The promoter of WBA, WBO, IBF and Ring Magazine champion Oleksandr Usyk 21-0 (14) remains sceptical of the information he is being fed by the camp of WBC titleholder Tyson Fury 34-0-1 (24) after their four-belt unification bout was pushed back by three months.
Britain’s Fury, 35, suffered a cut over his right eye in sparring a fortnight out from their February 17 bout in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with the fight rescheduled for the same city on May 18.
While Alexander Krassyuk, who promotes the 37-year-old Ukrainian southpaw Usyk, believes there is a cut involved, he remains unsure of the veracity of the sparring video he has been shown that shows Croatian sparring partner Agron Smakici 20-2 (18) appearing to connect with an errant elbow to Fury’s head.
“I did see this video,” Krassyuk told Boxing News. “It’s not a convincing video, together with the picture of Tyson that he is in good shape. Very slim. People find this picture to be made three years ago. I did not explore it myself. But that’s what people said to me on Instagram.
“There’s another picture with him and [promoter] Dmitry Salita in the ring, same underwear. But who knows? Maybe Tyson has been wearing his underwear for three or four years. You never know.
“The fact is that you cannot trust this video. And the video itself does not prove anything. The picture of the cut, yeah, it shows us the fact. The cut is severe. But getting punched in a gear by an uppercut and get cut? No way. There is an elbow. But how the hell can an elbow get inside after an uppercut? What should be done? And when someone is screaming — why would they scream? Did they see blood? Okay, if they saw the blood, why wouldn’t the blood appear on the gloves when he was wiping his eye?
“Too many questions. This video is not convincing. The convincing thing is the medical report and the statement that he got cut.”
Krassyuk said he is satisfied with the medical report supplied by the Saudis.
“This was confirmed by our Saudi partners,” Krassyuk said. “They got the medical report and the medical report claims he would need two, three months to recover.”
For his part, southpaw Smakici explained what happened in the gym in an interview with iFL TV.
“Unfortunately it looks like bad news because I cancelled the biggest fight, but it wasn’t on purpose,” Smakici said. “That’s nonsense [that I don’t feel bad] because I’m telling you it was a punch. I threw a punch. I feel the punch [but] because how he was pulling my head forward, maybe it goes to the elbow. I didn’t [do it] on purpose.
“We had breakfast at 11 o’clock [on the Friday] and at 11:30 they say ‘hey we’re gonna spar at 12 o’clock’. So that was short notice. Everybody was still struggling from the day before, and two days before we also had conditioning training with him, doing all the stuff that he does. We were really trying to motivate him… Thursday was hard sparring, and Friday, it was too early for us to be honest, I was tired from the day before.
“Thomas Carty started the first three rounds, and then I was the next one. We did good rounds. The first round was very good. I moved a lot, wrestled with [Fury]. He did some tricks, he likes to speak. ‘You little sausage, let’s go, come on’, he’s the type like that. In the third round it happened, the cut. Before that it was very good sparring.”