Usyk-Fury II promotion starts with respect, humor and tragic disclosure
Former champ reveals wife miscarried baby boy night before 1st fight
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When unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk and former champion Tyson Fury met the media for a news conference on Wednesday in London to kick off the promotion for their much-anticipated rematch, which will headline a Riyadh Season pay-per-view event on Dec. 21 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, there was no trash talk or threats.
Instead there was largely a celebration of the extraordinary fight they waged on May 18, a good dose of humor and the revelation of the tragedy that Paris, Tyson’s wife, was six months pregnant when she miscarried their baby boy the night before the fight.
When Fury and Usyk met last spring, also in Riyadh, they put on a classic fight worthy of the undisputed championship.
“It was history the first time — all four (heavyweight) belts on the line for the first time. You had two undefeated fighters going into the fight,” said Queensberry Promotions’ Frank Warren, Fury’s co-promoter with Top Rank. “It was a magnificent fight, unbelievably top quality heavyweight bout, and the next one I think is going to be every bit as good if not better because they’ve been in the ring with each other. They’ve shared that ring. I know they’ve got respect for each other.”
Usyk suffered cuts over his right eye that needed stitches and his face was bruised. Fury, whose face was also bruised, got knocked down in the one-sided ninth round in which Usyk was a whisper away from stopping him in a fight of the year contender. Both of them were so beat up from the rough fight that the original date for the rematch, Oct. 12, had to be postponed.
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