The cut that Tyson Fury received during sparring has already played a significant role in the Fury-Usyk saga by delaying the undisputed heavyweight title affair by three months, and now Fury’s manager has pointed the finger and blamed the cut on a fighter who was not directly involved in the incident.
Croatia’s Agron Smakici is confirmed as the man who dealt Fury with the gash, reacting after a practical joke was played by ‘The Gypsy King’ and bringing about huge concern as to whether the hotly-anticipated showdown would even go ahead.
This came just weeks after rumours that Fury was dropped in sparring by Australian cruiserweight Jai Opetaia, who left the camp after suspiciously sparring just five rounds with the WBC champion.
Speaking to OLBG, Fury’s manager Spencer Brown claimed that Opetaia’s decision to leave the camp forced Fury and his team to bring in new sparring partners, who were slightly rougher than planed and admitted that the Briton has had to be careful with sparring in his second fight camp ahead of his match-up with Usyk.
“I watched every minute of that spar between Jai and Tyson, it was all b******t that Tyson got chinned, I think Jai was a bit shocked at how good Tyson was. The simple fact was, he went home because he didn’t have any more sparring partners for himself.
“Tyson said to him ‘thank you for coming for sparring, if you need to go home, don’t worry about it’ – and then maybe that was the catalyst for Tyson’s cut, because we had to bring new sparring partners in and it got a bit rough.
“Is this a very happy camp? Yes. Has everybody got a buzz about them? Yes. What I’ve seen is a very happy feeling, Tyson’s in great nick, obviously we’ve had to be careful because we can’t have the cut opening up, so it’s been an extra careful camp if you know what I mean. Everybody is being extra careful.
“When you’ve got a good racehorse, you don’t have to train it so hard, John Fury always says it’s easy to train a good racehorse, because as long as they eat, as long as they drink and they do their bit of training, they’re still the greatest.
“Muhammad Ali used to run with an old pair of boots on, three or four miles a day. He didn’t do hundreds of rounds of sparring. He used to do his six rounds and that’s it, you can over do it. But he was always in good nick.”
Fury will take on Oleksandr Usyk on Saturday night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia live on DAZN PPV, TNT Sports Box Office and Sky Sports Box Office.
Meanwhile, Opetaia will attempt to reclaim his IBF cruiserweight title in a rematch with Mairis Briedis, seeking to go one better than their first encounter and knock the Latvian out.
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