Oleksandr Usyk was unbothered by Tyson Fury’s antics at the weigh-in for their undisputed heavyweight championship in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
After retaining his composure throughout the build-up to Saturday’s fight, Tyson Fury briefly lost it in the moments after he and Oleksandr Usyk weighed in.
“I’m ready to rock and roll,” he said after his getting into Usyk’s face on stage meant that the rival camps required separating. “Fireworks tomorrow night. I’m gonna knock this little f__ker spark out.”
“I’m coming for his heart,” he then responded when asked about the possibility of winning Usyk’s Ring Magazine, IBF, WBA and WBO heavyweight titles. “That’s what I’m coming for. F__k his belts. I’m coming for his f__king heart. He’s getting it tomorrow. Spark out! F__k him.
“F__k the lot of them [Usyk’s team]. They can all get it if they want it.”
In the build-up to his fight in 2018 in Los Angeles with Deontay Wilder, Fury had become similarly angry when he came face to face with Wilder, and yet on fight night performed as perhaps only he can. It was regardless tempting to conclude that what unfolded in Riyadh on the eve of his fight with Usyk owed to his growing frustration to detect any vulnerability in either his opponent’s psyche or masterful technique.
The 37-year-old Ukrainian has consistently refused to be bullied by Fury, who has previously watched him outbox considerably bigger fighters. When they fight for the undisputed and Ring Magazine heavyweight championship on Saturday at the Kingdom Arena he will also be a career heaviest 233.5 pounds in preparation for a physical contest; Fury, in a sign of respect for his gifted opponent, weighed in at 262 pounds and therefore the lightest he has been since struggling to victory over Otto Wallin in 2019.
Oleksandr Usyk has not backed down from Tyson Fury at any point during the build-up to their May 18 showdown. (Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
“No two days are the same for me,” Fury said mid-fight week of his coping with bipolar disorder, and with the benefit of hindsight somewhat presciently. “Up and down like a rollercoaster. Even if I’m feeling absolutely shit tonight, I think ‘I’ll start again tomorrow’. It’s a fresh, brand-new day to start afresh.
“I’m bulletproof on fight day. I can’t be affected on fight day because it’s not Tyson Fury. It’s ‘The Gypsy King’. Different mentality completely.”
He also spoke of the baggage that comes with his profile and being seen as so accessible, which owes in no small part to the symbol he has come to be for others struggling for their mental health.
At 35 he similarly spoke of having “completed” his life and his priority instead being his seven children; of wanting a further 10 fights yet having no desire to still be an active fighter for the coming five years.
“I can’t see myself hanging around for the next five years, never mind 20,” he said. “I’ve given a lot to this game. I give all my youth; all my teenage years; all my young adult life. I’ve got to have some time to be me. All the things I’ve done and all the accolades and all the money I’ve earned – I’ve got to have time to enjoy it. It’s only a short life.
“Being a champion and all that – fantastic. But we all know that don’t pay your bills and it doesn’t pay for a house or put food in your stomach. Having a belt in your cupboard is not what it’s about.
“I want another 10 fights, quick fire, if we can. Punch up a few more people.
“The pressure’s off now. I’m not doing it for any reason. I’m doing it now because I can. I’ve been doing it for that reason for the last five years – because I can.”
Usyk no doubt poses a greater threat to Fury’s version of peace than any other, and all week in Riyadh has carried himself as he did in the days before his first victory in 2021 over Anthony Joshua – with a quiet conviction that hinted that he believed he had identified something that no one else had.
Oleksandr Usyk confidently looks on after weighing in ahead of his showdown the Tyson Fury. (Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
To hear Fury describe himself as doing something “because I can” is regardless to be reminded of the wider picture that exists in Saudi Arabia, given reports that there will be no radio coverage in the UK because those in Saudi Arabia believe that they will sell more pay-per-view packages if the radio rights remain unsold.
With Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield – the last fighters to contest the undisputed and Ring Magazine heavyweight titles – being joined there by Larry Holmes and Wladimir Klitschko on Friday the sense of occasion had grown. There were also more than a handful of fans present – and they were vocal – at Friday’s weigh-in at the typically soulless BLVD City, but Lewis was being polite when he said: “The energy is in the air.”
What Lewis was referring to was what he and Holyfield would have detected the nights they fought in 1999 at New York’s Madison Square Garden, and at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. It is also what Holmes would have experienced the night of his fight in 1982 with Gerry Cooney at Vegas’ Caesars Palace, and Klitschko against Joshua at London’s Wembley Stadium in 2017.
Anthony Joshua’s epic 11th-round stoppage of Wladimir Klitschko took place in front of 90,000 at Wembley Stadium. Photo / Esther Lin-SHOWTIME
Holmes-Cooney and Joshua-Klitschko may have been fights to determine the world’s leading heavyweight, but the undisputed title was not on the line. That the most significant heavyweight title fight for a quarter of a century is unfolding between the world’s two leading heavyweights would typically guarantee the “energy” Lewis was claiming to detect, but instead the only electricity that will exist – beyond that briefly shown by Fury – until the moments before the fighters make their ring walks will be that in the neon lights and the empty amusement rides so close to where Fury and Usyk weighed in.
After Fury departed the scene of their confrontation, Usyk was asked what he had said to his opponent.
“Don’t be afraid – I won’t leave you alone tomorrow,” he responded. Perhaps it was the knowledge of that that made Fury switch.