A few days ago Agron Smakici could not have imagined that he would soon be at the centre of the biggest story in world sport this week – he is the man who ‘cancelled’ Tyson Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk.
The 33-year-old Croatian heavyweight (20-2 with 18 wins inside distance) became a global story on Friday morning when he cut ‘The Gypsy King’ in sparring, just over two weeks out from that February 17 superfight.
Now boxing must wait until at least the rescheduled date of May 18 to crown a first undisputed world heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis back in 1999.
Four days on from that cut that reverberated around the world, Smakici spoke to IFL TV on YouTube to explain just how Fury’s injury happened, and what he felt at the time.
How Smakici cut Fury
“Unfortunately it looks like bad news because I cancelled the biggest fight, but it wasn’t on purpose. I’m telling you, it was a punch, I threw a punch. I know I feel the punch, but how he was pulling my head forward, maybe it goes to the elbow.”
Smakici revealed he had been in camp Fury for two weeks before the cut happened, sparring the WBC and lineal heavyweight champion ‘3 or 4 times’, each for 3 or 4 rounds.
“I was really trying to move a lot like Usyk, avoiding punches, hitting the body. I also do professional wrestling so I was also wrestling with him. He was really good, I can’t say he was not in shape or something, what people are writing.”
Smakici opened up in detail about the session on Friday where the injury to Fury happened, revealing: “Thomas Carty started the first three rounds, I was the next one.
“We did good rounds, the first round was very good, I moved a lot, wrestled with him. He did some tricks, he likes to speak – ‘you little sausage, let’s go’ – he’s the type like that. We had some stuff like that, speaking like that in the sparring.
In the third round, it happened, the cut. Before that it was interesting sparring, it was very good sparring.”
