Former featherweight champion Naseem Hamed says Tyson Fury needs to hurt unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk with hard punches early on if he is to win their rematch on December 21.
Hamed wants to see former WBC champion Fury (34-1-1, 24 KOs) control the fight from the center of the ring, use his jabs and uppercuts to land powerful punches and overpower Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Is Hamed's strategy realistic for Fury?
Unfortunately, what Hamed is asking of the soon-to-be 36-year-old Fury is outside his capabilities. He's too young to fight in the center of the ring and lacks the power even at his best.
Fury is too old, too slow, too big around the waist and too weak to execute Hamed's strategy, and staying in the center of the ring is physically impossible at Fury's age – that requires youth, and Fury gave up on that years ago.
Fury is able to land uppercuts, but he always comes up with punches before them that Usyk easily avoids. In their last fight on May 18, Fury hit Usyk with a powerful uppercut, but then couldn't land the same punch as the talented Ukrainian adapted.
Doubts about feasibility
In the rematch, unless Fury can knock his opponent out with the first uppercut, he won't be able to land the same punches.
“He has to keep his jab in the center of the ring and control the fight,” Naseem Hamed told 2ndSouto about what Tyson Fury must do to win his rematch with WBA/WBC/WBO heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk on December 21.
Fury's jab is too weak and slow to control Usyk. His jab is like a wet noodle, with no power or spring and is only used as a “keep it away” type of punch. The Gypsy King's jab has always been weak and useless, being no weapon at all against anything other than the lower level fighters he has faced in his career.
The importance of adaptation
“Fury has to come at him with his uppercuts, the way he's used to do it on Fury, land some big punches and make sure he does the damage in the early rounds. That's how he's going to win,” Hamed said of Fury.
Fury can't land an uppercut, he lacks the power to follow Hamed's advice and hit as hard as he could, so all Fury can do is grab Usyk whenever he gets close and punch him until he's exhausted, like he did against Deontay Wilder.
Fury's heavy-handed tactics only worked against Wilder and he has not been able to use them in any of his fights since. Interestingly, Fury should have tried to invent new tactics rather than reusing a game plan designed to beat the skinny, lanky, 220+ pound Wilder. Is that all Fury's trainer, Sugarhill Steward, could have done to help his fight?
“I don't think it had anything to do with him showing off,” Hamed said when asked if Fury's showing off early in the fight on May 18 contributed to his loss to Usyk. “People need to realise it was a close fight.”
Fury looked showy early in the fight against Usyk, leaning like a big bird against the ropes and failing to land any moves that would impress the fans or intimidate his opponent.
“That was the ninth round. For me, I'm surprised it went beyond the ninth round,” Hamed said of the round in which Fury was so beaten so badly by Usyk that the referee spared Tyson a knockout. Tyson was on the brink of finishing him off when the referee inexplicably gave him the standing eight count to save the knockout.
“Even though Tyson found himself in that situation, he still found the strength to get up and finish the fight.”
The fight should have been stopped in the ninth round when Fury was hurting Usyk and bouncing from rope to rope and nearly being dragged off. Instead of giving Fury a standing eight count, the referee should have just ignored it or let Usyk finish the fight with a final head shot. Fury was literally one punch away from going down. If Fury had come back, Usyk would have knocked him out right away.
“Why is nobody talking about Fury's win or what he did to Wilder,” Hamed said of Fury. “Why is nobody talking about how nobody got close to Fury for years until Usyk came along?”
Fans don't talk about Fury's wins before Usyk because he never beat a good fighter. Fury's best win was against Wladimir Klitschko at 39 and near the end of his career. You can't really classify that as a good win, and Wilder is overrated and never beat anyone of note. His best win was against Luis Ortiz when he was over 40.
