Fury made Joshua ‘look like a p***y’ and ‘bullied’ Usyk

Johnny Nelson has accused Tyson Fury of ‘bullying’ Oleksandr Usyk in the negotiations for their doomed undisputed fight. The former cruiserweight world champion doesn’t believe Fury wanted to box Usyk and claims his public negotiation tactics were used as smoke and mirrors to shift the blame onto the Ukrainian for the fight’s eventual collapse.

A similar approach was used with Anthony Joshua ahead of their proposed showdown in December as Fury bombarded his fierce rival with a stream of callouts which Nelson says made AJ ‘look like a p***y’ when he didn’t respond.

“We’ve seen this before and it’s like when a bully, bullies you in a passive way, makes a joke about you and makes everyone else laugh about the joke so it’s a passive way of bullying someone,” he told IFL TV. “Usyk was answering it, he was replying and you’ve got to reply or you look like a p***y. Anthony Joshua didn’t reply and looked like a p***y when it fell by the wayside.”

Usyk, learning from his former foe’s mistakes, chose to publicly respond to Fury’s rants and was able to shift the narrative as a result. One such example is when Fury came out and claimed that negotiations were being held up because Usyk was demanding a rematch clause.

The former undisputed cruiserweight world champion then replied on social media, insisting that it was in fact Fury who had put the clause forward in the first place. In the end, the splits for the rematch were the final nail in the coffin.

Usyk reluctantly accepted Fury’s demands of a 70 per cent lion’s share of the prize pot for the first fight on the understanding that the split would be reversed in the rematch if he won their inaugural encounter. However, according to boxing insider Mike Coppinger, The Gypsy King refused to accept anything less than 50-50, leading to Usyk’s side pulling the plug. 

“From what I’ve seen, it sounds like Tyson has priced himself out of the job,” Nelson continued. “First, he gets the agreement of 70-30 split then there’s no rematch clause and Usyk is saying ‘hang on, wait a minute, I didn’t want a rematch, you wanted the rematch and I’m cool with it’. 

“Now, all of a sudden, it’s something else, it’s something else. If I’m going to ask for the impossible and you’re going to keep giving it to me and you’re going to keep pushing and pushing, then it’s quite clear Usyk wanted the fight. It’s quite clear Tyson Fury has put demands down and has pushed it too far.”