Oleksandr Usyk has said that he knows he will fight Tyson Fury.
The Ukrainian is back between the ropes later this week.
The fight will be staged at the Jeddah Superdome in Saudi Arabia and comes 11 months after last September’s dethroning of British golden boy ‘AJ’ at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.
DAZN will broadcast the fight in over 190 territories, including the United States, Canada, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Poland, while Sky Sports Box Office has paid a staggering £23million to broadcast the fight in the UK & Ireland.
According to The Express, Usyk believes it is only a matter of time before he comes up against WBC champion Fury, who retired last week just days after claiming a deal had been agreed to fight in a trilogy clash with his old pal Derek Chisora and then went on to relinquish the Ring Magazine title that will be at stake between Usyk and Joshua this weekend. The Ukrainian responded to previous claims from Fury that he would “run away” from the 6ft 9in heavyweight by saying:
“I want to laugh every time I watch him and listen to him.
“He told me completely different things to my face but I am not going to tell you what he told me.”
Asked if he thought the pair would meet, Usyk nodded and added:
“I know we are fighting.”
Fury, 34, still holds the green and gold belt despite claiming to have hung up the gloves for good, with the WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman giving ‘The Gypsy King’ until August 26 to confirm his retirement in writing before considering the status of the title.
Per The Mirror, Dubai Eye 103.8 asked Fury ‘if Usyk would pose a greater threat than Wilder?’, to which he replied:
“You’ve got the most powerful in the history of our sport [Deontay Wilder], what’s Usyk going to do? Tip, tip, tip, tip, tip…”
Fury shared an enthralling trilogy with the aforementioned Wilder, but he’s convinced that he will get the better of Usyk if the pair do end up being pitted together, potentially for the undisputed crown in the sport’s premier division.
He added:
“[Usyk will] tap dance around the ring and run away. He didn’t do any damage at all to Anthony Joshua and definitely ain’t doing damage to me.
“I’ll obliterate him. He’s a cruiserweight. He’s a middleweight, a pumped-up middleweight!
“He was a middleweight in the amateurs, 75kg. I was a super-heavyweight at 11 years old.”