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LENNOX LEWIS worries Tyson Fury could be distracted from his Oleksandr Usyk revenge mission by the mega-money Anthony Joshua showdown looming over it.
The Saudi Arabian bankrollers are desperate to finally see the 6ft 9in Morecambe showman settle the score with Watford’s 2012 Olympic golden boy.
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PAThe overdue clash – that has collapsed late into talks twice already before – would be the biggest fight in British boxing history.
When Joshua was knocked clean out by Daniel Dubois at Wembley in September for the IBF crown that Usyk had just been stripped of, front-row Fury even jumped up and roared: “That’s cost me 150 million – the silly c***”
Whether that is pounds or dollars doesn’t matter – the fact is AJ would likely be getting the same, making it a fight worth around £300m.
And it would most likely be a two-fight deal, with one happening in boxing’s new Mecca of Riyadh and a return happening in London – tipping the rivalry toward a combined half-a-billion double header.
Instead of insisting on an instant rerun, Saudi boxing boss Turki Alalshikh has let AJ off of the rematch and he is sitting out to recover from the five-round catastrophe and waiting to pounce on Fury.
And Lewis – the last undisputed champion before Usyk, who bounced back from two shock defeats – fears that Fury could have his eye taken off the ball by the crazy cash on the table.
He told SunSport: “I think it is a bad distraction to have in your head.
“My goal would just be to get the undisputed championship first, before thinking about anything else.
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“That would be my goal, especially if he is 1-0 down.
“For Fury, winning this fight is very important for him and I know what he will be thinking.
“He’s there but he’s not quite there – he will be there if he works for it.”
Win, lose or draw, it seems certain that Fury and Joshua is planned for early 2025 and both Brits could potentially go into the clash with back-to-back losses to the Ukraine’s gap-toothed southpaw genius.
Lewis avenged all the blots on his magnificent record.
Rebuilding and waiting almost three years to chin Oliver McCall, chasing Hasim Rahman through the courts to get an instant rematch and dominating Evander Holyfield eight months after he was handed a scandalous draw and denied the undisputed honour at the first attempt.
Speaking from unmatched experience, he believes a Fury win on Saturday night must spark a Usyk trilogy and anything less – including the AJ shootout – would be a disappointment.
He explained at the WBC convention: “If it gets to 1-1 then there has to be the trilogy.
“You need the third one as the decider.
“Tyson Fury loves the trilogy aspect, he lost the first so he will want to win the second one and, if he wins, he will want the third one.
“It doesn’t matter that one of the belts has been taken away, this is still the undisputed fight for most people.
“These are the two top guys and even though all the belts are not there, the public opinion will be that the winner is the undisputed champion of the world.”
In order to level the score, Fury has to make the most basic simple-sounding changes to try to implement an almost impossible plan.
In the original clash he chose to waste the first three rounds showboating and gurning to the crowd.
The Gypsy King was superb in rounds four to seven, when his body shots and uppercuts couldn’t miss.
But when Usyk – who he had dismissed as an “ugly little middleweight sausage” – caught him flush on the nose with a perfect left hand, he was saved by his own incredible courage, the ropes he bundled around, the ref’s eight count and the bell.
When the bell goes we will soon see if his first professional defeat has reignited the fire within and the new and unfamiliar challenger mindset has re-energised him.
Or if Usyk’s psychological warfare and relentless pressure really robbed Fury of his soul.
“Fury will have woken up on Sunday morning feeling bad,” Lewis said.
“It will be even more difficult to win the second because he can’t just repeat what he did in the first.
“When I woke up after a loss, I wanted to realise what I did wrong, go back to the drawing board and fix it.
“When I watched the first Holyfield fight back I wanted to learn the differences between us, I knew we both wanted it and were smart fighters.
“It’s about who takes each individual round, you have to win each individual round, with hard work, you cannot dance around and expect to get the round.
“Tyson didn’t do enough work to win the fight, he let a couple of rounds go and in the ninth he was hit in the nose and I think it affected his breathing.
AP“It showed me that that one punch affected him, that’s how it is, one punch, even to the belly, can force you to take a round off to recover and then you’ve lost it with the judges.
“There’s different things to do to win the rounds; making it look like you’re being busy, scoring punches, pressure, being smart, all of those things will impress judges.
“There’s different ways to win a fight, you can walk toward the guy and apply pressure. Or you can wait and make him come to you, and then counter punch him.
“Fury has great movement and is elusive and has a good jab, he needs to use all of those gifts and talent to win the fight.
“When I saw him playing around in those first couple of rounds, that to me showed he wasn’t serious and was giving away rounds for no reason.”
If Lewis – who is now guiding the career of 12-0 light-heavyweight prospect Costas Nanga – was in the corner for either icon on Saturday, he knows what his final teamtalk would be.
Fury would be told: “Use your skill, use your gifts and don’t fool around.
“Be so serious that you just seek and destroy. Winning is all that you need to do, winning is what you must do.”
Usyk would get even simpler instructions: “Stay on his ass and cut off the ring.
“Use that catchphrase he likes to say: ‘Tyson I will not leave you alone'”.
- Watch Usyk v Fury Reignited 2 on TNT Sports Box Office. Coverage starts from 4pm on Saturday 21st December. Find out how you can watch at tntsports.
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