WBC heavyweight titleholder Tyson Fury 33-0-1 (24) says his focus remains on boxing debutant and former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou and not WBA, WBO, IBF and Ring Magazine champion Oleksandr Usyk 21-0 (14).
Fury is set to face Ngannou in a 10-round non-title bout in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Saturday night. It will be Fury’s first outing since his 10th round knockout of gatekeeper Derek Chisora 34-13 (23) in Tottenham last December.
It was announced late last month that Britain’s Fury, 35, would face 36-year-old Ukrainian southpaw and former undisputed cruiserweight champion Usyk after the Ngannou bout on a date to be determined.
“A lot of people are on about this undisputed fight [against Usyk], fantastic. But I have a much more dangerous person to deal with on [October 28] than I do after for the undisputed fight, I believe,” Fury told Mike Coppinger of ESPN.
“Because Francis is a bigger man, stronger, more powerful and has knockout capability. As we’ve seen with Oleksandr Usyk, he doesn’t really do much damage to people he hits. So you could probably let Usyk punch you all about the head and he’ll give you a black eye. If you let Ngannou punch you all about the head, he’s probably going to rattle your brain for you.
“He won’t do anything that I’ve not seen before. I’ve sparred with a lot of kickboxers and MMA fighters over the years. They’re all strong and tough guys and they all can take a good beating usually.
“So I’m expecting him to be fit and strong and motivated. He’s getting an awful lot of money to be here and fight, so I’m sure he is going to have a good game plan and I’m sure he is going to try and execute it.”
In a separate interview Fury accused Usyk – who is expected to be ringside for for the bout – of trying to steal his shine.
“I say this, fuck Usyk. It’s not about him. This is the Tyson Fury show. It’s about me and Francis Ngannou,” Fury told The Daily Mail.
“The African King is meeting the Gypsy King and you know, we are throwing it down. So, anything that happens after that, happens after that and anything before that, is not important.”
Fury’s co-promoter Frank Warren has said that the announcement of the Usyk fight should have been kept in mothballs until after he Ngannou bout, but circumstances outside of his control forced his hand.
“The reason it’s been announced was because the contracts had to be lodged with the governing bodies, especially the IBF, before they – because they may have announced that [Filip] Hrgovic was going to fight [Usyk], was going to order that fight between him and Usyk,” the Queensberry Promotions boss explained to TNT Sports at the time.
“So we had to get our contracts in because under their regulations they allow for unification fights. They take priority [over mandatory title defences].
“And we knew that once we put those contracts in that it would leak and somebody else would be saying it’s on, so we had to take the bull by the horns.
“In an ideal world, I wouldn’t like to have said it was signed. I would’ve liked to have done that after the fight [with Ngannou], provided Tyson does the business. That’s how we’d like to have done it.”
