Can Fury overcome his ‘Glass Jaw’ to defeat Usyk?

Shakur Stevenson is giving Tyson Fury the edge to defeat unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk on Saturday night in their rematch in Saudi Arabia.

Shakur 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 of defeating 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 Usyk (22-0, 14 KOs) on May 18, and still lost the fight by a 12-round split decision.

Fury’s problem isn’t his conditioning. it’s his glass jaw of his three fights with Deontay Wilder. He no longer holds a punch, and Usyk will expose that weakness on Saturday, just as he did in his previous fight when he had him standing in the ninth round in Riyadh.

Usyk so cool though bro it’s so hard to go against him over the course of a 12 round fight.. I’m like 55-45 Fury on this one.. All Fury has to do is get fit and stay concentrated throughout the fight! !

— Shakur Stevenson (@ShakurStevenson) December 16, 2024

Destructive force?

“I’m looking forward to a fight that I’m going to win and be destructive and spiteful,” Tyson Fury told Queensberry Promotionspredicting a win against Oleksandr Usyk. “I was basically landing at will. They said I couldn’t show up, and then me and SugarHill (Steward) get together, and I became a destructive puncher and started knocking everybody out.”

The opponents Fury has knocked out since teaming up 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, maneuvered to win his WBC world title via a clever matchup.

Fury’s knockouts under SugarHill’s guard

– Derek Chisora: *Traveller
– Dillian Whyte: Ditto
– Deontay Wilder x 2

If Fury had knocked out some of the good heavyweights, like Martin Bakole or Daniel Dubois, you could say that SugarHill turned him into a “destructive puncher”, but he has won three fights.

Rationalization of defeat

“He won that fight by one point last time, by one round,” Fury said of Usyk. “If one of these other rounds, I would have gotten it from one of these rounds from one to twelve. If the rounds had been identical to the rounds he had won and the rounds he had lost, then it would have been a draw,” Fury said, trying to rationalize.

“If I had gotten any of the other rounds and I hadn’t gotten 10-8, I would have won it.”