“Indisputable.” It would be strange to label Saturday night's showdown between Saudi Arabia's Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk as something off-putting. After all, nearly every aspect of the fight, from the venue to the date to the division of the £115m prize money, is the subject of endless controversy.
But now, boxing has finally conjured up a true blockbuster, the first fight in 25 years for all the heavyweight belts. The timing couldn't have been more auspicious, given the soul-sinking prospect of 57-year-old Mike Tyson coming out of retirement to face trash-talking YouTuber Jake Paul this summer.
In an age of kitschy crossover experimentation than ever before, the sport finally has a spectacle that propels winners to true greatness. Fury has two wins over Deontay Wilder and Usyk has two clinical wins over Anthony Joshua.
Each fighter also has a backstory befitting the occasion, given Fury's recovery from severe mental illness and Usyk's enlistment in the Ukrainian military in the weeks after the Russian invasion. After all, this is the story of how KSI, social media star and CEO of the aptly named Misfits Boxing, is competing with Conor for a match that's a box office sensation but means nothing. A powerful antidote to hearing McGregor called out.
Gravitas: That's the quality promised in this weekend's showdown in Riyadh. Or at least when Fury's father wasn't allowed to headbutt the smallest member of Usyk's entourage.
Undisputed champions are rare in the four-belt era, and only nine have held that honor since 2004. A quarter-century ago, the last time Lennox Lewis wore the heavyweight crown, it was just three major league championships. In addition to the belt, he also won the title of a lesser-regarded international boxing organization. No matter who completes a quad right here on the outskirts of Saudi Arabia's capital, there's no denying the magnitude of the feat.
Turki Alalcik, an adviser to the Saudi royal palace and chairman of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority, calls the Fury-Usyk fight the “crown jewel” of boxing's efforts to unite its fragmented landscape. No one in the sport wields more power than the ambitious 42-year-old, but he is rarely photographed without sunglasses on. Without his funding, this fight would not have happened. And while the prize money on offer may be unpleasant – Fury would earn more than £80 million if he wins – the man pulling the strings insists he is a purist at heart. ing.
“We never want to see YouTubers again,” he says. “I want to see a fighter.”
I'm tired of the freak show
This is a heartening pushback against the arrogant would-bes and can-bes who have made boxing a bad joke lately. Just last year, Saudi Arabia staged a fight between Paul and an ex-Saudi to the delight of streamers.love island Contestant Tommy Fury is Tyson's half-brother. It was a despicable act, and Paul's provocations extended to revealing the birth of his opponent's baby before young Fury or his partner could do so.
Now it appears as if Aralsik has grown weary of pageantry and has decided that his true fame lies in directing important battles.
Despite the absurdity of its preamble, his latest work has far-reaching significance. That can be seen in the extraordinary respect with which Fury praises Usyk, calling him a “great warrior,” and in the Ukrainian's insistence that he is fighting for “legacy, not money.”
It feels like a stretch to paint this as a throwback to the 1970s. At that time, the status of undisputed world heavyweight champion could rightfully be called the ultimate prize in the sport. “Either he's the toughest guy in the world, or he's not, but he could be,” Norman Mailer wrote. “It's like God's big toe. You have nothing to measure yourself against.”
What made this era flourish was the frequent battles between icons. Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier faced each other three times, once at Madison Square Garden in the “Fight of the Century” and again four years later at “Thrilla in Manila,” a battle of unrelenting brutality. It became a symphony of actions. Even in the 1990s, headline showdowns were a regular occurrence. Lewis earned the “undisputed” tag and faced Evander Holyfield twice, with Holyfield tasting a trilogy with Riddick Bowe.
In contrast, today's tactics tend toward mutual avoidance, with outstanding fighters dancing around each other for too long and missing the moment. The carrot of an all-British showdown between Fury and Anthony Joshua is sickeningly dangling, but with both men in their mid-30s, could it really happen? Even this clash between Fury and Usyk has been postponed twice in the last six months, and it was only made possible by a huge sovereign wealth fund.
No wonder everyone rolls the crowd at Aralsik's feet. “Sir,” said Fury, a man who usually didn't like honorifics, but he frowned, aware that Saudi Arabia had made him richer than he could have ever imagined.
But if there's a better reason to be grateful to Alarusik, it's that he realized that boxing was ruined by drowning in the bubble bath of YouTube bubbles. This week he suggested that the dreaded Tyson-Paul matchup in Dallas in July was match-fixed and urged elders to “forget the script”. This signals that the pendulum is finally swinging back in the right direction in the battle for excellence between true champions and fame-hungry imitators.
