Tyson Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk: The Fight Sight Preview
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 16: Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk face off during the Tyson Fury v Oleksandr Usyk Press Conference at Outernet London on November 16, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Well, the big one is finally here. Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury square off this weekend, bringing their heavyweight belts with them. For the first time since Lennox Lewis beat Evander Holyfield all the way back in 1999, we’ll have an undisputed heavyweight boxing champion of the world. There are stronger divisions, there may be better fighters. We’ve had quite a few superb fights in the last year or so, and we’ve got more on the horizon. But when it comes down to it, in the eyes of the world? The heavyweights, clashing to crown the heavyweight? This is the big one.
The story till now
The pair have taken rather different routes to get here. Tyson Fury, the big brash Englishman, turned professional at 20, in 2008, and spent several years learning his style and moving up the ranks.
He shocked the world by beating long-reigning champion Wladimir Kltischko in 2015, then spiralled into a period of depression, extreme weight gain and legal battles over negative drug tests. When he finally returned - to some surprise- in 2018, he took a couple of warm-up fights then leapt back into the fray with a trilogy of fights against the ferocious-punching Deontay Wilder. He emerged from that rivalry victorious, with one controversial draw and two dominant wins, and cemented his reputation as the number 1 heavyweight in the world all over again. Unfortunately, since then he’s been mostly messing around- two fights against domestic rivals he long ago proved he’s above, and what should have been a circus fight against MMA fighter Francis Ngannou that instead saw him look slow and awkward, hit the canvas, and get away with a controversial (though probably correct) decision.
While he’s been doing that, Usyk’s been moving. The Ukranian, like many boxers in former Soviet-bloc countries, took the amateur route into the sport- winning a heavyweight gold at the 2012 Olympics. It should be noted that heavyweight at amateur isn’t the direct equivalent of the pros, as superheavy is the upper limit- and when he did turn over in 2013, he operated as a cruiserweight.
He won his first world title in 2015, and by 2018, he’d unified the division, going on the road to beat a series of extremely good fighters in their own home countries and establishing his place as one of the very best fighters in the sport. Having done that, he moved up to look for new challenges at heavyweight, and won three of the belts on offer when he beat Anthony Joshua, twice, in 2021 and 2022 (the latter following a spell in Ukraine’s armed forces, defending against the Russian invasion early that year).
The pair have been circling each other for a while now, and were originally intended to fight in December. That got delayed, first by the shocking performance against Ngannou, then by a cut picked up in training just before a date in April, but here we finally are, and the best heavyweight of this generation will be decided this weekend.
So, who wins? Well, there’s a lot of variables on the table. Let’s get into it.
What Tyson Fury needs to do
The first thing to consider is which Tyson Fury will turn up. The obvious question is will he be in good shape, or as unfocused as he looked against Ngannou. The thing is, while that’s a very relevant question, it’s not very useful analytically- if he’s rubbish, he gets schooled. Not much more to say than that. He looks in terrific shape, so he probably won’t be- but with Tyson Fury it’s hard to really say.
But there’s also the question of how he’ll fight, aside from that. The ‘classic’ Tyson Fury, the one who won the title over Kltischko and ‘drew with’ (but totally outboxed) Wilder in their first fight, is a rangy outboxer, stance-switching and angle-changing and generally playing with range and position in very tricky ways. In the second two Wilder fights, he came out aggressive, heavy on the front foot, looking to use his weight and size to push Wilder around and keep him on the back foot. In his more recent fights. Against Whyte and Chisora, he was more measured, backing off a lot more than the two Wilder fights but still happy to sit in the pocket and load up on power shots.
The thing to bear in mind, though, is that while Fury has incredible technical breadth- he can do a lot- the depth isn’t there for quite a lot of those areas. His jab and outboxing movement are great- varied timing and positioning, a strong feel for how to change it up if an opponent starts to get a read. But in other phases, you start to see limitations, or errors start to be exposed. A Fury win, therefore, might depend on what decisions he makes as Usyk makes his own adjustments, and how quickly he realises if something he does goes catastrophically wrong..
It may come down to what he sees as more useful - his length advantage or his weight advantage. If it’s the first, then backing off will be more helpful - making Usyk press through as much distance as possible. The pure outboxer of the Kltischko fight probably isn’t on the cards, though- partly because he seems to just not want to be that boxer anymore, but partly because even for someone as good at it- and as big- as Fury, relying on just a jab and footwork to keep Usyk as bay and peck out a points victory seems a long shot.
So mixing in some solid intercepting shots would make sense. We saw some of that against Whyte and Chisora. Of course neither of those is close to as good as Usyk. But on the other hand we saw Mairis Briedis have a lot of success doing that against Usyk, and while he is probably technically better in that specific area than Fury, Usyk will be moving through a much bigger danger zone. It may be his best shot- throwing out his multi-purpose jab to keep Usyk occupied, then anticipate his movement as he comes in.
The weight advantage could be more risky for him. His preferred method of bringing that advantage to bear tends to be to get in close, clinch up and lean on his opponent, stiffling their movement and draining their energy. It normally works quite well, because he has a useful understanding of the clinch that gets him above most modern heavyweights. But it is quite limited- get his head in a controlling position, tie up one arm, and hit with the other if possible. Francis Ngannou, used to far more technical clinch-fighting from MMA, showed the limitations off that, able to take up positions that dragged Fury off-balance and prevented him bringing his weight to bear.
Usyk, of course, is no MMA fighter, and he’s also a lot smaller than Ngannou. But we did see him use similar tricks against Anthony Joshua, refusing to let him get his balance when in close and therefore winning the strength battle repeatedly against the much larger man. Fury is better than Joshua at that kind of thing- but he also tends to be more reliant on it, and he could find himself in trouble if Usyk can make it uncomfortable.
Ultimately, what Fury will probably need to do is a bit of everything. That’s because while Usyk’s gameplan is, on the surface, a lot more predictable than Fury’s, actually stopping him achieving it for any length of time is another thing entirely.
What does Oleksandr Usyk need to do?
So, what is it he does? Well, it’d be a mistake to call him a one-trick pony in any way- like Fury, he is also comfortable going backwards or forwards, and both at range and inside. The difference is that for Usyk, this is always built towards one goal. He’ll jab (excellently), move back, intercept his opponent’s movement if he has to - but what he is trying to do is get into position where he can emply his tight circling footwork in close, and start building combinations.
And it’s that footwork that will be key here. Fury can probably compete with him in the jab battle- he is after all much longer, and his own is excellent. He can probably match him at distance- that’s where his footwork is best. And while Usyk might have a technical advantage in the clinch, it’s a lot of size difference to overcome.
But the footwork and positioning in close? That’s where Usyk shines, and that’s where Fury might well be weakest. We’ve seen him get caught out, on multiple occasions. Ngannou knocked him down because, eating a counter left hook, he wasn’t set to either slip it or properly move with it and was taken off his feet. Wallin gave him problems repeatedly, cutting off his attempted angled exits with hooks of his own. Wilder, badly hurt himself, knocked him down because Fury walked at him with his head stiff straight down the middle instead of disguising the approach.
Wallin might be the most relevant of those- like Usyk, he is a southpaw, and as well as the stance it was some slick little turns in close that gave Fury problems. Usyk is, with all due respect, much better at that than Wallin. Fury will presumably have prepared for the style to some extent- he is not an idiot. You’d imagine he’ll have been practising both punches and positioning to stifle Usyk’s movement. Those intercepting shots we spoke about earlier will be key- if he can freeze Usyk in place for even a fraction of a second, he’ll have gone a long way to having time to react. But if those fail, he’s going to be vulnerable for a fairly long time until he resets back to a position he can defend in.
That will probably be the key, for Usyk. There are lots of crunchy technical details about Usyk’s baits, reads and reactions (check out Feño’s video for some insight on that), but the broad stroke that might define the fight is this: Fury is used to being the more agile guy in the ring. For the first time in his life, he’s not. He’s used to being the more technically complete, solid guy in the ring. For the first time in a long long time, he’s not. He’s used to having a stamina advantage, too - he’s not a huge volume guy, but his constant feints and twitchy movements keep opponents reacting and burning more energy than they’re used to. But Usyk moves far more than that for his own gameplan, and it’ll likely often be Fury that’s reacting. So, again, for the first time in his life: advantage the opponent.
So, to sum that up briefly: what Usyk will be doing is trying to drag Fury out of position enough to punish him as he recovers. If he can manage it, he’s well on his way to victory. If Fury can stifle his movement, he’ll find it hard.
A few other things to bear in mind
A lot is being made of Usyk’s reactions to bodyshots. While the Dubois controversy is a lot of palaver over nothing- it was a low blow- we have seen him in the past react most strongly to bodyshots. Nothing that really looked dangerous in the end, but he certainly seems more vulnerable there than upstairs. That will definitely be a part of Fury’s gameplan.
On the other side: the Fury cut. It’s not just that it really isn’t that long since the initial fight date was postponed because an errant elbow split his eyebrow open. It’s that it looks to be in a very similar place, if not identical, to the secondary cut he took under the massive gash Wallin gave him. It could just be a coincidence- that hadn’t troubled him in the intervening fights between Wallin and now- but it does suggest that that area may be weakened. Usyk will definitely at least look to test the theory, and if he can open something up, that may be his route to the stoppage.
Weights: as of this writing, we’ve just learned that Tyson Fury is coming in the lightest since 2019 - 262lbs - whereas Usyk is career heavy- 233.5, 12lbs over his previous highest weight. For both, that could be a mixed bag. Coming in light suggests Fury is focused- but that 2019 low (254, for the record), was against Wallin, where he did not perform well. For Usyk, of course, added weight means potentially more power and strength- but that’s a big leap, so has he gagued the effect on his stamina correctly? We can’t really make predictions based on either thing, but it’s something to bear in mind.
Tyson Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk: The Prediction
Okay, let’s take the plunge. I don’t really want to, because this fight is so tightly balanced with so many unknowns on Fury’s side that it’s hard to know. But, honestly, it’s partly because of all those unknowns that I’m going to come down on Usyk’s side. Too many things in Fury’s column could be taking him away from, rather than towards, his best chance of victory. Usyk knows what he has to do, and how to do it: Fury might, but he might have to invent new gameplans on the fly. The sensible choice would be Usyk by decision, but hey ho, let’s put it out there- that cut is not fully healed, and Oleksandr Usyk will exploit it to the max for a late-rounds stoppage.