Tyson Fury will fight Oleksandr Usyk on May 18 after the much-anticipated heavyweight bout was rescheduled.
Fury was scheduled to fight Usyk in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, February 17 to become undisputed heavyweight world champion. But the fight was postponed on Friday after Fury sustained a deep cut above his right eye while sparring.
The 35-year-old Brit required 11 stitches to the gash and needs time for it to heal. But it has taken just a day for Saudi officials to find a new date for the fight, which will see Fury or Usyk take the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO heavyweight world titles and become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world – something that hasn’t happened since Lennox Lewis beat Evander Holyfield in 1999.
Usyk’s team had been keen to draft in Croatian Filip Hrgovic as a late replacement for two weeks’ time, but that plan has now been dropped. Fury struggled to beat former UFC world champion Francis Ngannou in October, but claimed he was in fantastic shape in his training camp until the injury struck.