Eddie Hearn says Oleksandr Usyk should be the favorite to defeat former WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury in their rematch on December 21 in Riyadh. Matchroom promoter Hearn claims Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) is “tough to beat” when he’s already beaten a fighter in the past.
Fury’s Kryptonite: Non-stop punches
Usyk will be hunting for a knockout, knowing that Fury’s kryptonite it’s that he can’t handle a non-stop barrage of punches. Fury has shown in his previous fight that he reacts slowly when he is hit with a storm of blows, and his only instinct is to try to catch and hold.
Usyk didn’t allow Fury to catch him. Clinching had become Fury’s bread and butter strategy for winning fights since teaming up with the Kronk Gym-trained Sugarhill Steward. Usyk immediately settled that simplistic approach, leaving Fury with nothing to fall back on but limp jabs and slow right hands. It wasn’t enough for him to win.
Oleksandr won’t let the judges pick a winner because that puts him in a position to lose to the monster.
Look at it this way: The massive mega-fight between Fury and Anthony Joshua is set for early 2025, which will bring in a lot of money. With all that money on the line, Usyk might need a knockout to guarantee a win.
Hearn knows all too well how 2012 Olympic gold medalist Usyk is almost impossible to beat as he beat his flagship Matchroom fighter Anthony Joshua in back-to-back fights in 2021 and 2022, with AJ having a mental breakdown in the ring immediately after the second loss. . Joshua went to pieces after Usyk’s hand was raised, and he hasn’t been the same fighter since.
Despite how Joshua looked in his second fight with Usyk, he did much better than Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) did earlier this year on May 18 in Riyadh. Although the judges scored a 12-round split decision in favor of Usyk, it should have been a knockout victory in the ninth round.
He could even put an asterisk next to the result in the record books with a footnote revealing that the referee saved Fury from a knockout by giving him an inexplicable eight-count stoppage in round nine. The referee stepped in and stopped the action at the exact moment Usyk was about to knock Fury down in the round.
Hearn Favors Usyk to get the job done
“I think you have to favor Usyk, but at the same time, you can never rule Fury out,” Eddie Hearn told secondsoutseeing three-belt unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk as the favorite in his rematch with Tyson Fury on December 21.
“The first fight was close. When the final bell went, I felt like Usyk had reached the fight, but I didn’t know that he was going to get it because sometimes it happens in a fight. It was a split decision , but I think Fury will be better in the rematch. It’s just very difficult to beat Oleksandr Usyk when he’s beaten you once already,” Hearn said.
Fury has looked old in his last two fights, looking slow, weak, and not the fighter he once was several years ago when he was in his prime. Of course, you could argue that Fury was never as good as the naive boxing public had thought he was because his resume was packed with tomato milk.
Is Fury’s entire career just a farce?
The Gyspy King Fury was more than a fighter outside the ring who gained his fame for being funny in interviews and cracking up during press conferences. His best win of his career came against Wladimir Klitschko, 39, who he barely beat in 2015.
Aside from his win over a washed-up Wladimir, Fury has never beaten solid fighters during his career, and it’s obvious now that fans were misled by the careful matchmaking that was done to create his lucrative career. money
Fury’s best wins:
– Wladimir Klitschko
– Deontay Wilder
– Dillian Whyte
– Derek Chisora
Most unbiased fans believe Fury doesn’t have much of a chance at all in his rematch with Usyk on Dec. 21, which they agree with.
For fans who don’t have a dog in the hunt, they see this as a rematch that shouldn’t even have happened in the first place because Usyk clearly won the first fight by KO if you do the odd standing eight count in. the ninth that saved Tyson.
