Tyson Fury’s dad John has taken a swipe at Oleksandr Usyk’s physique coming into the undisputed fight with his son. John believes the unified heavyweight champion isn’t big enough to trouble Tyson, insisting that The Gypsy King’s wife Paris has a ‘bigger pair of shoulders’.
As negotiations near completion, Usyk has been terrorising Tyson with a series of call-out videos. In his most recent one, Usyk emerges from a swimming pool and refers to the Mancunian as ‘belly’, but John says that the Ukrainian should be more worried about his own physical condition.
“Looking at Usyk getting out the pool the other day, he needs to do something different physically to get in the ring with Tyson,” John told talkSPORT. “We could put the boxing gloves on Paris and let her fight him based on how he looked the other day.
“They are about the same size; I think Paris has a bigger pair of shoulders, to be fair. He did himself no favours with a body like that. He looked terrible, like he’s not eaten for three months.
If the four-belt shoot-out cannot be staged overseas, then London’s Wembley Stadium is a backup option. According to Fury’s promoter, Frank Warren, the fight will happen between late March and early April, slightly later than initially thought.
Many have struggled to separate the pair leading up to the historic clash but John is in no doubt that his son will be crowned the first undisputed heavyweight champion of the four-belt era.
‘I’m telling you now, there’s nobody out there who has a chance of beating him [Fury],” he added. “I’ve seen them all, he can beat them at half-mast. You’ve got to be 6 feet 6 plus, 20 stone of muscle and a heart as big as the body. If you haven’t got these things, don’t mess with the Gypsy King.
“Usyk is a good technician, a good little boxer, but Tyson is a good big boxer who can do everything better than him. When it comes down to it, it’s a one-horse race. I saw enough when [Usyk] fought [Anthony] Joshua to know that he doesn’t have a prayer against Tyson.”