Tyson Fury is Damaging his Legacy

Tyson Fury is the single best heavyweight I have ever seen fight live. He is that rarest of beasts: the chameleonic heavyweight who can bang with Deontay Wilder and come out on top in a firefight, and who can neuter Wladimir Klitschko with movement and trickiness. He is extraordinary.

On a personal level he has always been a hypocrite and a liar, but those personal issues have never got in the way of his fighting excellence because, simply, he has never ducked a fight.

Until now.

Looking objectively at the circumstances around the Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk unification fight and its apparent collapse, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

Tyson Fury has ducked Oleksandr Usyk and has decided not to pursue the opportunity to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis and the first in the history of the 4-belt era. The fact that the fight appears to be dead is sad for boxing and damaging to Fury’s legacy as an alleged all-time great heavyweight.

Fury’s resume, like all modern boxers, has gaping holes. He has beaten either one or two historically consequential fighters in his career being Wladimir Klitschko and possibly Deontary Wilder, depending on how you view Wilder. He also has notable wins against Derek Chisora and Dillian Whyte. As far as talent goes, he is in the conversation with Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Lennox Lewis etc but his resume is simply far too thin to be realistically considered on that level. Had he fought and beaten a pound for pound legend like Usyk, his place in the pantheon of heavyweights could have been reasonably debated but if this fight is dead, it cannot.

And the blame lies with Tyson Fury.

Let’s go all the way back to when Usyk beat the brakes off Anthony Joshua a second time in August 2022. Usyk retained his three belts and Fury had one. Fury decided to emerge from his favourite attention seeking ploy and come out of retirement, calling both Usyk and Joshua “shit” and that he would “annihilate both of them” on social media. He also said, after having previously said on many occasions that he would fight for free, that the way to get him in there with Usyk would be to “get your fucking chequebook out”. The wheels were in motion.

Before Usyk though, Fury decided to do irreparable damage to a fading Derek Chisora as a comeback to the UK fight in December of 2022 (he had been practically barred from fighting in the UK because of his association with Irish criminal Daniel Kinihan). After violently dispensing with Chisora, the stage was set for Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk to fight.

Fury and Usyk apparently agreed to April 29 as the proposed date of their unification bout by February of this year, so all they needed was to work out where to do it and how the money would be split. After much to-ing and fro-ing between Saudi Arabia and Wembley, it seemed as of a month ago that the fight was set for Wembley on April 29.

Then Tyson Fury’s main character syndrome started to emerge.

In early March, Fury told Usyk over Instagram that the fight is only on if Usyk accepts a 70/30 split of the fight. Bear in mind two things: firstly, Fury has 1 belt and Usyk has 3; and secondly, Fury has regularly said words to the effect of “I’m just a fighting man, I live a simple life, I don’t need money”.

Based on the belts alone, even if Fury is clearly the A-side, this split is absurd. But Usyk, in his relentless chase of history, accepted the 70/30 terms subject to a Fury donation to the Ukrainian war effort. Fury then responded to Usyk’s show of ambition by mocking Usyk’s manager for accepting such an inequitable purse split saying “you’re the worst manager in history to get your fighter to accept 30%”. I hate to play gotcha, but doesn’t that necessarily mean Fury didn’t expect Usyk to accept such absurd terms?

Anyway, we seem to have a fight. The WBA confirmed that they would not pursue Usyk to fight his mandatory because of the fight and Fury’s trainer SugarHill Steward posted a photo saying that he was in England and ready to train Fury for the fight. All systems were go. I was talking to my boxing friends working out how we would equitably pay for all of the excellent upcoming fights in Davis v Garcia, Fulton v Inaoue (now delayed), Fury v Usyk and then Tszyu v Charlo. Fans were actually excited.

Then came the issue of the rematch clause. The utility of a rematch clause is often debated in boxing. Did we realistically need to tie up Devin Haney with George Kambosos for an entire year, only to see him win, conservatively, 22 out of 24 rounds? Especially given it was clear after the first fight that Kambosos was levels below? Not really. But for this fight, a rematch clause makes sense because of the comparative excellence of the two fighters. Fury said that Usyk demanded a rematch clause in an Instagram video. Usyk said that Fury did. We can surely yada yada this part of the negotiation, what a non-issue.

Then reports emerged on March 22 AEST that the fight was off. Why? The rematch clause. Usyk apparently argued that he wanted the rematch to be split 70/30 in favour of whomever won the first fight. That seems reasonable enough to me. 70/30 in favour of the A side in the first fight, the same for the winner in the second fight. But alas it appears that, after some obstinance from Team Fury who reportedly wanted the rematch to be split 50/50 if Usyk won and 70/30 if Fury won (depending on where the rematch would be held), Team Usyk have made an end run and told media that the fight is off.

At every single turn, Fury has been an obstruction to making the fight. He has made repeated unrealistic demands in the hope that Usyk will not accept them. When Usyk has accepted them, Fury has simply raised some other obstruction.

By not unifying against Usyk, when given ample opportunity to do so, Tyson Fury is doing damage to his legacy. Without Usyk, his resume is thin even. Beyond that, the fact that this fight is one of very few unification fights that can realistically and easily be made but for Fury’s shenanigans is an altogether separate stain on his legacy.

I suspect that Team Fury can see that because Frank Warren came out on UK radio on the morning of March 23 AEST and said that the fight was not, in fact, dead and that the only sticking point left was the purse split on the rematch clause. Even ignoring the fact that the cart is being put before the horse if we're arguing about a split for the second fight when the first has not even happened yet, this should be easy to work out but for the outsized ego of Tyson Fury.

Who knows if the fight will happen but based on the current climate, it appears that it will need to be resuscitated if it happens at all. If the bout does fall through, blame will lie largely at the feet of Tyson Fury who has done significant damage to his legacy and can not be considered a true all-time great of the heavyweight division without this fight.