One of the big questions some people are asking heading into the massive four-belt heavyweight unification showdown between rival champions Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk is, will the cut Fury suffered in sparring reopen during battle? As fans know, Fury was forced to postpone the fight back in February, this after he was caught by an elbow in sparring, with Fury suffering a cut that required 11 stitches.
Fury suffered a worse injury in the same place in his fight with Otto Wallin, and now, veteran cutwoman Sammy Morris – who has worked in boxing, MMA and bare-knuckle fighting attending to cuts for a decade – says she think there is a good chance the cut will reopen in the Usyk fight.
“If he did that five years ago [in the Otto Wallin fight] and the wound has come open again five years later in exactly the same place then it hasn’t healed properly and now it’s a double wound site,” Morris said when speaking to Talk Sport. “He’s been cut and cut again in the same place. It just goes to show that after five years it hasn’t knitted back together. Even by coming back in 100 days, which is the basic recommendation of when you should fight again after a cut is meant to have healed, he runs the risk of it reopening against Usyk. You would have thought that after five years that it wouldn’t come back open but obviously it has. With age, your skin loses elasticity and the collagen underneath it, so it become much easier for you to get cut. And I personally think it [the cut] will come open in his next fight.”
It would of course be a real shame if the outcome of the May 18 fight between Fury and Usyk was decided by a cut eye. But the fact that Fury is going into the fight just 90 days or so after being cut is worrying to some people, Morris included. The cut Fury suffered against Wallin did not reopen in any of his fights after that one, only in the sparring session of earlier this year, and from an elbow. Maybe then, the wound will not reopen in the Usyk fight? We just don’t know.
Another question fans are asking going into this fight is, has Fury aged, and have his legs “gone?” Has Usyk, on the other hand, aged better than Fury? Have those two wars with Deontay Wilder (fights I and III) taken a toll on Fury? Fury does look to have whipped himself into great physical condition, this with a few weeks still to go until fight night. But is Fury still the same fighter he once was?