Heavyweight king Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury will be ringside this Saturday at Wembley Stadium on a scouting mission to watch IBF champion Daniel Dubois defend against Anthony Joshua.
It will be interesting to see how Fury and Joshua react to seeing their conqueror Usyk for the first time since beating them. Joshua could find it a little more traumatic to be in the presence of Usyk because he went crazy after his loss to the Ukrainian talent two years ago, in August 2022, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
After the fight, Joshua went into mind melt mode, ripping off Usyk’s straps, throwing him out of the ring, and then talking nonsense after taking the microphone to speak to the crowd. Joshua looked wild-eyed as if he was capable of doing anything.
I hope Joshua doesn’t see Usyk in the crowd because he needs to be 100% in his fight against Dubois. If Joshua is intimidated by Usyk’s presence, he could throw off his game, making him underperform.
Regardless of the outcome of the Joshua-Dubois fight, Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) has been promised a fight against Joshua (28-3, 25 KOs) by His Excellency Turki Alalshikh. Usyk will face Dubois (21-2, 20 KOs) next for the undisputed heavyweight championship if both win their fights.
It would have been better for the fans if the winner of the Joshua-Dubois fight faced the winner of the Fury-Usyk II fight because it would have been more sporting. As it stands, we could see Joshua and Fury back in their all-British fight next year, coming off humiliating losses.
If this is the circumstances we see, promoter Eddie Hearn needs to come up with another label for the fight because he says that Fury vs. Joshua would be the biggest fight in boxing. It will not be so if one or both came from losses.
On December 21, Usyk will defend his WBA, WBC and WBO titles against Fury in a rematch in Riyadh. It’s a fight Fury needs to win to generate more interest in a fight between him and Joshua. However, that’s not likely to happen because Usyk had Fury’s number after beating him last May.
