Promoter Eddie Hearn says he had last Saturday’s Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk 2 rematch scored as a draw in Riyadh. He says that everyone on his row at the Kingdom Arena, consisting of Fury’s promoters, Frank Warren and Bob Arum, had Fury winning. It’s unclear why Hearn would bother to point that out to justify why he felt Tyson deserved a draw.
Did Fury Deserve a Draw?
Unified heavyweight champion Usyk (23-0, 12 KOs) won by a 12-round unanimous decision with scores of 116-112, 116-112, and 116-112. Fury (34-2-1, 24 KOs) couldn’t muster up much offense in any round and was frequently missing with his attempts to land his bread-and-butter punch, the right uppercut.
It didn’t help that Fury came into the rematch with a late Elvis paunch, and wearing his trunks, he hiked up to his ribcage in an attempt to cover his battle of the bulge. He looked in woeful shape for an athlete going into an important fight.
“I couldn’t split them. I thought the fight was a draw. I had Fury going up into. I scored the last round [12th] for Usyk. I thought so many close rounds, and I do want to see it back,” said Eddie Hearn to DAZN Boxing, reacting to Oleksandr Usyk’s victory over Tyson Fury in their rematch last Saturday night at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh.
“[Promoter] Frank [Warren] was right. Most of the people on our row [at ringside] did have it for Tyson Fury, but one was Frank Warren, and one was Bob Arum, his promoter. I think Oscar De La Hoya felt that same. I really struggled to split them. It was more of a chess match tonight.
“Usyk did dominate more in the second half of the fight like we said he would, but I had it very close,” said Hearn.
Fury Looked Obese
It’s good for the fans that Hearn didn’t judge the Fury-Usyk 2 rematch. If he had, there would have been a massive uproar if he had scored it as a 12-round draw. Fury did not look like he came anywhere close to getting a draw.
The ‘Gypsy King’ Fury looked out of shape and unable to press the attract against Usyk. He wasn’t following the instructions from his trainer, SugarHill Steward, in the corner, who was telling him not to allow Usyk to back him up. Fury would nod in agreement but then immediately get backed up by Oleksandr when the rounds would start.
What gave Fury the problems were the shots to the midsection. He didn’t like getting hit by the breadbasket, which looked like it was full of groceries from his 6,000-calorie-a-day diet. Looking at Fury’s belly, he may have been eating a lot more than that, stuffing rich, calorie-dense foods down his piehole and not taking off the weight during his three-month camp.
Tyson claimed he’d stopped talking to his family for three months to focus on training, but how on earth could he look as fat as he was after three months? Put him in an 11-week boot camp in the U.S. with diet rations, and he’d have come into the Usyk rematch looking like the 247-lb fighting machine that had beaten Wladimir Klitschko on November 28, 2015. Put Fury on remedial PT, running six miles in the morning, noon, and night along with a 3,000-calorie diet, and that would have fallen off of him.
“Any time Fury did get something started, and he made the needed adjustments. We wanted Fury to fight like a big man,” said commentator Sergio Mora. “We wanted him to hit the body. He was going for the uppercuts. I was telling Eddie, ‘He was this close to landing the George Foreman-Michael Moorer lightning in the bottle shot against the chin.’
Sergio is right. Whenever Fury would land ANYTHING, Usyk would come back with three or four shots to the head and belly of the Gypsy King. How could Hearn and all the wealthy people sitting on his row at ringside not see that?
“Usyk was almost there, but he would make the adjustment to not get hit anytime Fury was demanding respect and getting the punches in. Usyk took it right back. It was a close fight, but I think it was still a fight where there was a clear winner and that was Usyk,” said Mora.
