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Tyson Fury And Oleksandr Usyk Play Mind Games Ahead Of Showdown

Written by Kristan Caryl on 16th May 2024.

Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk

As we approach the final hours before their undisputed fight, Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury have begun playing mind games with one another and new clips of them both on the pads suggest they are each trying to throw the other into confusion.

This is the first time in the four-belt era that all four of the world titles will be on the line in one fight. The last time the heavyweight divisions saw an undisputed champion was back in 1999 when Lennox Lewis held the honour.

Fury and Usyk are both undefeated fighters with great technical skills. Usyk is the naturally smaller man who has come up from being an undisputed cruiserweight king and has so far looked just as solid up at heavyweight with wins over Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois.

Lineal champion Fury has come through stickier moments in his career than Usyk, including several knockdowns against the likes of Deontay Wilder and even boxing novice Francis Ngannou back in October, but he always gets up and comes back to win, bar one draw against Wilder in their first fight which many people think should have been a win.

He is a master of mind games who likes to throw his opponents into doubt with his antics, from dressing like Batman and having the canvas changed last minute ahead of his fight with Wladimir Klitschko to singing, shouting abuse at his opponents or, in the case of southpaw Usyk, lavishing him with praise and hugging him when they first met out in Saudi Arabia to the start of fight week.

Now he has thrown another curveball by coming out on the pads with his legendary coach Sugar Hill in Southpaw. The footage has been shared by Matchroom Boxing with commentators pointing out that Fury is showing everything he can do.

“He is literally showing Usyk, I can do everything, back foot, front foot, southpaw, orthodox, whatever you want, I got it.”

For his part, a clip of Usyk moving around the ring and doing pads shows him doing so from an orthodox stance.

Whether or not this is smoke and mirrors or the fighters will come out in their reversed stances we shall find out on Saturday night.

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