Boxing fans won’t have to wait long to see Usyk vs. Fury 2, but it won’t be for the undisputed heavyweight title, which seems pretty dumb.

We’re less than two weeks removed from the epic showdown between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury for the undisputed heavyweight title — a fight years in the making — and we already have a date for the rematch.

That’s why so many sports fans are happy about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in boxing these days: they’re putting their money where their mouths are and making all the big fights happen … in a timely fashion as well. After Usyk vs. Fury went to Usyk via split decision, both men sounded too exhausted from extended training camps to stick to an October rematch date which was stipulated in their original bout agreements.

Normally, this would be where everything would fall apart. No new date would be set, and we’d never get to see a second fight between these two top heavyweights. But the Kingdom’s Turki Alalshikh has just come out and declared a new date for Usyk vs. Fury 2.

“The rematch between the Undisputed Champion Oleksandr Usyk and the Champion Tyson Fury is now scheduled on the 21 of December 2024 during Riyadh Season,” Alalshikh wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “The world will watch another historical fight again. Our commitment to boxing fans continues. We hope you enjoy it.”

We’re sure we will. The first fight lived up to all the hype, and featured Oleksandr Usyk almost knocking Tyson Fury out in the 9th round. The referee controversially stepped in and gave Fury a standing ten count, which scores the same as a knockdown but robbed Usyk of the chance to finish the fight completely right there. From Fury’s POV, though, he was robbed of a chance to avoid a knockdown completely … if there was no knockdown scored, he would have won the decision in the end.

High drama, and worthy of a rematch.

The only bummer? While Saudi Arabia is keeping the big fights coming (this weekend there’s an inter-promotional Queensbury vs. Matchroom event headlined by Deontay Wilder vs. Zhilei Zhang), you can always rely on the alphabet soup sanctioning bodies to trip things up.

There’s a good chance Usyk will no longer be ‘undisputed’ heavyweight champion by December because the IBF plans to strip him. They have Filip Hrgovic as the mandatory challenger and no concern for how stupid they look splitting the undisputed heavyweight title up so quickly.

Boxing gonna boxing. At least we’re still getting the big fights.

Author: Staff

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