The duel between Tyson Fury and Alexander Usyk has been pumped up to be a mega-fight for weeks, and a record-breaking stare down couldn’t be missed: the two heavyweight boxers faced each other for eleven minutes on Thursday, largely without saying a word, and it will take place in Saudi Arabia on Saturday evening for the world championship belts of the WBA, WBO and WBC associations.
“There’s been enough talk,” said Englishman Fury at the press conference, “I’ve been talking and joking my whole career. This time I’m serious. I’m going to do some damage, I’m going to cause some pain. I most definitely will put on the injured list.”
The duel on Saturday is already the rematch; Usyk won last May, thereby unifying all four relevant world titles and becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion. In the meantime, however, he had to resign the IBF belt because he did not want to defend it against a mandatory challenger due to the Fury rematch.
In Riyadh, the Ukrainian did not want to respond to his opponent’s provocations. It’s just an “imagination” for the cameras, “everything will happen in the ring on Saturday.” Usyk inflicted Fury’s first defeat as a professional boxer in May.