Former two division champion Carl Frampton was very critical of the recent performance by Tyson Fury, but he believes the WBC heavyweight champion will be in top form when he faces unified beltholder Oleksandr Usyk.
Last month in Saudi Arabia, Fury struggled in a ten round split decision win over MMA veteran Francis Ngannou, who was making his professional debut in boxing.
Fury went down in the third round and took more punishment than anyone could have ever expected.
While Frampton felt Fury looked terrible in the fight, he still believes the ‘Gypsy King’ is the favorite in the undisputed clash with Usyk.
“I still have Fury as a favorite against Usyk,” Frampton told BBC Sport. “He obviously needs to be much better than he was in his last fight, which he will be. He didn’t let the boxing community down, but he’s probably upset and annoyed at himself because it was a poor performance.
“It seems he’s doing too much. Both guys were at the gala dinner [in Saudi Arabia] the night before the event, what’s that about? I wouldn’t have been doing that if I was fighting. I would have been resting, but we all know Fury is much better than what we saw, and everyone is entitled to a bad performance once in a while.”
With respect to the performance by Ngannou, Frampton was blown away by what he witnessed.
“I couldn’t believe what I was watching at times. I expected Francis to look really wild and amateurish, novicey and be swinging from his feet, and he wasn’t,” Frampton said.
“He had a nice stylish stance, he looked like he had been boxing for a long time. He was very tough and powerful. Fury couldn’t work him out. It was a harder night than anyone anticipated. This isn’t me being the boxer slamming the MMA guys. Who in their rational mind would have thought Francis would’ve pushed Fury like that?”