As much as it was a relief to get a new date for the postponed undisputed fight between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk, Bob Arum has been asked if it is too soon.
This historic undisputed clash was first slated for February 17 but a cut late in camp has delayed things. Fury’s injury was inflicted by a Croatian heavyweight last week and has since been stitched up and assessed and a new date set for May 18.
It will see Fury defend his WBC and Lineal heavyweight world titles against a technically astute southpaw and former Olympic medallist Oleksandr Usyk, who has admitted he has made huge sacrifices for this fight.
He currently holds the WBA, WBO and IBF belts he won off Anthony Joshua and has successfully defended against the same man as well as fellow Brit Daniel Dubious.
Fury’s last fight was one that concerned many as he was in poor form when taking on MMA start turned boxing movie Francis Ngannou, who managed to knock down the champion in the third round and push him hard over the full 10 before taking a points loss.
Fury’s US promoter and Top Rank CEO Arum has been asked about the cut and the new date in an interview with Fight Hub.
“It’s not that deep a cut, it only took 11 stitches. Usually if the cut’s real deep it’s 20 or 30 stitches so Tyson believes that it’ll take him a month and then he’ll be able to go back in sparring.”
He then compared it to how Fury recovered from an awful cut abasing Otto Wallin in 2019.
“I think that if the scar tissue is not going to affect him, he’ll probably take the chance, because look what happened with the Wallin fight, that was a deep deep cut and didn’t take him long to turn around and to fight Wilder.”
The boxing world is hoping that the cut heals and this fight finally goes ahead, with Fury himself confirming he has no plans to call it a day just yet.