“Don’t be surprised if Tyson walks away,” said Sky Sports boxing expert Johnny Nelson after English boxing champion Tyson Fury lost in Saudi Arabia last night.
The Mancunian boxer was nearly knocked out and struggled through the final three rounds before Oleksandr Usyk was crowned the new world heavyweight champion in Riyadh.
It’s the first defeat of Fury’s professional career and sees his WBC belt ripped away and handed to Ukrainian champion Usyk.
Usyk won on a split decision and now holds the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO belts.
Mr Nelson said: “I think Tyson Fury will be devastated at the result of that.
After Usyk was declared the undisputed champion of the world, Fury demanded a rematch.
“Tyson’s team will have serious conversations about motivating him after this and get his mind back,” said Mr Nelson.
“What more can he do? How can he improve from that? This defeat would have done his head in and his heart in.”
“I believe I won that fight. I think he won a few rounds but I won the majority of them,” said Fury.
Later, however, he admitted in a press conference he had made mistakes and would do things differently in future.
He said: “[I’ll] keep my defence a little bit tighter, a bit more focused and not so much messing around because I was having fun in there, I was playing around, I was hitting his body, I was hitting him with uppercuts to the head.
“I thought I was bossing the fight.”
However, former pro boxer Barry McGuigan thinks Fury has peaked.
“Tyson is starting to drop,” he told Sky Sports.
“His ability to take a shot isn’t as good as it used to be, his powers of recovery aren’t as good as they used to be and he’s getting older.”
But Fury said he boxes for the love of the sport – and, once that love fades, he will put away his gloves.
“I’m not boxing because I’ve got no money, I box because I love it,” he told reporters after the fight.
“I’m 36 in a few months and I’ve been boxing since I was a child.
“All the time I’m loving the game, I’ll continue to do it. When I can’t do that anymore, I’ll pack it up.”
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Fury was on top of the world back in 2015 when he defeated Wladimir Klitschko to claim all four world title belts.
But his success was quickly followed by a dark period.
Public battles with depression and drug addiction ultimately cost him his belts, and saw him retreat from the sport.
He was accused of taking the banned substance nandrolone – which he denied – and admitted to drinking heavily and taking cocaine.
His weight ballooned to 27st, having clocked in at 17st 8lbs for his match against Klitschko.
After declaring himself “medically unfit” to fight Klitschko, he said would concentrate on his “medical treatment and recovery”.
In an emotional interview with Rolling Stone magazine, he said he was “going through a lot of personal demons” and was a “manic depressive” – and admitted to having suicidal thoughts.
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In 2020, however, he burst back into the spotlight of top-level boxing when he beat US fighter Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas.
Even the legendary Mike Tyson couldn’t contain his excitement as he watched Fury perform.
Now, after calling for a rematch for last night’s contest, it is up to Fury how he reacts to losing the biggest fight of his career so far.
