Fury vs Usyk is OFF following Tyson Fury’s ‘Bad Day at the Office’

Tyson Fury finds himself in the same predicament today as James J. Jeffries in 1910. Following his hollow performance against Jack Johnson in the “Fight of the Century,” sportswriters came down hard on the Boilermaker. The most vituperative were those that had written that Jeffries was a sure thing. They felt as if they had been cuckolded.

To be sure, that’s an awkward comparison. Jeffries likely didn’t win a round against Jack Johnson (there were no judges) until he was knocked down for the count in the fifteenth stanza, whereas Tyson Fury landed more punches than Francis Ngannou according to the punch stats and indisputably won more than a few rounds.

Two prominent boxing web sites, Boxing Scene and Bad Left Hook, kept a running score, the tally a consensus by Boxing Scene contributors and the other one man’s opinion, that of BLH round-by-round summarizer Scott Christ. Both gave Fury seven rounds, scoring the fight 96-93 for the Gypsy King. It’s worth noting, however, that these tallies were taken from the TV feed. The TV commentators, both American (ESPN+) and British (DAZN), were biased in favor of Fury, so say many, and while we personally have no quibble with the decision, we wouldn’t disagree.

Ringsiders in Riyadh appear to have been evenly split. One of the more measured reactions was that of the prominent British scribe Donald McRae. “I thought Ngannou won the fight.” he wrote, “but I have seen far worse decisions in boxing.”

McRae thought that Fury may have had too many distractions. “Perhaps spending too much time making family documentaries for Netflix and counting the hundreds of millions of dollars he will make from his liaison with the Saudis has robbed Fury of the grit and hunger all great fighters need….”

Fury’s promoter Frank Warren dissents. “That wasn’t [the real] Tyson Fury in there,” he says, attributing Fury’s performance to “a bad day at the office.”

In September, as Fury was preparing for Francis Ngannou, he signed to meet Oleksandr Usyk. The date was meant to be a secret, but it leaked out that the match between the two heavyweight kingpins would take place two days before Christmas in Riyadh. That fight is now off. In light of his showing on Saturday, the turnaround was too fast for the Gypsy King. But the fight will still come off, insists Warren, likely in late January or February.

Frank Warren’s arch-rival Eddie Hearn was in Cancun, Mexico last night for the WBC super featherweight title fight between O’Shaquie Foster and Rocky Hernandez (a Fight of the Year candidate), but had one eye cocked on a TV screen tuned to the event in Riyadh. “Tyson Fury,” gloated Hearn, “looked like he never boxed before…Ngannou won that fight.”

Some of those bleating the loudest on social media, were likely among the few that tossed a few quid on the underdog. When Ngannou knocked Fury to the canvas in round three, they would have been counting their money, a very juicy return on their investment. When the scores were announced, it was akin to Lucy pulling the football out from Linus in the “Peanuts” comic strip. We’ve been there before. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. Aaugh!

Fury vs Usyk, when it happens, will yield the first undisputed heavyweight champion in the four-belt era. In the meantime, Tyson Fury will likely announce his retirement and obtuse content-providers will take him at his word. The Gypsy King is such a big star in Great Britain that his every utterance is deemed newsworthy.

A final note: Although Fury vs Ngannou was rather fallow, the promotion succeeded wildly as a spectacle. No one does sportswashing quite so well as the Saudis.

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