In the end everyone runs out of road. It was probably necessary for Tyson Fury to say he was robbed in the Kingdom Arena on Saturday night. Boxing demands this level of irrationality. Logical multimillionaires do not willingly schedule a brain-jarring, soul‑shredding half-hour beating from one of the most effective practitioners of controlled violence ever to walk the planet. A basic suspension of reason is required. Without it no one would ever step in the ring.
So Fury will maintain that all three judges were wrong to award a unanimous points decision in Oleksandr Usyk’s favour after 12 thrillingly intense rounds in Riyadh. Last time out Fury said he lost because of the war in Ukraine. This time he said it was because of Christmas. Nobody was robbed here. Fury, the challenger, needed to go out and actively take the heavyweight belts. In the event the champion always seemed to have his head above the water.
The fight was still probably closer than the scores suggested. But 24 rounds into this, having witnessed slick, slimmed-down Fury1, followed by this version, jellyroll-laden Fury2, and having considered all possibilities in between – Semi‑Fat Fury? Hyper‑Fat Fury? Fat Fury But No Beard? – there is a sense they could do this 20 times more and Usyk would win every one with varying degrees of comfort.
For Fury this is also an occasion where defeat can be ennobling. There is no disgrace, no sense of loss for an athlete in stretching right into the limits of your own capacities. Matched against the greatest fighter of the modern age, Fury has twice stayed the course and given every drop of juice left in his skinny ankles. Sometimes you just have nowhere left to run.
At which point, with money in the bank and legacy fights safely packed away, this is surely the right time to leave the stage.
Either way there was a sense from the start of an occasion that always seemed likely to bend Usyk’s way. Aura and feelings and impetus do still have a say at this level. Fury offered his familiar energy in the buildup, the boggle‑eyed karaoke, the unhinged blood-and-therapy aesthetic, the sense of someone minced through the modern world, lost in Málaga, depression, booze, out there vaping into the abyss, and bringing it all back into this room now.
Usyk projects his own more orderly sense of destiny, and he carried it with him like a flag here. You have unhinged Mariah Carey. We have noble whiskery men singing a choral military anthem. You have zany Father Christmas shtick. I have the cold white light of carrying a nation at war, not to mention a quietly intimidating fringed tunic. As a general rule the more Usyk looks like a druid or a cossack the more invincible he seems to become.
It made for another wonderful contest. Boxing may be grotesque, greed-ridden and, as of the last few years, the tool of a politically motivated jackboot state. But it is also indissolubly pure at the point of contact.
Fury’s early shuffles and feints carried the usual gawky grace, gliding about out in his high-performance apron, floating like a Zeppelin. He went big for this fight, with the idea of adding power. It wasn’t an entirely logical move. One thing Fury doesn’t have is that visceral knockout punch. Why dilute his real strengths – speed, agility, stamina – by going in search of it? Usyk was already making him flinch, react, counter the counters.
Fury had his moments early on. He applied pressure, threw some good right hands, but met an endlessly resilient target. Even in Fury’s good moments he was, in effect, losing this fight, finding that his best wasn’t quite enough.
Smothering Usyk was always going to be a tough task. How do you apply all your force to this object when every exchange comes with its own sting in response, an opponent who is constantly learning your movements, forcing you to make constant micro-calculations.
Usyk has one other key advantage. He’s basically a super‑athlete. In between boxing he could probably do the 400m hurdles, play professional basketball and win an ancient Greek warrior challenge. He gets stronger as fights go on, calculates perfectly how much of his own power to release. Facing him over 12 rounds must feel like being pummelled by a team of 12-year-old chess geniuses armed with sledgehammers.
So it came to pass in Riyadh. Outside of the first three rounds there was never really a point where Usyk didn’t seem to have strength in reserve, while Fury fought right up to his limits. The maths felt quite simple by the end. Fury is one of the best boxers of his generation. Usyk is an all‑time great.
Where does that leave Fury now? There is no doubt his aura is dulled. Undefeated Fury, Fury the cackling disrupter, was key to his fascination. Aged 36, he has fought numerous times for a world title. Does anyone really feel the need to find out what he still has at this level? Realistically he should simply exit this world. Do some WWE. Co‑star in a terrible action movie. Have a beef with a celebrity on YouTube.
On the other hand, fighters like to talk about legacy. And it is here that Fury becomes more interesting. Boxing-wise, taking the title off Wladimir Klitschko was a rare achievement. The Deontay Wilder fights will remain Peak Fury, the absolute death or glory apex of his obsession. He has been a high-class, highly skilled, highly durable champion at a time when, it should be said, the division was there to be dominated.
Beyond this his legacy lies, improbably perhaps, in the parts of him that spill out of the ring. Fury has never really seemed to fit that well with the world. Many will find it hard to forgive some peculiar opinions. After the Klitschko fight 80,000 people signed a letter demanding his disqualification from the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, triggered by his musings on “scripture”, which boiled down to a fear of homosexuality and some wiffle about women belonging in the kitchen.
Fury will keep saying the wrong things. He follows a rare strain of evangelical Christianity. He’s a relative of Bartley Gorman, the bare-knuckle king of the 1970s and 80s who fought in quarries and at horse fairs. He describes himself as an “alien” outside of the traveller life.
But the fact is many people also love Fury. He has become an influential voice on mental health, depression and addiction, with something unavoidably affecting in his deep, beardy, Yeti-ish energy, the way he talks so freely about his own dark nights of the soul. Fury has come back from a dark place, gone to that dark place, come back again. It cuts through. Whether this counts as advocacy, campaigning or simply self-preservation, it will remain the most valuable part of a public-private life spent dancing in the harshest of lights.
For now Fury showed in Saudi Arabia that he can still fight like a contender, if not quite to the level of a hall-of-fame champ. There seems no need, sporting or financial, for him to do this again. Except for the obvious question of what exactly he’s going to do when it’s finally gone.
