Neither Tyson Fury nor Oleksandr Usyk fought last weekend. Fury is still 34-0-1 with 24 KOs, 6’9”, 35 years old, the same as he was a week ago. Usyk is still 21-0 with 14 KOs, 6’3”, 37 years old, the same as he was a week ago.
Nothing has changed in the past week. Nothing, that is, except perception.
At several major sportsbooks, Fury was favored one week ago to win the May 18 heavyweight championship showdown, but now is the underdog to Usyk.
To be clear, it’s not a dramatic odds shift — just enough to tip from ever so narrowly in one direction to ever so narrowly in the other.
At FanDuel, the highest-volume sports wagering operator in the U.S., last week Fury was a -125 favorite, and Usyk was even-money, or +100. Now, as of this writing, Usyk is the -128 favorite, and Fury is the ‘dog at a price of +104.
Again, it’s a modest amount of movement. But the movement is not so modest if you go back further. One year ago, last March, when Fury and Usyk seemed close to agreeing to an April 29, 2023 fight at Wembley Stadium, the sportsbook bet365 had Fury a clear favorite at -225 and Usyk a +175 underdog.
A price of -225 equates to implied odds of 69.2% that Fury was going to win. Now, the +104 odds on Fury say he’s just 49% to prevail.
For what it’s worth, the odds currently vary depending on the sportsbook. BetMGM has odds similar to FanDuel’s: Usyk -125, Fury -110 (is it any wonder the house always wins in the long run with prices like that?). ESPN and Caesars both have it dead even, -110 both ways. DraftKings still has Fury favored at -125 and Usyk at +100.
But if you average out all the prices at all the books, Usyk is, by the slimmest of margins, the favorite to win nine weeks from now.
And it’s pretty clear that has nothing to do with anything the southpaw from Ukraine has done recently. After all, he hasn’t done anything recently except continue training for the fight.
It’s all about how horrendous Fury looked in his last fight … combined with how overmatched his near-conqueror Francis Ngannou looked against Anthony Joshua last Friday … combined with Usyk having gotten the better of Joshua in both 2021 and 2022.
A beats B, B beats C, C damned near beats D, and either the betting public starts salivating seeing plus-money on A to beat D, or the bookmakers start worrying that they’ve made a mistake favoring D to beat A. Or a bit of both.
Whether it’s coming from the bookmakers or the bettors doesn’t matter as much as what the odds movement says about Fury. It speaks to fans and experts alike losing faith in a fighter who, prior to facing Ngannou, was regarded as the clear best heavyweight of his era. Fans spent as much time speculating about how he stacked up against the all-time greats (could he beat Ali, Lennox, prime Tyson, etc.?) as about how he compared to his contemporaries.
Then he got knocked down by a guy who’d literally never boxed professionally before and had to BS and hustle his way to a 10-round split decision win.
Did he take Ngannou lightly? Most certainly. Was he in subpar physical shape? It appeared so. But is that why he looked so awful? Or has a lifetime of hard living, hard fighting, and weight fluctuation started to catch up to him?
Hall of Famer Carl Froch said this week, “Fury’s past his best. He’s seen better days.”
He expounded: “I study the sport and I study the fights, and Tyson Fury used to throw 30-plus feints a round. Feint, feint. Draw his opponent in, feint. Double jab, right hand. He’s not doing the feints anymore. He’s doing four or five feints. He’s slow on his feet. He’s been knocked down five times [in recent years]. When you’re hitting the floor and getting hit on the chin and not throwing feints and not as busy as you used to be, that means you’re past your best and you’re on the decline and you’re on the slide.”
All of this was apparent immediately after October 28, when Fury barely eked it out against Ngannou. And that moved the Fury-Usyk odds quite a bit – but not enough to make “The Gypsy King” the underdog.
The key to pushing things over that line was Joshua exposing Ngannou’s limitations.
After “AJ” splattered Ngannou on March 8, there could be no more talking yourself into the notion that, despite his lack of boxing experience, Ngannou’s remarkable athletic talent and general combat sports background were enough to instantly make him a world-class heavyweight boxer, and therefore Fury’s tough night against him was forgivable.
Is Ngannou a good boxer for an MMA fighter? Sure.
But Joshua barely broke a sweat proving Ngannou isn’t actually much of a boxer. And Fury’s stock plummeted as a result.
Usyk is giving up six inches in height, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 pounds on the scale, and even a couple of years on the calendar. If the theory that “a good big man beats a good little man” is to be believed, Fury – who, by the way, doesn’t lack one bit for boxing skill or hand speed – should be expected to prevail.
But it’s safe to say Usyk is not just a good little man (“little” for a modern heavyweight, that is) but a great one. And maybe Fury, once a great big man, is now just a good big man.
And as we’ve seen countless times, a great little man can kick a good big man’s ass: Manny Pacquiao vs. Oscar De La Hoya, Terence Crawford vs. Errol Spence, Canelo Alvarez vs. Sergey Kovalev, Roy Jones vs. John Ruiz, and on and on and on. Size is the most overrated factor by casual fans when they’re trying to assess what will happen in the boxing ring.
The oddsmakers and bettors, however, are not overrating size in Fury-Usyk. At least not anymore.
The odds are telling us that there’s a growing belief that the Tyson Fury who ended the long reign of Wladimir Klitschko and scored two knockout wins over Deontay Wilder is gone.
Even his own father, John Fury, admitted, “For my money, his last three fights, I have seen a bit of a decline.” He proceeded to chalk that decline up to preparation and to confidently predict his son will put in the necessary work and therefore, “Usyk’s going to have a problem.”
But for the elder Fury to even toss around the word “decline” tells us the prime version of The Gypsy King may be a thing of the past.
The question now from a betting perspective is whether the odds have swung as far as they possibly can in Usyk’s behavior and will swing back between now and fight night, or if Usyk will became a more decisive favorite.
From where I sit, that will largely come down to training reports and videos out of Fury’s camp. If he’s looking sharp and, by his standards, svelte, there could well be another pendulum swing. If he’s looking flabby and word is trickling out that he’s been flat in sparring, the money will come in on Usyk and the odds will probably widen a bit.
For now, though, Fury, the lineal heavyweight champ, is the underdog against a former cruiserweight king who’s a little older than he is and a lot smaller than he is.
And, strange as this may sound, it’s largely because Anthony Joshua sent Francis Ngannou to hell last weekend.
Perception is not necessarily reality. But clearly, perception is impacting the betting lines. In the end, it will be reality that determines which bets win.
