Croatian heavyweight Agron Smakici has become well known in the boxing world after his sparring session with Tyson Fury ended up with the fight with Oleksandr Usyk being postponed.
Smakici went viral after a video surfaced of the sparring incident with ‘The Gypsy King’ where he caused a cut over the WBC champion’s eye.
Here's footage of the sparring that postponed the Tyson Fury vs Oleksander Usyk fight.
Looks like it was an elbow. Dayum. People can't go around saying he purposely wanted out of the fight now. #Boxing #MMA #Fury #TysonFury #Usyk #FuryUsyk pic.twitter.com/7wJRc6ANq6
— Abe (@AbeMorales209) February 2, 2024
MORE HERE: 🏟 John Fury calls out ‘snake’ Carl Froch for Wembley stadium fight
Speaking to IFLTV he clarified certain rumours that had been floating around.
He said: “Unfortunately it looks like bad news because I cancelled the biggest fight, but it wasn’t on purpose. That’s nonsense [that I did not feel bad] because I’m telling you it was a punch. I threw a punch. I feel the punch [but] because how he was pulling my head forward, maybe it goes to the elbow. I didn’t [do it] on purpose.”
He then continued and detailed the ill-fated day.
“We had breakfast at 11 o’clock [on the Friday] and at 11:30 they say ‘hey we’re gonna spar at 12 o’clock. So that was short notice. Everybody was still struggling from the day before, and two days before we also had conditioning training with him, doing all the stuff that he does. We were really trying to motivate him … Thursday was hard sparring, and Friday, it was too early for us to be honest, I was tired from the day before.”
“Thomas Carty started the first three rounds, and then I was the next one. We did good rounds. The first round was very good. I moved a lot, wrestled with [Fury]. He did some tricks, he likes to speak. ‘You little sausage, let’s go, come on,’ he’s the type like that. In the third round, it happened, the cut. Before that it was very good sparring.”
“In every camp you have situations when you have pain, or you get cold, it’s normal stuff. It’s boxing, not tennis. He was never complaining, he was doing all the rounds, training and everything. He was very good. Sometimes he would dance in the ring, singing, very good.”
Tyson Fury’s undisputed clash with Oleksandr Usyk has been rescheduled for May 18th in Riyadh.
