Late into the evening of Saturday 18th May 2024, at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk were deep into their hugely anticipated battle for the undisputed heavyweight championship. After a very even first half of the contest, Fury had taken over in the middle rounds and the in-fight betting odds, in some places, saw him as short as a 1/20 favourite. Uysk, apparently tiring, was facing massive odds and the real possibility of a first career defeat.
And then the bell sounded to start the ninth round and the significance of what would happen in those next three minutes cannot be underestimated in the context of the entire history of the heavyweight division.
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Opinions and reality
Boxing is the ultimate opinion sport - everyone has one. And in the modern world, in social media and in the pubs, gyms, bars and bus-stops across the world, everyone's an expert on boxing. This is great for the sport, and there really is nothing like fight week for a major event like the one we had on 18 May.
The Ring of Fire headliner between Fury and Usyk was, without debate, the most important fight in heavyweight boxing this century. Tyson Fury, who started the contest as a 1.87 betting favourite is a divisive character. His fans, and there are a lot of them, will defend him to the hilt, while his critics are frequently given new material to enhance their feelings. (Note that this article will be giving no copy whatsoever to the behaviour of Tyson’s father.)
Prior to this defeat, it has been argued by people that you think should know better (Stallone, Rogan, Garcia, Lampley) that Tyson Fury is the greatest heavyweight of all time. Now, opinions are great, and being a fan of a particular team or individual is also great. But there is a limit, and when you cross the line and state an opinion that is so far-fetched it carries as much credibility as flat-earth theory, then you cannot be taken seriously. Anyone who has argued that Fury is a potential GOAT is basically a boxing flat-earther. It is crazy.
It seems there are literally millions of boxing fans across the word who will argue that “Iron” Mike Tyson is the greatest heavyweight of all time. Again this is fine. It is far-fetched and very hard to support with any logic, but it is fine. His career highlight reel is as good as any there is, his style was unbelievably crowd-pleasing, and he transcended the sport.
While it is debatable as to where Mike Tyson sits in the all-time great list, you can understand why some would be so convinced that he is number one.
But Tyson Fury, the greatest heavyweight champion of all time…? This is nothing short of madness. He made his reputation almost a decade ago by outpointing an entirely passed-his-peak Wladimir Klitschko, who had failed to impress in his previous outing, back in 2015. This was an excellent against-the-odds victory for Fury, but Wladimir was nearly 40 years old and a shell of his former self.
For the best part of a decade following that win, big fights failed to materialise for Fury. Sometimes this was out of his control (David Haye), sometimes it felt like he was instrumental in scuppering the biggest challenges of his era (Joshua, Usyk).
Instead, he has built and bolstered his reputation with three epic fights with Deontay Wilder. While great to watch this trilogy, having Wilder on your resume as a second-best win, after a faded Klitschko, these are simply not the credentials required to even be mentioned in the same breath as Ali, Holmes, Holyfield, Lewis etc.
We have a situation here now where Fury has gone, in a matter of days, from being part of the GOAT debate (in some circles) to now consider himself lucky to even be considered in the Top Three of his era.
Fury lost his undefeated record in the biggest fight of his career, as an odds-on favourite against someone in only their sixth fight at heavyweight, while out-weighing his opponent by 40lbs. If this doesn’t give you grounds to scrutinise his resume, then nothing will.
A good big man…
There is a tired, old saying in boxing that “a good big man always beats a good little man”.
It might be time to put this saying to pasture. It is true to a degree, but it is so simplistic to be reductive. In the buildup to this fight, when assessing the likely outcomes, this phrase did some serious heavy-lifting. For me, whenever I heard it, I switched off. I wanted more than that to convince me that Fury had the tools to defeat Usyk. I certainly made Fury the favourite in the fight, but this lazy and monotonous cliche wasn’t enough for me to doubt my belief that Usyk could upset the odds.
Boxing fans have a short memory. The Kltischko brothers (Wladimir 6'6" and Vitali 6'7") dominated a post-Lennox era of heavyweight boxing with a somewhat reluctant, hit and hold, jab ‘n’ right-hand style. They benefited from their size, reach and weight advantages for sure. But it is debatable as to whether those advantages would have been enough to see them get past the great “smaller” heavyweights of the past.
In fact, the expression has been rendered somewhat pointless by Tyson Fury himself. It has been reported by a reliable source that when Fury signed with Bob Arum, he explicitly requested “no small guys”.
We saw the trouble he had with Steve Cunningham, another ex-cruiserweight who was outweighed by 44lbs. The writing has been very much on the wall for some time.
We have seen Fury dismiss Usyk’s credentials as a worthy opponent to him. It is quite possible that the “good big man” quote is the opposite of the truth when it comes to this particular Fury-Usyk matchup. There are plenty of sharp opinions out there that believe Fury would never beat Usyk in a boxing match.
At a certain point, against certain styles, being big becomes a hindrance rather than an asset.
I have been of the opinion for some time that Fury did not want to fight Usyk, that the only reason this bout went ahead in Saudi is because of the absurd money it would be worth to him. Plus the fact that it was quite possible he would win it. With $120,000,000 on the table, plus the rematch clause, the risk-vs-reward made it impossible for Fury not to fight the man he had been avoiding for so long.
Why Usyk could upset the odds
Usyk has been referred to as a “small heavyweight” countless times since he moved into the “land of the giants”. At 6’3 and over 220lbs, he is not a small heavyweight in such a way that it is a bad thing. He is smaller than some of the modern giants of course. But could it be that he is in fact not small, but “optimal”. He shares a lot of physically similar dimensions as Ali and Holyfield and he would have towered over Mike Tyson and Joe Frazier.
It was far too simplistic to assume Fury would just maraude his way to a spectacular knockout after leaning on and exhausting his smaller opponent in the clinches. He was the bigger, heavier man, but the stronger man? Maybe not.
The problem for the really big men in the division, the likes of Fury (6'9") and Joshua (6'6"), is that their size restricts what they can do in the ring and almost without exception raises questions about their stamina down the stretch. While Deontay Wilder (6'7") will go down as one of the biggest punchers in history, he is unique in the literal sense of the word.
At 6'5" and around 245lbs in his prime, Lennox Lewis is a genuine all-time great, a huge natural puncher with tremendous athleticism, but he too was targetted with accusations of stamina issues. For me, Lennox (with an 84 inch reach) is very near the optimal heavyweight size, but anything bigger than Lewis and the physiological limitations start to appear.
Fury and Joshua are not massive punchers, they do not carry the power one might expect from such giant men. Of course, anyone over 6’6” and 250lbs is going to have a dig and score stoppages, but real concussive natural power is a product of timing, speed, leverage, genetics and other intangibles that go beyond size.
Without genuine power in his armoury, Fury’s greatest chances were to outpoint Usyk rather than to stop him inside the distance. And while Fury has incredible, otherworldly, speed given the size of him, fighting Usyk was always going to be his biggest test.
Usyk shares many of the offensive and defensive styles of some of the most effective “small” men in history. Muhammad Ali was a master of getting in-and-out in quick time, Joe Frazier would go up-and-down with his attacks and upper-body movement, and Mike Tyson mastered the peekaboo and tick-tock left-right lateral movement. Usyk has all three of these assets in his armoury. For a bigger man, he is a stylistic nightmare. Anthony Joshua, at times, looked lost at sea in the 24 rounds he shared with Usyk. And Joshua is no mug.
What this means is that the bigger man was probably less likely to win by stoppage than the smaller man. Fury had to answer the questions about the weight gain and loss; was he in shape to do 12 hard rounds? And the lack of knockout power coupled with how hard it would be to hit Usyk cleanly meant his best chance was a distance fight.
Usyk is not known as a massive puncher but he is relentless, and if Fury tired in the second half of the fight which was a real possibility, it was quite possible that Usyk could force a late stoppage of the fatiguing big man. At 6’3” and over 220lbs, make no mistake, Usyk can whack. And from his southpaw stance, it was quite possible that Fury would again have trouble with his propensity to cut that has been apparent in theses twilight years of his career.
- If the opening prices which had Usyk as the outsider at around 2/1 (3.00) were still available I would have no hesitation pulling the trigger and backing him to score the upset win.
I wrote in my preview [published 14th April 2024] that “I would have no hesitation” backing Usyk to score the upset win against Fury. However, I felt it was an upset, and with the betting being so close (it was a perfect pick’em a week before the fight) the Usyk outright odds of 2.00 did not offer the value that was there when the fight was first announced.
This was my stock reply to anyone who asked me for my pick a couple of weeks before the fight:
- I’m still sitting on the fence about how I see this going. My current thinking is it’s a distance fight. I also think the business side does better with a Fury win than a Usyk win, so maybe Usyk will need to win 118-110 just to get a split decision.
At that time, I expected a close controversial fight, and felt it was very likely a distance fight. We tipped up the draw at 18/1 (it was 21.0 on the exchanges).
And then, fight week happened.
Market movements during fight week
Fight week started with no significant recent changes in the betting, both fighters were circling around 2.00 on the exchanges with the draw into 15.0.
This was my assessment on Monday of fight week:
- For me, there’s two things: 1. Who will win? 2. Who is the value bet? Not the same thing. I’ve said for months Fury is the value bet at recent prices and I’m laying Usyk (in case of draw). I definitely think Usyk can win. Might even stop Fury late. But it would be an UPSET. So I’m not backing him at these prices. Might do if he drifts in the week. I cannot see Fury winning inside the distance.
With every day that went by, more money was coming in for Fury. Not in massive amounts, but significant enough to show that there was a clear market momentum shift in favour of The Gypsy King.
By the time we were finally under the lights in the Kingdom Arena, Fury was the betting favourite at 1.87 and Usyk had reached prices over 2.50.
While this was not the 3.00 price that was available for Usyk last year, it was certainly going in that direction.
It was a fascinating fight week. Fury looked considerably lighter than he had been in years. This was a huge talking point. For many it showed that he was taking this fight seriously and was in “fantastic shape”.
For me, and many others, it was cause for concern. When I see a boxer in the twilight of his career making such drastic physical changes compared to “normal” fighting weight and his opponent looks exactly the same, I know what usually happens. It is a reason to be concerned about the implications of that weight loss. Be it unintended muscle-loss and atrophy during the training camp, or lowered power and stamina reserves during the fight, the weight loss has to be considered. It might be more important than a simple, reductive “fantastic shape” narrative.
Every time I saw Fury or heard him speak, I saw more reasons to doubt him. And yet the previously 50:50 odds for Fury continued their slow but steady journey to favouritism.
Thursday of fight week saw the final pre-fight press conference. During the face-off, Fury refused to look Usyk in the eye. It was all good stuff and created some drama and some talking points. Predictably, many people went overboard using this episode as evidence that Fury was rattled. It was absolutely meaningless in terms of Fury’s mindset. He looked fit and focussed. Usyk, meanwhile, looked unbreakable. People were too busy looking for flaws in Fury’s make-up, and not noticing the rock-solid visual clues that Usyk was giving off in every word he said, and every move he made.
At no point during the week did Usyk present himself as anything but a driven individual with complete belief and destiny-levels of certainty that this was his fight to win.
Usyk is an incredibly likeable character and you have to be a special kind of contrarian to not admire him. He is so utterly confident in himself he is redefining what it is to be an alpha male. The armchair psychologist in me will say his confidence comes from a place so deep inside him, that he doesn't need to play a role, act up, or project anything. He wastes no time or energy on games. Those “mind-games” that Tyson Fury fans like to talk about and that TV pundits use to fill hours of dead air-time are nothing but a pointless distraction.
Meanwhile, Usyk always came off as the genuine alpha in any of the pre-fight exchanges with Fury. It was Fury’s mind-games that were trying to convince himself that he was Usyk’s superior because they certainly wouldn’t work on Usyk. Every time Fury has called Usyk a “middleweight rabbit”, a "little 14-stone coward", repeatedly called “ugly”, a “pussy” for wearing a Cossack warrior ear-ring, he is trying to insert some false dominance and it just did not work.
Between these two men, it is Usyk (who carries a teddy bear, dances like no one is watching, speaks in perfectly-wrong viral semi-English, wears pink hand-wraps and day-glow training gear and publicly cries about his dead father) who is the alpha and it is quite possible that Fury knows that too. Perhaps it is Usyk who is the "real fighting man".
The fighters weighed in at 7pm on Friday night. Fury was 262lbs, Usyk was read out as “233½lbs” but in a classic case of “you only had one job” it turns out he was in fact 223lbs. When something doesn't sound or look right, I tend to ignore it or explain why it might be, and when they claimed Usyk was 12lbs heavier than expected, I didn't give that much attention. A lot of people wasted a lot of time discussing why he was coming in so heavy.
It was another meaningless distraction.
After the weigh-in, instead of carrying out interviews with the broadcasters, Fury delivered an out-of-control rant of mainly tired cliches and gibberish about what he was going to do to “Usyk’s heart”. Again, if I was looking for reasons to doubt Fury, this was a display of nervous energy and an adrenaline spike that is not a positive. It instantly reminded me of Ricky Hatton’s demeanour at the weigh-in for his fight with Floyd Mayweather.
Fury was whistling in the dark, but still, he continued to attract the betting money.
At this time, 24 hours away from the first bell, I placed two bets. I backed Usyk to win by KO at odds of 7.00 on the exchange. I also layed (bet against) Fury to win by KO.
The WhatsApps, texts and DMs were starting to come in enquiring about how I saw the fight unfolding. I then took to X to share my final thoughts on how it would go down. Backing Usyk by stoppage was described as “genuine insanity”, “bold”, “clueless” and having “not a chance”, among other things. It’s always quite interesting when people tell you what they think of your betting strategies… I have been doing this long enough (and well enough) to have confidence in what I say and they can keep their helpful feedback to TripAdvisor as far as I am concerned.
This was my final roundup of why I was picking the Usyk stoppage from round nine onwards:
- I think fury has gained an inflated reputation against second-tier opposition,
- Usyk is elite level and by far his biggest test.
- And at this stage of Fury’s career,
- with the miles on clock from the Wilder trilogy,
- the recent cuts,
- the weight gain/loss,
- the poor recent form,
- while admitting he has trouble with smaller guys
- and my firm belief that he would have ducked Usyk if it wasn’t for the absurd money …
- plus Usyk knowing he may not get a fair decision,
- I think Usyk is going to stop Fury in the final third of the fight.
The fight
In the hours before the fight, both men looked confident. The anticipation was huge and it felt that there was no way this could disappoint. After some dreadful live music, Micheal Buffer (somewhat underwhelmingly, via video replay) invited the fighters to make their entrances. Usyk came out in full traditional Cossack warrior regalia.
If you had felt that there was a sense of destiny for Usyk during fight-week, you could feel it now in spades.
Fury followed shortly. It seemed like there was some nervousness in his camp, but Fury looked relaxed enough. This was going to be a fight, and after months, and even years of speculation, we would soon have a unified, undisputed heavyweight champion for the first time since 1999.
As soon as the fight started, no amount of gurning and showboating could hide the fact Fury had a somewhat haunted look about him. Some six inches taller, and 40lbs heavier than Usyk, the size difference looked more extreme in the ring than it had done in any of the pre-fight head-to-head meetings and face-offs.
In the opening exchanges there was a palpable nervousness about Fury. Deep down, perhaps he knew he’d finally met his match in an opponent he’d desperately avoided. An opponent who he had ridiculed many times as just a small middleweight.
It was Usyk who took centre ring. Fury was happy to back-peddle, his back against the ropes and Usyk initiated the action and was the aggressor for the first few rounds.
Usyk had the better of the first two rounds and then Fury found some rhythm and it felt even, two rounds each, after four.
The betting odds during the fight would support this. The graph below shows Fury’s starting odds implied probability of 53% chance of winning before the first bell. The blue line shows Fury’s implied chances of winning after the completion of each round in the fight.
The first third of the contest was nip-and-tuck, a fascinating clash of styles and the fears that this might be a stinker had in no way materialised. It was high-quality, absorbing stuff. The middle rounds saw Fury get ahead in the fight, it looked like Usyk might be tiring, and Fury visibly grew in confidence in rounds 5 and 6. The sixth was Fury's best round, having success with body shots and an eye-catching right uppercut that rocked Usyk to his boots.
Meanwhile, there was a fascinating mini-battle taking place as the contest developed. Fury would showboat, mean-mugging, dropping his hands, inviting Usyk in to engage. Usyk, not for one second stepping away from his role as apex predator in this match-up, simply ignored Fury during those moments of non-combat. Usyk stepped away. Looked at Fury, as if to say, “I am here to fight you. I am not here to play games with you. I’ll wait here until you are ready for me to fight you.”
Again, it was pure alpha behaviour by him. At no point during the entire promotion, the fight itself, or the aftermath did Usyk deviate from that position.
At the halfway stage, Fury was arguably up by four rounds to two. If you give Fury the 7th too, you can make a good case that he’s now winning five rounds to two, with five rounds left in the fight.
While following the betting markets during the fight, I saw Fury in the middle rounds as short as a 1/10 favourite. It has since been mentioned that some sportsbooks had him at 1/20 (1.05 decimal, -2000 US moneyline).
Let that sink in. Usyk was now facing colossal odds to get the job done.
He was a massive underdog now, and there were five rounds left to come. Essentially, Usyk was suffering his worst period of the fight after such an encouraging start, and he now faced a stark reality: he had to win all of the next 5 rounds or at least score a knockdown (something that few pundits had said was possible) if he had any chance of getting the nod.
And he knew, for all intents and purposes, that the judges and officials would be seeing him as the "away" fighter. He would be afforded no favours from here.
This is when Usyk seemed to take inspiration from somewhere most of us cannot even start to fathom. It is not hyperbole to say there was something other-worldly, spiritual even about what was happening here. Usyk kissed the cross being carried by his cornerman, said a silent prayer, probably heard words from his late father, and then changed the course of history.
The eighth round was pivotal. They say a great fight needs at least two momentum swings, and this was certainly a great fight. Usyk seemed to hurt Fury, bloodying his nose in a way that gave the impression it was broken. It was significant, and it was what Usyk needed. He won the 8th round. Suddenly, again, the fight seemed to take on a different trajectory.
With thirty seconds left in the ninth round, Fury was working his way off the ropes, throwing a four-punch flurry, consisting of nothing more than arm-punches.
In a three-second sequence that encapsulates everything that is great about this Usyk performance, the Ukrainian simply shrugs off Fury’s combination with complete contempt while throwing his own powerful one-two combination. The straight right-hand detonated on Fury’s chin in a manner we have seen so many times before.
We called it back in our April preview:
- “While Fury has been vulnerable to the right-hand thrown by boxers with an orthodox stance, the writing could be on the wall for him. The straight left-hand from Usyk's southpaw stance could cause Fury's fragile scar tissue around the right eye all sorts of problems. Could it be the shot that even forces him to have to get up from the canvas yet again?”
It was the start of a 30-second barrage that saw Fury doing an uncanny impression of 2005's WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev as he fell clumsily around the ring, Usyk stalking him down relentlessly knowing the end was in sight.
Fury was in more trouble than we have ever seen him before, only just kept up by the ropes. With just a few seconds left in the round, Usyk had the left-hand cocked, reminiscent of Ali’s pose over the stricken George Foreman, but rather than throw that shot, the referee jumped between him and Fury to stop the onslaught.
For those in attendance, and for the millions watching around the world, it felt like the fight had been stopped. Boxing fans across the globe were out of their seats. Usyk even looked directly into the eyes of the referee in anticipation of the seemingly inevitable stoppage.
Instead, a rather slow count followed.
There is largely a consensus view that if it was Usyk on the receiving end of those blows and Fury was delivering them, the fight would almost certainly have been stopped in that 9th round. Fury was given every possible advantage to keep himself in the fight in order to maintain that undefeated record ahead of the potential Joshua fight that the Saudis seem so desperate to make.
It's likely that 99 times out of 100, the fight would have been stopped there, with Fury in “no fit state to continue”.
What Fury did next was quite remarkable. It seemed almost impossible that 60 seconds would be enough time to recover, and surely Usyk would get the job done in the tenth. However, Fury bounced back somehow, in a manner that, for me, is even more impressive than any of his back-from-the-brink heroics in any of the Wilder fights.
Coming up from undisputed cruiserweight champion, a lot has been said about Usyk’s size in terms of his place in the heavyweight division. The same questions were asked about Evander Holyfield, the last undisputed cruiserweight champion who would step up and ultimately reign at the top of the heavyweight tree. Evander and Oleksander are both Hall Of Fame undisputed cruiserweight champions, 6’3 and around 100kg. Both have gone on to heavyweight glory against the odds and proving the naysayers wrong.
The similarities don’t end there. With the end of this incredible 9th round with Tyson Fury staggering across the ring, desperate not to hit the canvas, there were shades of the end of the 10th round in the first Tyson-Holyfield fight, when Holyfield would come out and finish Tyson in the 11th. Holyfield’s 1996 victory over Tyson goes down as one of the most remarkable results in the sport. The myth of Mike Tyson was over.
Twenty-eight years later, I expected Usyk to do the same with his own dismantling of a Tyson myth.
If he had achieved that, stopping Fury in the tenth, it would have rendered any long-count conspiracy or referee incompetence irrelevant. How Fury survived that phase of the fight, given the question marks about his lifestyle and conditioning, is nothing short of extraordinary.
On the subject of Fury’s legendary powers of recovery, this has always been something of a backhanded compliment. If you're picking Fury and putting a tick in the positive attributes column next to “powers of recovery”, you must also admit that there is a huge red cross there too… I find it hard to see the overwhelming positivity about a fighter who has been dropped so frequently in his career.
Yes, it is quite phenomenal to see this huge man recover the way he does, but if I am putting my money on him, I would rather he never tasted the canvas in the first place. Particularly when so many of his fights go to the scorecards. Celebrating a boxer's propensity to survive 10-8 rounds is good recreational stuff and makes entertaining copy for the casuals, but it is not something that should be weighted very heavily when assessing the fight's variables.
The result
For me, Oleksander Usyk is everything that is good about this sport. A sport that so often gives us reasons to doubt it.
What is sporting greatness? One of the reasons many people put Evander Holyfield above Mike Tyson on the all-time list is the frequency of coming back from adversity. Despite all his attributes, Tyson was rarely able to turn a negative position into a positive one. Holyfield was at his best in those situations.
With Usyk facing the huge -2000 odds midway through this fight, after only five fights in the division, at his age, against this opponent, with these officials, in the most important heavyweight fight for a generation, this is nothing short of greatness.
Most neutral observers thought that Usyk had won after the final bell. Fury was now a +900 dog, and the draw was down at +390.
A split decision was generally seen as evidence that the judges were looking for reasons to give rounds to Fury. Given some of the referee’s choices, and the time-keeping during the count, it is not conspiracy theory nonsense to suggest that Usyk was up against the officials in this contest. This had been widely speculated before the fight.
With that in mind, while scoring the fight live, I was aware that the judges would probably be looking to reward Fury’s work more than Usyk’s. I felt like Usyk had done more than enough to win, but I was expecting something grubby when Buffer eventually read out the cards.
I was not surprised in the slightest it was a split verdict. With that in mind, I had Usyk a 115-113 winner. On a repeat viewing 24 hours later, I gave it to Usyk by a wider margin. But 115-113 was my official card.
Again, this is becoming an old record, but you will often hear fans cry “robbery” about a decision. When you ask them to support that claim by sharing a scorecard, it is often the case they did not score it. Honestly, how boxing fans can comment so strongly on a result that they did not score themselves remains a mystery. All part of the fun that mainstream casual boxing offers up.
In the interviews that follow these types of career-defining fights, it is important to give the boxers some slack. They’ve often been through hell, they're physically and mentally wrecked, not to mention carrying some concussion. In that light, how most boxers remain coherent and respectful is frankly extraordinary. Fury started well, kissing Usyk on the head and inviting him and his family for a holiday in Morecambe. (I suspect, strongly, that Usyk will decline that particular offer.)
But then Fury dug deep into his repertoire of crassness and declared: "I believe we both put on a good fight - best we could do. And, you know, his country is at war. People are siding with the country at war."
Even with the caveats of what he had just been through, that was a disgusting remark. What a great opportunity it would have been for him to perhaps say the opposite, that Usyk’s country would be boosted from this result. But no, Fury does Fury things. He would be lambasted on social media in the hours and days that followed, but the mainstream media, historically pro-Fury, decided it didn't warrant any criticism.
It was quite interesting to see Fury reduced to this sort of nonsense. It was reminiscent of what Usyk did to Anthony Joshua in their second fight, when he rendered another massive British heavyweight into an incoherent mess. Usyk, this “little middleweight” really knows how to discombobulate the big heavyweights.
End of an era
Ultimately, Usyk’s win has to be considered as one of the most important wins in the history of the heavyweight division.
That ninth round is one of the most important rounds in the history of the heavyweight division.
Usyk proved, once and for all, that skills, boxing ability and commitment to the sport are more important than size and weight. No longer will we hear what a "good big man" can do...
This era of the super-sized heavyweights simply has to be reframed now. If Usyk could do this to a -2000 Tyson Fury, you can only smile when you consider what Lennox Lewis, Ali, Holyfield, Holmes, Mike Tyson would have been capable of doing to the big man.
Fury has brought millions of new fans to the sport. He's produced some thrilling performances and made extraordinary riches in the process. He has achieved a rare popularity that transcends his sport. But never again can Fury be mentioned in the same breath as those great fighters of the past. Fury is a top-three heavyweight in his era. That's where the platitudes must end.
Reflecting on Tyson Fury’s legacy now brings up memories of Naseem Hamed’s career. Hamed burst on to the scene and was a huge fan favourite among the casuals, while some hardcore boxing fans held on to concerns about how he would do against a truly elite opponent. This has been similar in recent years when assessing Fury’s status among the greats. For every person who questioned Fury’s resume for a lack of genuine, top-tier opposition, there was someone else who would reduce this down to being a “hater”.
Marco Antonio Barrera was Hamed’s first truly elite opponent. A huge fan-favourite, Hamed was famous for absurd levels of self-confidence and making outrageous, off-colour comments. Unbeaten at the time, and surrounded by questions about his preparation, he started the biggest fight of his career as the odds-on favourite and he lost a 12-round decision, suffering moments of humiliation in the process.
Usyk was Fury’s first truly elite opponent. A huge fan-favourite, Fury is famous for absurd levels of self-confidence and making outrageous, off-colour comments. Unbeaten at the time, and surrounded by questions about his preparation, he started the biggest fight of his career as the odds-on favourite and he lost a 12-round decision, suffering moments of humiliation in the process.
Finally, if you still believe it is a truism that "a good big man always beats a good little man” then by extrapolation it must also be true that Fury was not that good (his words, not mine) after all.
Of course, he is a very decent heavyweight, no one would say otherwise, but there are levels to this sport and Fury’s level has for so long been exaggerated. Exaggerated in spite of the mounting evidence that has been building over the course of his post-Klitschko career.
I have followed heavyweight boxing for as long as I can remember. For me, this results feels like a crucially important and timely recalibration of the sport. Reframing what has gone before, and changing the trajectory of what lies ahead. In terms of my investment in this sport since I was a kid, this is the most important result I have experienced.
It was one of my favourite nights of boxing, possibly the best of the lot. I said from the get-go I thought Usyk could upset the odds and every day during fight week I felt it more and more. And while all the betting markets were moving in favour of Fury, I felt more and more confident that Usyk would not just win, but that he could actually force the stoppage.
I really do not want to see a rematch and while there are several reasons why it may not happen, it is likely we will see it in October. But for now, the result of this historical fight is a major bookmark, the perfect ending to this chapter of the sport. It’s history, it’s conclusive, it’s the right result, the best result.
It reminded me why I still love boxing.
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