WBC heavyweight titleholder Tyson Fury 34-0-1 (24) is exuding confidence five weeks out from his unification bout with WBA, WBO, IBF and Ring Magazine champion Oleksandr Usyk 21-0 (14) at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 18.
The fight was original scheduled to take place at the same venue on February 17 before Fury suffered a cut in sparring that forced the bout to be rescheduled.
After the initial disappointment of the postponement, Britain’s Fury, 35, got right back to work.
“At first I was a little depressed, for the first day or so, but afterwards, like all things in life, I realised God’s timing is impeccable, perfect,” Fury said. “It’s not late, it’s not early, it’s bang on time. It wasn’t my time to fight then, but it is going to be my time on May 18.
“I’m in fantastic shape. I’m having a fantastic training camp and have got a good team around me, everything is going to plan. I’m working very hard, I’ve got my dad (John Fury) in camp this time, so I’ve got my secret weapon. We’ve got a full circus camp, so can’t do any more really.”
The senior Fury is an interesting addition to the camp after he was critical of his son’s preparation for his last fight, a disputed 10-round split decision win over boxing debutant and former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou in October.
“Ngannou probably fought the worst version of Tyson I have ever seen, physically and mentally,” Fury said to GiveMeSport last year.
“Even in the dressing room, his face was a funny colour. I was watching him spar the week before and I wasn’t impressed. His lungs were all over the place during the week, I was taking notes of how hard he was breathing after rounds.
“It could be where we were at, but things weren’t improving. He had a terrible week, one of his worst ever, but he still did enough to win.”
He added: “If Tyson wasn’t able to go back to the old version of him in the later rounds, he was fucked.
“But he hadn’t been training to do that and he was instead trying to throw bombs. I saw it coming and I knew this would happen. What was he doing, trying to blow him away?
“He wasn’t giving it his full wit, his full concentration, and he thought it was going to be easy because people were telling him that.”
Ukrainian southpaw Usyk, 37, is a difficult riddle to solve. He wiped out every serious contender at cruiserweight on his route to becoming undisputed champion and has gone undefeated in five outings at heavyweight since jumping up a weight class five years ago.
But Fury isn’t worried by his opponent’s outstanding credentials.
“I think if I didn’t train at all for this camp, I just came in at like 25 stone and sank maybe 15 pints of Peroni beforehand, and the next day got in there, what is he going to do? Jab me around?” asked Fury, who is six inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than Usyk.
“Take nothing away, but he couldn’t do anything with Derek Chisora (who Usyk beat in a heavyweight fight in 2020). It was a 50-50 fight.”
Fury is taking the same attitude into the fight as he had when he boxed Usyk’s fellow Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko in Germany to win his first world title.
“I said if I can’t beat old Wlad, I must be useless, and I’ll say it again if I can’t beat Usyk, I’m no good clearly,” he said. “That’s your headline. If Tyson Fury can’t beat Usyk, Tyson’s no good, end of. But if I beat him, I beat another man, great, fantastic on to the next one.”
