Road to Riyadh: Fury and Usyk’s long journey to date with destiny

attention but his amateur career was marked by frustration. Fury fought only 35 times and his dream of going to the 2008 Olympics was shattered when David Price – responsible for one of those four defeats – was selected as Team GB’s super-heavyweight for Beijing. After a failed attempt to qualify for the Ireland team, a disillusioned Fury almost quit the sport at the age of 19. “My age of innocence was smashed,” he said. “For a while I didn’t go near the gym because I was so upset.

Although often in the shadow of his close friend, and fellow Ukrainian southpaw, the brilliant lightweight Vasiliy Lomachenko, Oleksandr Usyk had an outstanding amateur career. The pinnacle came when he won Olympic heavyweight gold at London 2012 a day before his future opponent, Anthony Joshua,. Usyk’s father died later that August. “He watched me become Olympic champion, but I didn’t make it back in time to show him the gold medal,” Usyk said.

At 26 years old Usyk had his first professional fight in Kyiv. In front of an adoring home crowd, the top-knotted cruiserweight finished the Mexican journeyman Felipe Romero with a pinpoint left hand in round five. Given Usyk’s amateur pedigree, he was unsurprisingly put on a fast track to success. In his third contest, he was near the top of the bill when his countryman Wladimir Klitschkoin Germany.

In early 2022, the life of every Ukrainian changed with the invasion by Russia. Usyk took up arms, joining a defence battalion in Kyiv, saying: “I don’t want to shoot, I don’t want to kill anybody. But if they will be killing me, I will have no choice.” Eventually he was told by the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, among others, that he could better raise funds for his homeland and awareness of Ukraine’s plight by returning to the ring.

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