Usyk v Fury 2: The Preview

Usyk v Fury 2: The Preview

GuyWhoLikesSport

It’s finally here.

It appears to be real.

It is spectacular.

Tyson Fury v Oleksandr Usyk II, Sunday morning Australian time.

Merry Christmas.

Even though this one is inexplicably not for the undisputed heavyweight title like the first one was, this one feels like a bigger fight to me.

Maybe it’s because the Saudis are shitting all over everyone else’s promotional chops.

Maybe it’s Usyk showing up as Agent 47 from Hitman to the presser.

Or maybe it’s just because of of how brilliant the first fight was, and how brilliant the two thinkers inside that squared circle are.

Whatever it is, I can’t wait.

Let’s get into it.

Upon a rewatch of the first fight, it can be broken into three distinct phases.

Phase 1: Feeling Out – Rounds 1 and 2

Fury started the fight jabbing and moving, different to how he fought Wilder the second and third time and how he fought Dillian Whyte and Derek Chisora.

It was more of the Fury from the first Wilder fight, who wowed everyone with his movement of both head and foot for a big man.

He was on his toes moving around, feinting and peppering his jab to good effect.

The key thing here was that he ceded the centre of the ring to Usyk. It was a fight of one man, Usyk, putting on unrelenting pressure, and the other man working off the leader.

We also saw Usyk’s key punch, which was that off centre left hand that he throws as a southpaw.

His head went outside of Fury’s hitting range, while his left hand hit Fury’s stomach early and chin later.

https://x.com/SteveBoxman/status/1849056911695434040

Neither fighter dominated the first phase of the fight, though Usyk’s instant understanding of distance was something to behold.

Phase 2: Fury Feasts – Rounds 3 to 6

While the fight retained its initial comportment, with Usyk moving forward and Fury moving backward, Fury kept his jab flicking out and had some success.

Fury’s tactical brilliance was on display with the way he threw his jabs in this fight. He always threw them from around his waist and basically left his right to do the defensive work.

That meant that Usyk, whose reflexes are still insane even at his age, couldn’t see the jab coming until late.

In this phase we also saw Fury’s key punch, the right uppercut to the head and body.

Like the jab this was also kind of a hidden shot, and the ones to the body seemed to affect Usyk.

However punching Usyk in the head is like punching Mickey in Snatch, it just makes him stronger.

While Fury had some success with his jab, both men’s rear hands were the decisive punches.

Phase 3: Usyk’s Uprising – Rounds 7 to 12

This was the decisive phase in the fight.

It started in round seven as the fight started swinging from Fury to Usyk.

After a lot of activity from Fury in the previous three rounds, he started to fatigue.

You could see it in Fury’s right hand dropping defensively, which led to Usyk’s left hand making itself at home on Fury’s chin time and again.

Due to the fatigue, Fury also abandoned his jab and started to let Usyk control the geography of the fight.

Usyk started to get his angles game going, as he stepped outside of Fury’s lead food again and again to land his off-centre left hand.

Then, in rounds eight through 12, Usyk started pouring it on.

Defensively he neutered Fury’s uppercut with positioning and movement away from the right hand in the first instance, then dipping inside the uppercut when he was there to be hit (a 180 change in his dip angle).

https://x.com/TypewritingDA/status/1852720565716435333

Offensively, he was fresher than Fury. He was able to counter every Fury potshot with a combination, which usually landed on the chin because of Fury’s constant lapses in defensive responsibility.

This was also the phase when the biggest punch of the night happened, and where Fury was again saved by the ref and the ropes

Every time Usyk landed that left hand Fury was like Steve Carell in Crazy Stupid Love when he finds out his wife was having an affair.

He was surprised but he shouldn’t have been.

What does it all mean?

If Fury tries to box Usyk, he’s going to lose again and probably worse.

Usyk is the best in-ring thinker since Floyd Mayweather Jr and always has a one more adjustment than his opponent, like his movement to get away from the uppercut in the first fight for instance.

Usyk boxes like a Rubik’s Cube that makes a move every time you make a move then after a while it just blows up.

He is impossible to solve, and he will eventually hurt you.

Usyk is also one of the best momentum fighters I have ever seen, maybe since Manny Pacquaio.

I mean that in both a macro and a micro sense.

In a micro sense he’s a brilliant combination puncher, even if it’s mostly 1-2 or 1-1-2 combinations.

He varies speed, tempo, angles and power so brilliantly that it’s impossible to know what’s coming.

In a macro sense, Usyk always finishes fights strong.

He has come home with a wet sail the whole way through his career, almost always winning the later rounds in fights partly because of his superior fitness and partly because of his adjustments.

Boxing with him is an invitation to let him do that.

However, Fury has a possible adjustment that Usyk doesn’t.

Fury, at 6’9 is the taller and heavier man than Usyk.

Fury can use that height and weight like he has in his recent career, to fight moving forward and to lean on opponents in the clinch.

Tire them out not with movement, but instead with this huge and tall man leaning on you and unloading on the way in and out.

That’s basically been how he has fought since the second Wilder fight, if you hear him describe it, he boxes like an 18-wheeler running opponents’ over.

In the first fight, Fury used the clinch sparingly and in the back half of the fight only to save energy for himself.

He could try and employ those 18-wheeler tactics against Usyk and totally flip the comportment of the fight.

There are three issues with that.

The first is that, because of Usyk’s outrageous movement, he’s going to be hard to find and sit on.

If Fury plans on coming in heavy for this fight and employing this tactic, I think that’s a mistake because it’ll just make it harder to chase Usyk around.

You’re going to be bigger anyway, don’t overcapitalise.

The second is that Usyk is a brilliant counterpuncher when Fury does find him, and Fury has shown he can’t just walk through Usyk’s power on his way in.

The third, and this is the most important, is that while Fury is bigger Usyk is clearly better in the clinch.

Usyk’s body strength is like a Greco-Roman wrestler’s and Fury couldn’t weigh him down the first time.

He can also get out of the clinches quickly and launch attacks.

In the fifth round, while Fury was still trying to clinch as an attacking move, he tried to lean on Usyk.

Usyk was too quick, spun out of it, and had his left hand cocked and ready for action. Nothing was thrown, but it was an indication of Usyk’s skills.

I suspect that experience turned Fury off doing it for the rest of the fight and might have an impact on the second one.

Prediction

Don Draper famously said “if don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

Fury is the one who can change the conversation most significantly, but even if it does, I don’t think he’ll like what anyone is saying regardless.

Usyk by UD.