King of the rematch: What Tyson Fury’s history tells us about Usyk vs. Fury 2

Nine years ago in Düsseldorf, Germany, Tyson Fury said many things before and after his fight against Wladimir Klitschko, yet failed to say the one word the world wanted to hear. It was, for both Fury and countless others, the hardest word; the word Fury has never given anybody, not when hurting them, not when pulling out of fights, and not when failing drug tests. The word they wanted him to say was this: Sorry.

Within the five letters of that magic word the world could bury its disgust and find forgiveness, he was led to believe. However, without it, there would be no chance of Fury ever becoming the people’s champion, regardless of his exploits in the ring. He had, by now, said too much, wounded too many. Whether to sell or to shock, he had let his intrusive thoughts win ahead of the Klitschko fight and had, in a sport predicated on dishonesty, dared to be the one thing people claim they want from an athlete until it gets too much. That thing, of course, was honest.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Fury had spoken ignorantly but truthful to his views, as well as joked that Klitschko was a devil-worshipper who practiced witchcraft. He said: “There are only three things that need to be accomplished before the devil comes home. One of them is homosexuality being legal in countries, one of them is abortion, and the other is pedophilia. So who would have thought in the ’50s and early ’60s that those first two would be legalized?”

By then idiocy was produced as freely as a jab by Fury and most familiar with his ways knew to take whatever he said with a pinch of salt. Moreover, those familiar with his family, and with the traveller community, knew never to expect his views or outlook on life to mirror their own, nor for his brand of honesty to be the same as theirs. This, in the end, is what separates fighters like Fury, and people like the Furys, from the rest of us. That some professed to be shocked by his words, and demanded an apology, merely highlighted this difference and the extent to which people still unreasonably expect from boxers — people who punch people — either perfection or just common sense.

“The last comments made me sick,” said Klitschko. “It is disgusting. That is nothing to do with the promotion, it just shows what is inside Tyson Fury. I think he should just keep those comments to himself.”

Fury, for his part, couldn’t understand the fuss. Each morning in Düsseldorf he would sit in the hotel dining room with his team and laugh in the face of the storm brewing outside, seemingly more concerned with reminding hotel staff that he liked his porridge smooth and not lumpy. To them, the staff, he was nothing but the perfect gentleman, respectful to one and all, and was a model guest all week. Even to the people who entered the hotel, guests or otherwise, Fury was only ever accommodating, happy to share a few words and take pictures. There, inside the hotel, he found not only shelter from the storm but a world of his own making. He was, for seven days, surrounded by like-minded individuals, most of them family, and thus had no reason to question his views, let alone apologize for them.

No, it was outside that the damage had been done and it was there the storm continued, unabated. Outside, middle-class chief sportswriters with no interest in boxing, nor any understanding of a boxer’s psychology, wailed with righteous indignation and implored Fury to do the right thing and take back everything he said. Meanwhile, on the other side you had a smattering of YouTubers — mercifully, a practice still in its infancy at the time — whose access to Fury and reluctance to upset him provided the “Gypsy King” with the stage on which to further horrify the horrified.

This approach not only irked those intent on an apology, but pushed Fury’s name into the mainstream press and created an “Us vs. Them” dynamic which Fury and his team used as fuel ahead of his impending title challenge. By the time it came around, Fury’s belief was that any apology would not be his, but instead theirs, and that the only thing better than an apology, in terms of absolution, was winning the world heavyweight title and asking the British public, “What is it you really want, a role model or a winner?”

Success, such is its power, can make disciples of detractors and will often allow a boxer to get away with things for which a less successful boxer would be punished. In Fury’s case, he had total belief in his ability to dethrone Klitschko and was therefore determined to stay true to himself and become the heavyweight champion he was born and bred to be, not the one the world wanted him to be. His stubbornness was less a character flaw and more a strength in those days, and his aim, it seemed, was always to make the world bend to him rather than acquiesce and bend to the demands of the world. Despite all the pressure, he refused to say sorry. He then somehow made the world forgive.

Implicit in the word rematch is an admission that one previously erred and must now do better. There is, in fact, a certain humility one must find before any rematch; an acceptance that things need to be different the second time around and that during the first go they perhaps weren’t at their best. Many fighters, of course, will attempt to conceal this realization to preserve their pride, but it is applicable to even the most gregarious and outwardly self-assured characters and something with which they must make peace before trying to make corrections.

True rematch specialists, like Fury, are men whose inherent stubbornness dissolves the moment they set foot in the ring and are reminded, again, of the unpredictable nature of their profession. It is then, when in the ring, even someone like Fury, whose views have never changed, becomes suddenly open to all possibilities and eventualities. It is then you see his malleability and realize that, no matter what he says and believes, he knows the importance of improvement and growth.

This has been evident throughout Fury’s career, but never more so than in the three rematches that have served to define him. The first of these rematches, which involved John McDermott in 2010, was an attempt to grab the neuralyzer and have us all forget that we had witnessed McDermott soundly outbox Fury nine months prior only to be stiffed by Terry O’Connor (both the referee and the bout’s sole judge). That night McDermott boxed the fight of his life. He capitalized on Fury seeing him as just a fat man and not a threat to beat Fury to the punch time and time again and expose his technical deficiencies. It was, in the final analysis, as vulnerable as Fury has ever looked without being hurt and knocked down.

The second time around, Fury promised to be better, even if still of the belief that he never lost the first fight. And he was better too, stopping McDermott convincingly in nine rounds. His lesson, clearly, had been learned, and although he was loath to give credit to his teacher, Fury nevertheless made sure he was much improved when re-sitting down for the exam. This time he corrected himself. He said sorry. All was forgiven.

His next rematch came against Derek Chisora in 2014. This was a repeat of their 2011 encounter, which Fury won by decision to land the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles. During the second fight, Fury demonstrated just how much he improved in the space of three years and how his ability to correct himself was largely unmatched. At ease throughout, he turned southpaw in Round 2 and then showcased every punch until Chisora, after the 10th, decided he had enough of playing punch bag for pay.

Fury won again, which came as no surprise, only this second win was different. It felt different for Chisora, who this time couldn’t last the course, and it felt different watching it from ringside as well. If the first fight had been competitive, and occasionally thrilling, to watch the rematch was to see a chasm develop between two erstwhile rivals and pray that only the one on top had enough mercy to put his opponent out of their misery. It was, as a spectacle, both controlled and cruel. Fury wanted Chisora to cower and to quit. For sometimes that, in the mind of a fighter, is the ultimate correction.

There was a similar feeling when Fury rematched Deontay Wilder in 2020 and broke him down in seven rounds. As with the Chisora rematch, Fury’s adaptation against Wilder represented a complete costume change and makeover, and was so jarring of a shift that he was almost unrecognizable when marching Wilder down and extracting his sting. Rather than run, or simply move, he went toward the threat and said to Wilder, “Yes, I can also beat you this way.”

Fourteen months earlier, against the same opponent, Fury’s stubbornness had been both a blessing and a curse. To remember it now, it was Fury’s stubbornness that put him in the kind of danger he should ideally have looked to avoid in Round 12. Yet it was this very same stubbornness that helped him rise like The Undertaker when knocked down by a Wilder flurry with only two minutes to go.

Had he not been so stubborn, Fury may have stayed down, rolled over, and just said sorry. He may have been the opponent Wilder always wanted him to be and gone the way of so many previous Wilder opponents.

That night, though, Fury wasn’t about to conform. By rising, which he did, he played his part in a contentious draw rather than settle for being another Wilder knockout victim. Even better, stubbornness made way for pliability in the rematch, as always it must. Slighted though Fury was by the draw, his willingness to accept he got certain things wrong in the first fight enabled him to not only improve in part two but also shock Wilder with these improvements. Wilder, after all, remains the very antithesis of this idea; a man whose spirit and stubbornness will ensure he can never change in the boxing ring.

In the end, every rematch is an apology. It is an apology issued by a fighter to their own physical potential and the idealized version of themselves they know they will never get to meet. It is also a chance to make peace, either with an opponent or their own limitations, and find clarity in a sport built on uncertainty.

The next rematch in Fury’s career of corrections and contradictions takes place Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It comes against Oleksandr Usyk and is a rerun of their fight from May, which Usyk won by decision and from which there are several enduring images. The first, of course, is that of Fury being badly hurt by Usyk in Round 9, a round he was lucky to survive and a round in which the fight appeared set to end. But there is also a key sequence from earlier in the fight, one involving Fury moving well and digging shots to Usyk’s body, which is hard to shake despite all that followed. Indeed, even Fury, the one who felt the full weight of all that followed, has been able to find encouragement in what he produced early on against Usyk.

“Being honest, as I always am, it was actually easier than I thought it would be,” he said of that May night. “I listened to Tony Bellew, and I listened to AJ (Anthony Joshua), and they said this guy is so hard to hit, he’s ‘The Matrix.’ So I’m thinking this guy must be really hard to hit. I’m expecting to be missing him a lot. But in realistic terms he was much easier to hit than I anticipated and it got me a little bit complacent, because every time I threw an uppercut to the body or the head, I would hit him.”

Critics will no doubt question both the veracity and honesty of this appraisal, yet in the end it matters not. All that really matters is that Fury believes what he is saying and that he now understands the pitfalls of complacency and the need to do better.

Truth is, even if he doesn’t believe what he is saying, which is possible, he will surely know the corrections he must make when given his second chance on Saturday. He will be just as aware that the brief period of success he enjoyed in fight one was ultimately ruined by Usyk’s ability to make corrections of his own, which kicked in after Round 7.

That, at the time, took Fury aback, for never had he encountered an opponent with the capacity to correct himself mid-fight. Nor for that matter has Fury, for all his success in rematches, ever had to correct himself in that manner either. It is this unique skill, in fact, that separates Usyk from all other heavyweights and most other boxers. He is, you see, a man of many styles, skills and ideas. He has not only a different plan for every opponent but a different one for every round.

Whether Fury can confound Usyk with his own corrections Saturday will depend on both his ability to adjust and his ability to accept. He can say whatever he likes in public to save face, yet, as ever, the true indication of Fury’s progress, as both a boxer and a man, will arrive in the ring on fight night. It is there, in the ring, he does his best work, it is there his language is understood, and it is there we find he is most honest. It is there and only there he makes his corrections.