Watching Tyson Fury get robbed last night in Riyadh, I realised on balance that I am in favour of Saudi Arabia’s often ludicrous-seeming recent efforts at sports-washing. Why not? Sure, staging ultra-high profile boxing matches like this in a nation with no boxing heritage whatsoever is obviously a shameless effort at changing negative perceptions, but it’s also an attempt to integrate with the outside world.
Ultimately, integration is a good and civilising thing, not least because it means abiding by different, and in this case better, rules. It’s no coincidence, for example, that it became possible at the start of this year to buy booze in the kingdom. Likewise, it would be impossible for anyone familiar with Saudi Arabia before 2018 to witness the luminously beautiful, unmarried Rosie Huntington-Whitely sitting ringside with her stupendously glossy hair displayed over her shoulders for all the world to see without considering how far the nation has come in a relatively short time. Tourists – with the exception of religious pilgrims – weren’t even allowed into Saudi Arabia until 2019.
Boxing is a murky business – always has been and presumably always will be
Anyway, I digress. Tyson Fury was robbed by three human judges and a gimmicky AI judge when they decided unanimously he had been defeated for a second time over twelve admittedly close rounds by the smaller Ukrainian fighter and reigning world champion Alexander Usyk.
Yes, the big man from Morecambe might have landed fewer punches – which according to the AI judge was the case – but there wasn’t much in it and Fury’s were certainly the heavier and better-aimed blows. Usyk darted in and out bravely to land his hits, and by doing so, cause mini-tsunamis to explode frequently across his opponent’s copious belly and back fat. But as the contest wore on it was clear that Fury, with his more disciplined fight plan for this second contest, was dominating.
Fury might not have looked as fast either on his feet or with his fists as he had previously – for example, in his last two fights against Deontay Wilder in 2020 and 2021 – but still he was able to breach Usyk’s defences with regularity and to snap his head back with pleasingly stiff jabs and hurtful upper-cuts. By the end, it was the Ukrainian who looked to be hanging on most desperately in the hope of making it to the final bell.
But then the verdict, and for Fury the heartbreak. His likeable manager Frank Warren got into the ring to flash his hammerhead eyes and announce he thought the decision was ‘nuts’. Usyk, too, seemed surprised. Asked if he agreed with the judges’ scores, he evaded the question by saying he was only an athlete and therefore in no position to know.
Both men have long been a credit to boxing. Yes, Fury has said some things – particularly about Christianity and homosexuals – that have caused outbreaks of panicked pearl-clutching in places like the BBC, but surely he must be cut some slack on the basis he left school at eleven and was raised a gypsy. On the whole, he has navigated the piranha-tank of elite-level boxing with a pleasing openness and lack of guile, trying always to entertain out of the ring as much as he has in it.
Usyk, too, seems every inch a comic book superhero: an emissary from a nation going through hell sent to restore pride and glory by defeating all who stand in his way – which is exactly what he has done, with considerable charm and eccentricity. His professional record is astonishing, and has led to observations that he has ‘completed boxing’.
‘I can more’, he said last night in his delightfully broken English, shortly after dedicating his win to the mothers of Ukraine. Presumably, that will mean pocketing another $100 million-odd to give Saudi Arabia’s international reputation one more 60-degree spin by fighting Daniel ‘Dynamite’ Dubois, the young chap from Greenwich who recently poleaxed fellow Brit Anthony Joshua. Nice work, if you can get it.
Fury, perhaps, shouldn’t feel too aggrieved. He was soundly thrashed in Riyadh in 2023 when he boxed the mixed martial artist Francis Ngannou and yet, ludicrously, was given the decision by the judges. Had the decision gone the other way, the result would have been quite possibly the greatest upset in the history of sport – Ngannou having never competed in a boxing match – and it’s likely Fury’s two matches against Usyk would never have transpired.
Anyway, boxing is a murky business – always has been and presumably always will be – and, once you accept that, it is possible even perversely to start to enjoy it. Saudi Arabia is getting what it wants, and so, too, are the fans. If you can ignore the stuff the kingdom would like you to ignore – which is the whole point – then it’s all tremendous fun. Ultimately, as they like to say in the hurt business, that’s all she wrote.
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