Shakur Stevenson favors Tyson Fury to defeat unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in a rematch in Saudi Arabia on Saturday night.
Shakur’s prediction
WBC lightweight champion Stevenson says Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) will win if he is “in shape” and stays “focused.” ” Shakur gives Fury a 55-45 chance to defeat WBA, WBC and WBO champion Usyk.
Bearded Fury looks fit for him, but that might not make a difference. He was in form the last time he fought Usik (22-0, 14 KOs) on May 18, and still lost the fight by split decision in 12 rounds.
Fury’s problem isn’t his conditioning. It’s his glass fork from his three fights with Deontay Wilder. He can’t take the punch anymore, and Usyk will expose that weakness on Saturday, just as he did in their previous fight when he took him to his feet in the ninth round in Riyadh.
Usyk is so awesome bro it’s so hard to go against him over a 12 round fight.. I’m like 55-45 Fury in this one.. All Fury needs to do is get in shape and stay focused throughout the fight! !
— Shakur Stevenson (@ShakurStevenson) December 16, 2024
A destructive force?
“I’m looking forward to a fight where I’m going to win and where I’m going to be destructive and mean,” said Tyson Fury Queensberry Promotionspredicting victory against Alexander Usyk. “I landed on my own accord.” They said I couldn’t come forward, and then me and SugarHill (steward) got together and I became a destructive batsman and started knocking everyone out.”
The opponents Fury has knocked out since teaming with SugarHill Steward in December 2019 have been nothing special. Since then, Fury has knocked out two British-level heavyweights, and Deontay Wilder, a non-world-class fighter, has managed to win his WBC world title with clever match-ups.
Fury’s Knockouts Under SugarHill’s Watch
– Derek Chisora: *Journeiman
– Dillian White: Same
– Deontay Wilder x 2
If Fury had knocked out some of the good heavyweights, like Martin Bacole or Daniel Dubois, then you could say that SugarHill had transformed him into a “destructive hitter”, but he won three times.
Rationalizing defeat
“Last time he won this fight on a point, by one round,” Fury said of Usyk. “If it was one of those other rounds, I would have gotten it from one of those rounds one through twelve. “If the rounds were identical in the rounds I won and lost, then it would have been a draw,” Fury said, trying to rationalize.
“If I had won any other round and I hadn’t gone 10-8, I would have won.
