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Tyson Fury vs Oleksander Usyk not happening on Feb 17
UPDATE: Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix is reporting that Tyson Fury is cut and out of his February 17 heavyweight unification bout with Oleksander Usyk. The fight was booked to occur at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and air on pay-per-view worldwide for $69.99 on DAZN.com and PPV.com.
Bout has been pushed back once before
The fight had originally been booked for December 23, 2023 but was pushed back to February after Tyson Fury had a much tougher time winning a split decision over MMA lineal heavyweight champ Francis Ngannou who was making his pro boxing debut.
Incredible Fury vs Oysk promo video just dropped yesterday
Yesterday, an incredible video was released to promote the upcoming heavyweight title bout between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk. The full length trailer looks like it belongs to an incredible action movie or perhaps a cut scene from an elaborate video game. It’s riveting, with appearances by Tyson’s father (who looks like he belongs in movies as a proper tough guy) and a celebrity narration by a Peaky Blinder.
UFC hasn’t done a proper promo in years
The UFC put out one really well-done movie-trailer-style promo back when Conor McGregor fought Jose Aldo. Billed as the most expensive promotional trailer the UFC ever produced, the 47-second clip garnered near universal praise from fans and media alike, but since then, they’ve not done anything remotely similar. It’s almost as if they blew their proverbial wad on that one promo and decided either the fans weren’t worth the effort or the fighters weren’t. Not even Conor’s future fights would get that sort of video treatment.
These days, UFC trailers are collections of fight footage narrated by Jon Anik or a collaboration of the commentary team. A prime example is the one for UFC 271 where Israel Adesanya faced Robert Whittaker in a rematch. There is no movie magic hype to go with these “trailers”, just fight footage and rehashed stats-sharing. It’s boring and tedious, but we often forget these things because we’ve become conditioned to this being the fodder the brass thinks will hype fights. I think I can speak for us all when I say we deserve more. The Facebook link below takes you to the official UFC 271 trailer. The UFC’s official Facebook page was the only place I could locate the original.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1104346987034477
The mastermind behind the Fury-Usyk video deserves an award
The Fury-Usyk video, by comparison, is the best combat sports trailer in existence, in my humble opinion. There are tons of special effects/CGI and the clip takes us on an action-packed journey through different periods in human history that feature battle sequences. From the days of the Roman gladiator to the wild west with cowboys and shootouts, this trailer has it all.
And, as mentioned above, it’s narrated by Arthur Shelby himself aka Paul Anderson. It’s a good thing the filming and narration was completed before Anderson’s recent brush with the law due to his possession of crack cocaine (didn’t even know that was still a thing), because I think his voice is perfect here. Whomever came up with this brilliant mash-up of history’s combatants should win an award of some sort.
The UFC has a golden opportunity to one-up boxing with some sort of hype trailer like this. UFC 300 is right around the corner. All the creative minds across the social media sphere are already using Zack Snyder’s 300 movie as an obvious prop, but the largest promotion on the planet, currently valued at more than $12B, doesn’t even have a main event booked.
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