’s been burning the candle on both ends in between fights, living it up with rich food and expensive drink.
What Fury has been doing when not fighting has done something to him. Sitting on a massive fortune like Fury, why he’d want to eat well is understandable. Who wouldn’t when they got Fury’s money? If I was as rich as Fury, I’d be eating high on the hog, too, and be just as washed as him at his age.
Fury needs to bring back the version of himself that beat the stuffing out of Deontay Wilder in their second clash in 2020 because he was his career-best for that fight. Even the version of Fury that edged 39-year-old Wladimir Klitschko in 2015 wasn’t at the level he was when he beat Wilder in the second fight in 2020.
