WBA, WBO, IBF and Ring Magazine heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk 21-0 (14) simply shrugged and got on with business when the bad news came in.
The 37-year-old Ukrainian southpaw was two weeks out from his four-belt unification bout with WBC titleholder Tyson Fury 34-0-1 (24) when the 35-year-old Brit was forced to withdraw from their February 17 bout in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia after suffering a cut eye in sparring.
The bout has now been rescheduled for May 18.
Fury has repeatedly tried to get into Usyk’s head with insults and taunts, but the mild mannered champion has remained as unflappable as always.
In fact, Usyk appears to be trying to kill Fury with kindness.
“Why? Because it’s the man who has my fourth belt. It’s the man who helped me become famous a lot. Because we, all people, must love friends, [people who are] not friends, acquaintances, all people. It’s great when you are polite, not dirty,” Usyk said.
There was never any doubt that the fight would be rescheduled with the amount of money on the table from the Saudi backers. But more than that, says Usyk, he didn’t want to waste what had been such a successful training camp.
“I just looked back at all the work I’ve done – getting up early, jogging, swimming, sparring, the amount of all it, and I thought to myself: ‘Wow, that’s some good work I did.’ Then I thought of how much more training I will do and how much good work I will do,” Usyk said.
“So when, with God’s help, I will finish all this work, I’ll be able to box three Tyson Furys. We can do it simultaneously or one by one on Saturday, Sunday and then Monday.”
Usyk’s promoter Alexander Krassyuk has questioned the veracity of the sparring video that has been released that purportedly shows Croatian sparring partner Agron Smakici 20-2 (18) cutting Fury with an errant elbow to the head head.
“I did see this video,” Krassyuk told Boxing News. “It’s not a convincing video, together with the picture of Tyson that he is in good shape. Very slim. People find this picture to be made three years ago. I did not explore it myself. But that’s what people said to me on Instagram.
“There’s another picture with him and [promoter] Dmitry Salita in the ring, same underwear. But who knows? Maybe Tyson has been wearing his underwear for three or four years. You never know.
“The fact is that you cannot trust this video. And the video itself does not prove anything. The picture of the cut, yeah, it shows us the fact. The cut is severe. But getting punched in a gear by an uppercut and get cut? No way. There is an elbow. But how the hell can an elbow get inside after an uppercut? What should be done? And when someone is screaming — why would they scream? Did they see blood? Okay, if they saw the blood, why wouldn’t the blood appear on the gloves when he was wiping his eye?
“Too many questions. This video is not convincing. The convincing thing is the medical report and the statement that he got cut.”
Usyk is not getting drawn into the debate.
“What will change if I watch a video and start shouting ‘it’s fake’ or ‘it’s not fake?’ Nothing will change. What happened – happened. Being nervous because of that means only wasting your own energy,” Usyk said.
“Is it serious or not? Does he want to box or not? He says he wants to become an undisputed [champion] but he doesn’t take some of his training seriously enough. In general, I don’t want to judge Tyson Fury, I’m just trying to say that it happens sometimes – what people plan, sometimes, doesn’t correlate with our Lord’s plans.”
