Fury sparring partner breaks silence after freak injury cancelled Usyk fight

06 February 2024 , 11:36

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Fury sparring partner breaks silence after freak injury cancelled Usyk fight

Tyson Fury's sparring partner - who cancelled the Brit's undisputed fight with Oleksandr Usyk - has rubbished claims he didn't feel bad about the incident.

Fury was scheduled to fight fellow heavyweight champion Usyk for the undisputed world titles on February 17, but pulled out on just over two weeks' notice after being cut in sparring. Video footage later emerged of Croatian heavyweight Agron Smakici cutting Fury and most fans were convinced it was because of an accidental elbow rather than a punch.

Smakici played down a report that he didn't feel bad about cutting Fury as he told iFL TV: "Unfortunately it looks like bad news because I cancelled the biggest fight, but it wasn't on purpose. I threw a punch, I know I felt the punch but maybe because he was pulling my head forward it went with the elbow. It wasn't on purpose. I was asking Mr Sugar [Hill] what sort of sparring I should do.

Tyson Fury was cut by the Croatian in sparring (HappyPunch/X)

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"He said 'Just do however you feel.' I was trying to move a lot like Usyk, moving around a lot and hitting the body. I do professional wrestling so I was also doing wrestling with him, everything was going good. He wasn't not in shape as people were writing. He did some tricks, he likes to speak. 'You little sausage, come on'. We had some stuff like that in the sparring."

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Rumours were spreading about Fury having a troublesome training camp for the fight, with former world champion Johnny Nelson claiming he was being 'turned over' in sparring. Smakici said Fury was in great shape and another sparring partner, Jai Opetaia, only left the camp after five days to focus on his own fight against Mairis Breidis, which was supposed to take place on the undercard.

"In the third round, the cut happened. All of the time was with headguards, he had big gloves and I had big gloves. They put vaseline [on him]. Everything was protected. We didn't know what happened, he just said 'I'm bleeding, I'm bleeding. I'm cut.' Every camp you have situations like these, it's boxing," Smakici added.

The Croatian wants to help out Fury for his rescheduled fight against Usyk on May 18th and revealed he was supposed to stay in Saudi Arabia to help Joseph Parker prepare to fight Zhilei Zhang. "I would like to go back to the Fury camp, they are really cool. I will put some elbow protection if they need," he added.

Harry Davies