When promoters toss out the idea that Oleksandr Usyk-Tyson Fury II will be a better fight than their first matchup, you should raise an eyebrow.
The first fight was spectacular and would be difficult to top under any circumstance. Usyk is 37 and into his sixth year of taking punches from men significantly bigger than he is. Fury is 35 and has exposed his body to various extreme weight gains and cuts, along with Deontay Wilder’s flush right hand.
If you’re a fan and not a promoter, approaching Usyk-Fury II with caution rather than pure hype is a better tactic.
Though age operates at a steady pace, its effects do not. We never know quite how far any fighter stands from the cliff of their athletic abilities, even operators as skilled as Fury and Usyk. And we are only aware of the punishment a fighter takes in the most public rings – how hard and often they are struck in sparring remains a question mark.
Josh Taylor is 33 years old. In his 18th professional fight, he beat Jose Ramirez in 2021 to obtain the undisputed junior welterweight championship. Just three years later, he looked stiff and slow in the ring in his rematch with Jack Catterall, a tin man who was beyond the help of an oil can. Was it the weight cut? The years of alcohol and drug consumption taking their toll? Was he just old?
Then you have Erislandy Lara, who remains a world titleholder at 41.
Or look to the heavyweights: Through the end of 2022, Deontay Wilder appeared close enough to the peak of his powers. Getting stopped by Fury the second time didn’t stop him from wiping away Robert Helenius with an almost invisible right hand. But then Wilder looked shot against Joseph Parker and worse against Zhilei Zhang. Wilder clobbering Helenius sure didn’t seem like an indication that his end was coming, but there it was.
Anthony Joshua, though “only” 34, may be shot, too. He looked better and better through wins over Jermaine Franklin, Helenius, Otto Wallin and Francis Ngannou. Suddenly he was a shell of himself against Daniel Dubois, even before eating the enormous right hand that hastened his demise at the end of round one. How he’ll look next time out is anyone’s guess.
Age is a sneaky antagonist. Knowing it’s there doesn’t mean you know when it’ll grab hold of you. It comes for different people at different times. Some seem curiously immune until, all at once, they are as susceptible as everyone else. Boxing, which adds the element of constant head trauma, accelerates and complicates the equation. Take no fighter for granted.
Fury and Usyk have remained fully elite through their most recent fight (besides Fury’s tussle with Francis Ngannou, anyway), but that could change at any moment.
In their first fight, both men looked like the best versions of themselves in just about every area, with one notable exception: Fury’s punch resistance.
I was surprised when I saw on Reddit (perhaps not the best place to review boxing opinions) that a number of fans had dismissed the idea of Usyk’s devastating salvo in the ninth round further weakening Fury’s chin. This was the first time Fury had lost his legs so badly; Usyk landing clean left hands on Fury while the Gypsy King’s eyes were rolling back in his head on top of that certainly couldn’t have had any positive impact on him.
In the rematch, I think it’s entirely possible that Fury will be wobbled earlier and by a less vicious punch than what damaged him in the ninth round in May.
Usyk’s condition isn’t a given either. Though he won the first fight, he took more of a beating than he has in any of his other heavyweight fights, maybe more than in any of his professional fights, period.
“Word on the street is that Usyk has been dropped badly in sparring – at least twice – but sparring is sparring,” Adam Noble-Forcey wrote on BoxingScene before the first fight. Again, sparring: a side of boxing no less damaging despite its invisibility to the fans. How much damage did Usyk take in this training camp? Is he still ahead of the punch that will send him into steep decline, or has Fury thrown that punch already? Has a sparring partner?
Hoping for a better fight in the rematch isn’t completely unrealistic, but hoping for better-conditioned versions of either fighter may be. Usyk can do a better job evading uppercuts; Fury can protect his chin more effectively from distance. But it is hard to imagine better punch resistance or gas tanks in the rematch.
Ideally, Usyk and Fury are roughly on pace with each other in their declines. Fury’s younger age might have been canceled out by the effects of repeated cocaine use and weight fluctuation, plus a half-dozen clean Wilder right hands – or something like that.
But one fighter could suddenly prove shot. Both could. Adjust your expectations and standards accordingly. If Fury can no longer take a punch, given the furious shots he’s absorbed over the past several years, we can hardly be surprised. If Usyk’s extraordinary stamina is gone, let it be proof that heavyweight boxers are not meant to dance as well as he does into the shadow of their fourth decade.
We can still criticize – both fighters now know what to expect from the other and should be able to neutralize what gave them trouble in the first fight. If Usyk rushes forward in a straight line after the opening bell and gets iced by an uppercut, I will not be arguing that he should be spared from any negative feedback (though I will worry about his well-being).
But we shouldn’t be willfully ignorant of the possibility that one or both fighters might be a shadow of themselves this time around. All the fighters can do is show up on December 21 with everything they have left.
I suspect that Fury will receive the sharper rebukes if he is shot; by all accounts Usyk lives like a monk while Fury, well, dabbles in extracurricular pleasures. Getting thrown out of a pub after his first fight with Usyk does not bode well for his conditioning. Still, Fury’s loose living hasn’t stopped him from authoring and winning a dramatic trilogy with Wilder, or surviving the mother of all cuts against Wallin, or starting a new rivalry with Usyk. Though it hasn’t always felt this way, he’s served boxing well.
As for Fury’s rematch with Usyk, I’ll hope that both fighters are still in possession of the qualities that made them special for their rematch. But I’ll do so while making peace with the possibility that they’ve lost those qualities. Watching fighters decline, really, is a small price to pay for years of watching them excel. Even if Usyk-Fury II rivals Shakur Stevenson-Edwin De Los Santos in lack of entertainment value, it’s not the end of the world for us viewers. The difficult thing is experiencing the decline yourself.
