The length of Fury’s beard raises controversy before his fight against Usyk | sports

Sky Sports reported that Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk and his team asked British Tyson Fury to cut his beard before a heavyweight match.

Usyk and Fury will face off this Saturday evening in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in a return fight for the unified world title, 7 months after the Ukrainian’s victory last May.

But before this clash between the two heavyweight giants, in which 3 world belts will be at stake, a dispute arose over Fury’s beard.

The same source indicated that Ukrainian Osyk’s camp asked the referees to cut Fury’s beard, but officials announced that Fury would not be obligated to shave his beard.

Mauricio Sulaiman (President of the World Boxing Council), one of the three federations that will award the belt today, said, “There are regulations and the boxing committee examined Fury: there is no problem.”

However, Usyk’s camp does not have the same explanation, as they believe that Fury’s beard hair could serve him in some way to mitigate “the impact or trajectory of strikes” or could “cause scratches on his opponent’s face during a tackle. Therefore, Tyson’s beard must be trimmed. We will To move forward with this matter.”

In professional boxing, the boxer usually has to keep his beard trimmed and of a certain length, so a short beard cannot be used, for example, because it may cause damage to the opponent’s face. In this case, Usyk’s team wondered whether Furie’s full beard would be able to soften the blow.

Big difference in weight

For his part, Frank Warren (boxing fight promoter) considered such demands to be tantamount to “psychological warfare” that precedes the confrontation.

The two camps also disagreed in the last hours about choosing the judge who will replace Fernando Barbosa, who will be absent due to a health problem.

Thanks to his victory over Fury last May, Usyk was able to reunite the four main heavyweight belts, for the first time since 1999. But the International Boxing Federation belt this Saturday will not be at stake because it goes to Daniel Dubois, the winner over Anthony Joshua.

Usyk, “the one with the moustache,” still maintains an undefeated record during 22 professional fights, but he will not have the weight advantage today, as he weighed 102.5 compared to 127.46 kilograms for his opponent, Fury.