Champion Dillian Whyte came up with ‘The Gypsy King’ Tyson Fury’s winning strategy to dethrone joint heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk on December 21.
According to Whyte, Fury’s strategy for beating Usyk is consistent with using the roughhouse tactics he used to defeat former cruiserweight champion Steve Cunningham 11 years ago in 2013. In that fight, who was 25 years old at the time. Fury does a lot of catching, leaning, and throwing the gun.
Dirty Tricks Won’t Work
For the highlight reel, Fury grabbed Cunningham with his left arm, pinned him against the ropes and nailed him with his right hand. The referee should NOT stop the fight because that was illegal and obvious.
“Usyk was showing some things in the fight where he was only shown to novices. He has never been seen by professional players,” said Dillian Whyte on the talkSport Boxing channel, revealing that he knows little about Oleksandr Usyk’s career and the way he fights.
“I still think Fury can beat him. He is a very big man and has a size advantage. You need to fight him like you fought Steve Cunningham. That way you need to fight Usyk. Get dirty and have fun,” Whyte said.
Dillian fails to mention that Cunningham was there on top of the hillhaving lost three of his last four battles going into battle with Fury. In other words, Cunningham was nowhere near Usyk’s level and fought a poor fight, allowing Fury to hold and lean on him all night rather than push him hard so he wouldn’t use his weight to wear him down. Usyk didn’t let Fury take advantage of his lean.
When Tyson tried to grab, Usyk pushed him away, sending the giant back. You could see from those shoves that Syk was stronger than him, which is strange because he was very light.
Anger has a weak surface power. His weight is concentrated in the middle and his legs are like a basketball player. In terms of upper body strength, Fury has light weight strength, not super strength. Artur Beterbiev is a bigger puncher than Fury, and he’s fighting at 175.
The basic problem Fury has with using the game plan he used against Cunningham on the hill is that Usyk doesn’t allow him to hold and lean. Furthermore, it’s unlikely that Fury could use an illegal forehand to hold Usyk still and taunt him with a right hand.
That strategy won’t work for Usyk because he won’t be fighting on the ropes like Cunningham did stupidly in their fight on April 20, 2013.
Age of Fury shows
Another problem facing Fury is that he is much older than when he fought Cunningham. That fight took place BEFORE Fury fought Wladimir Klitschko; he was light on his feet back. He was a completely different fighter than the old, 50-year-old heavyweight he is today.
The years have been hard on Fury, and he is aging fast. Some people age slowly, but in Fury’s case, he’s nowhere near the person he was in his mid-20s. As such, the game plan Whyte would like to use against Usyk is not physically possible.
A technique that would have had a chance of working if Usyk stood with his back to the ropes allowing Fury to catch him and set him up for a right hand. That won’t happen.
Fury’s best chance for victory is to stay in the center of the ring and try to nail Usyk with an uppercut to the head or a body shot. It is known that Usyk’s kryptonite affects the body. We saw that in his fight with Daniel Dubois when Usyk was dropped by a body shot in the fifth round of their fight on August 26, 2023.
The referee said it was a low blow, but replays showed it was on the belt. If Fury wants to win, he needs to focus on getting to the body, not trying to arm-arm Usyk illegally and slam him with his free hand like he did to Cunningham.
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