Crocker vs Felix.
1 Like
The size of sunny Edward’s between the 2 lads 
1 Like
Hon Felix.
Crocker the prick with the deserved win.
Fury -v- Usyk is OFF
Gypsy King unfortunately picked up an injury
He is 100% ducking, rumors he was getting slapped around in sparring and there you go.
4 Likes
One of the top boxing men in the country passed away today, Ollie O’Neill from Paulstown. Father of Darren.
He had a tough few years of it with about the worst illness you can get.
RIP Ollie.
5 Likes
Fair play to him letting whatever fat cruiserweight it was headbutt him 5 or 6 times, and in the same place the fat Swede cut him for believability. Would be lovely if he’d fuck off and retire the fat, pillow fisted, boring cunt.
Can’t fight with that, wonder how he went about it, built un excuse when he gets beaten, as he likes.
His resume is basically the fundamentally terrible Wilder and Vlad, who had a massive streak of yellow in him.
People had this cunt over Lewis!
The current crop of heavyweights are Junior B compared to the greats.Frank Bruno would dominate if he was around these days.
A wave breaks gently across the beach and the tears begin to pool in Oleksandr Usyk’s eyes as he stares out towards the horizon. Only a few days have passed since Tyson Fury was cut in a sparring session, forcing the pair’s undisputed heavyweight title bout to be postponed and rendering the Ukrainian’s four-month-long training camp in Valencia almost futile.
That time and distance from his family in Kyiv was a measure of the sacrifice Usyk had made for a fight that could confirm his place among boxing’s greats, even missing the birth of his daughter last month, but the 37-year-old harbours few signs of frustration. In fact, it is just as Usyk is explaining why victory still would not surpass his 2012 Olympic gold medal in London that he is suddenly overcome by emotion.
“My father was a tough man. He never told me sentimental words but, when I won the Olympics, he was already very sick,” Usyk says, after a long pause to stem the tears. “I called him on the phone that evening and he told me he loved me. He said, ‘Now I’m ready to take death’. I told him, ‘This is only the beginning for us, there are professional belts,’ but a few days later my mum called at 2.30am and said, ‘That’s it, Dad’s gone’.
“I flew to Chernihiv, where they lived, and, when I entered the room, he was lying in a wooden coffin. I took the medal and put it in his hand and said, ‘Here you go’. I know he’s up there in the skies watching me and he’s proud. I think about him every day, and I never miss a chance to tell my children that I love them.”
Usyk pauses again, takes his phone from his pocket and video-calls his son, Mykhailo. “Baby boy, I love you very much. I will call you again later,” he says, his voice still cracking.
Usyk is an extraordinary champion, as unashamed to cry as he is to laugh, gleaning optimism despite the death and devastation that have formed the backdrop to daily life for almost every Ukrainian since Russia launched its full-scale invasion two years ago.
He recalls the messages on his phone from friends fighting on the frontlines and the memory of those who have already been lost and, in that light, it is little wonder Usyk gives short shrift to the interminable delays to a fight with Fury, which has now been rescheduled again, for May 18 in Saudi Arabia.
“I can either blame the world for all my problems or try to smile and make it better,” Usyk says. “Maybe things will not get easier, but it’s easier to live with it if you find something positive. There was a time when it was difficult even for me to have dreams, so I’m grateful. This is just an ordinary fight against a big guy holding my belt in occupation. It’s not if I win, but when.”
The outcome may not be quite such a formality as that. Fury is the slight favourite, owing largely to his significant size advantage, with Usyk having started his professional career as a cruiserweight, where he unified all four titles before stepping up a division and twice beating Anthony Joshua to claim and then defend the IBF, WBA and WBO belts.
“If Joshua is a gentleman and an intellectual guy, Fury is rather a chatterbox,” Usyk says, erupting into laughter. Joshua did not cover himself in glory after their rematch in 2022 either, tossing the belts from the ring and ranting as he refused to accept defeat, but the pressure on Usyk, as an enormously popular emblem of Ukraine’s resistance in traditional Cossack clothing, was a far greater weight to bear.
“The first task is peace in our country, and the main thing is not to give up, never, no matter how difficult it will become,” he says. “God does not give you a challenge if you are not able to endure it. He does not give you problems, he gives you strength.”
It has often been difficult for Usyk to reconcile that individual success with the broader plight of his country. When the invasion began, he volunteered for a territorial defence battalion in Kyiv and patrolled the capital with a machine gun. His home in Vorzel, about 20 miles to the northeast, was damaged and occupied by Russian soldiers, who tied grenades to trees in the garden. It was only after he visited a hospital and the wounded soldiers cheered him that Usyk resolved to continue boxing, but even now he insists he is “ready to go to the frontlines if necessary”.
“It’s horrifying when a young man is there without an arm or a leg,” he says. “I have lots of friends that are now protecting our country from the enemy. Some have died. Some have lost their limbs. I visit them, talk to them, and help as I can, but their brave hearts are still beating.
“They haven’t lost their spirit. They are more positive than the people who don’t live having to think about war.”
That mindset acts as the bedrock of Usyk’s personality, a confluence of religious faith and resilience. He is a devout Christian, consistently referencing prayer and a sense of destiny. “My sons say, ‘Dad, you will be a legend after this fight’. I just say, ‘Thanks, God,’ ” he says, but it is also the product of an impoverished upbringing in Simferopol, before Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014, when Usyk used to tend cattle and sold fresh fruit and ice cream to help his family survive.
“My father was in the military, then he worked in the [power] plant and in security,” he says. “My mother worked on a construction site all her life. When I went to bed, they weren’t home and when I woke up, they were already gone, so I spent a lot of time in the street working from a very young age.
“We didn’t have enough food. There were days I wanted bread so badly but we had no money, but now I know how incredible bread and water taste. If I didn’t have such a difficult life, I wouldn’t be this person, so I’m not complaining. I bought my first pair of trendy shoes for $100 when I was 18. It was the only money I had. Now I can afford to buy my son 100 pairs of any trainers in the world. I’ve worked hard so my children don’t have to live like I did.”
Football was Usyk’s first love — he even made a professional appearance for the Ukrainian second division club Polissya Zhytomyr last year — but his parents could not afford the team kit or travel expenses. He turned to his local boxing gym at 15 years old, where the coach’s wife re-sewed a pair of gloves to fit his hands, and Usyk established himself as a formidable amateur over the course of the next decade. He credits Anatoly Lomachenko, the father of his fellow Olympic gold medallist Vasiliy, for honing the agile technique that defies old stereotypes of stiff Soviet boxers.
“Anatoly helped me understand what I was capable of,” says Usyk, who also won heavyweight gold at the amateur world championships in 2011. His amateur record was outstanding, with 335 wins to only 15 defeats, before he turned professional after the London Olympics. But when Egis Klimas, Usyk’s manager, shopped him around the United States, there was little interest from promoters, who presumed him to be too small to compete at heavyweight and instead focused on Lomachenko, who went on to win a world title in only his third fight.
“I told Oleksandr, ‘I highly recommend you go back home and build your career there,’ ” Klimas says. Usyk instead signed with K2, the promotional outfit founded by the Klitschko brothers, and he was fast-tracked through the unglamorous cruiserweight division, becoming the undisputed champion inside 15 fights.
Usyk only came to the broader attention of the British public when he knocked out Tony Bellew in Manchester in 2018, but many still believed he would prove too slight against taller opponents often weighing about 20kg more. “Nobody gave him a good chance,” Klimas says. “They said, ‘He’s too small, he can’t do this’. Nobody believed he could beat Joshua two times.”
The first bout with Joshua, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in September 2021, was a dominant points victory that exposed the Briton’s technical flaws. The second, in August 2022, was a more emotionally charged and closer-fought contest in Saudi Arabia, taking place only six months after the invasion began, which Usyk again won unanimously on the scorecards. While Joshua flew off in his fit of rage, Usyk stood in the centre of the ring with a single tear falling down his cheek, an image of stoicism in stark contrast to the goofy, gap-toothed grin and humorous barbs in broken English that defined his earlier career.
“We brought several soldiers with us [to Saudi], but I was also getting a lot of messages from people on the frontlines who I didn’t know saying that I was inspiring them,” he says. “I was just happy and relieved for the victory.”
There would be little else for Usyk to achieve in boxing if he defeats Fury, assuming the fight does eventually come to fruition. Conspiracy theories have inevitably abounded over the WBC champion’s cut, which required 11 stitches and followed persistent rumours of poor performances in sparring. “Even if someone is trying to play me, he’s playing on my rules,” Usyk says, although he feigns no interest in a back-and-forth. “Sometimes you just have to let a naughty child yell for a bit,” he adds, much to the hilarity of his translator and English teacher.
Usyk remains adamant that he has several more fights in him yet, regardless of what happens. “Until I don’t have enough strength to wake up at 5am to train, I will keep going,” he says, but the emotion creeps back into his voice as he envisions what comes afterwards and the prospect of his sons following him into boxing. “I think they would like to and I’ll help them. I’ll dedicate my life to my family, attend their competitions, become their driver,” he says. Usyk plans to return to Kyiv this week.
“Sometimes I think about all the time I could be spending with my kids, watching them grow up, how they run, smile, fall down and raise themselves up, trying to become more like me or fighting the whole world. For all this time I’ve been without them. It’s sad but I pray everything is fine. That is our life.”
Usyk’s daughter, his fourth child, was born in the morning on January 28. Yekaterina, his wife of 15 years, who has never missed any of his professional fights, video-called from the maternity ward with their newborn baby lying on her chest. Usyk told them he loved them from his hotel room more than 2,000 miles away, sat alone, and cried tears of joy.
2 Likes
Fury will get killed by this chap. Like the time McGregor tried to wind up that raving lunatic kabib.
1 Like
Hopefully.
4 Likes
These boys are a different bred.
2 Likes
The Wilder trilogy finished Fury, he’s only interested in fighting binmen like Derek Chisora and Dylan White now, no doubt he’ll have another “injury” before the rescheduled fight, he’s a disgrace to heavyweight boxing
3 Likes
Sheeraz v Williams should be a good fight tonight on BT lads. Warren has a lot invested in Sheeraz, has a really fan friendly style. Williams is never in a bad fight. Think Sheeraz has moved to America to train and the whole show.
Be surprised if it goes by halfway. Sheeraz to win by round 6 2/1
1 Like
One round FFS easy easy
1 Like
He is something else that kid. Next biv UK star. I know Smith is punchy but still.