Carl Froch has little sympathy for Tyson Fury after a cut in sparring forced him to postpone his undisputed heavyweight world title fight with Oleksandr Usyk.
‘The Gypsy King’ shared the news just over two weeks out, and Froch, speaking on his YouTube channel, said ‘I told you so’ after questioning the fight date’s legitimacy all the way back in December, albeit for different reasons.
“Tyson Fury’s gone and got himself a stupid cut. It’s the same mark where the Otto Wallin [cut was.] He got cut in sparring two weeks before the biggest fight of his life. This is the undisputed heavyweight title fight that we’ve been waiting for.”
“I am gonna say it – I told you so. I didn’t think the fight was gonna happen, now the fight’s not happening. PEople are gonna say ‘hold on a minute because he’s cut, he’s not made an excuse,’ okay, fair enough that’s warranted. I’m still yet to see this cut, I want to see a fresh interview until I’m 100% convinced.”
Following the video’s upload, Fury was indeed seen in interviews with his fresh stitches.
Froch went on to discuss the sparring incident that caused the cut, believed to be a rogue elbow from Croatian heavyweight Agron Smakici.
“I’ve seen the dodgy clip of the left elbow going in. Don’t know why the guy’s throwing an elbow in a spar, but when I say I told you so I’m not gonna go back on that … Injuries can happen, but they shouldn’t really happen in a fight of this magnitude when there’s so much on the line.
Tyson Fury is in there sparring, the guy was shorter than him and he’s having a ruckus with him. He should be, especially two weeks out, keeping his sparring partners at distance, on the end of the jab, boxing at range and movement. As soon as he comes in close, tie him up. From the clips I’ve seen Fury was having a push around, he wasn’t looking sharp, he was looking sloppy … I don’t think there’s any excuse for him to get cut. You say it happens. It never happened to me. Didn’t happen that often to a lot of top world champions.”
Froch then said Fury should have been wearing a face guard along with his open headguard, and ultimately blames the Brit and his team for ‘not taking that precaution.’ He ended the segment by saying he was ‘devastated’ for all involved and that it was a bad day for boxing in general.