A MAN with a point to prove is a dangerous animal, and especially so when it comes to professional boxing. Tyson Fury arrived in Riyadh at the start of this week as precisely that, having spent the last twelve weeks in a closed training camp in Malta preparing for his rematch against Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk.

Saudi Arabia is where he experienced the first loss of a ring career which began in 2008, and Saudi Arabia is where he has arrived determined to avenge it. Saudi Arabia is also where people still get their heads chopped off one after the other in the name of criminal justice.

So now we have a hugely hyped boxing rematch on our hands. The usual boxing circus has rolled into town in the name not of sporting integrity, but money and mammon. The torture tables are full in Riyadh and so is the bullshit. Talk of repeat or revenge has been all the rage, as grown men — grown men, grant you — demean themselves in public and on camera with “His excellency” this and “His excellency” that. A small “e” will suffice for such a small man of such wealth.

As to the fight itself, Fury maintains that he did enough to gain the decision last time round. If so, he is walking in dangerous territory. If nobody within his entourage has the willingness to challenge this narrative, how does he approach the rematch? What changes and adjustments does he make?

The self-styled and coronated Gypsy King should, on the basis of the old saw that a good big man beats a good little man, walk through Usyk this Saturday night. But this is not heavyweight boxing of yesteryear. The result is Usyk being a pumped up cruiserweight for whom heavyweight boxing has provided a rich seam of riches. He has found there big men of questionable craft, of which he has taken full advantage.

But Tyson Fury is a different kind of “big man.” He can actually box and has the mindset and mentality of a fighter who can win ugly or handsomely, depending on the occasion and challenge presented.

In the first fight, in May of this year, he was cruising to the point of switching off concentration-wise. To switch off in a boxing ring is to be guilty of committing a cardinal sin. He should have known better. He didn’t. Usyk did and the result was the result. Unanimous decision after twelve rounds.

Neither Tyson Fury nor Oleksander Usyk need the money at this stage in their respective careers and lives, but they want more of it nonetheless. Greed is good in top flight pro boxing. Usyk claims to fight for a country mired in conflict. Does any serious person still seriously believe that?

Fury comes over as a man who will seek any excuse to escape the wife and kids. Gruelling boxing training camps are child’s play in comparison to the rigours of fatherhood and husbandry. It is what it is, as he proclaims on the regular.

Fury should win the rematch, and comfortably. Usyk as a heavyweight is an impostor. He has brought craft to a weight division in which size has sadly become all. Tyson Fury, though, is not merely a a size merchant, he also has serious ability in abundance. Would he have bested a prime Lennx Lewis? Not a chance. But he would have defeated the Frank Bruno who tested Lewis in Cardiff way back in 1993.

Top flight boxing is today a late-stage capitalist entity. Spectacle has replaced reality. The Colosseum is where the public are not so much entertained as distracted. Blood is the new currency, and the new currency is blood.

Violence is now hegemonic. War everywhere, peace nowhere. The boxing ring is now figurative in this regard. We have been reduced to primal.

All of this being said, I am looking forward to this event in Riyadh. I view it as an exercise in the suspension of disbelief. The critical theorists of the Frankfurt School would have a field day when it comes to unpacking its conceits and meaning.

Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk are two unlikely folk heroes. As were Jack Johnson and Joe Louis back in their day. Great fighters but flawed men. They excite, but also challenge the same time. Perhaps challenge is where consciousness resides.

The outcome of Fury vs Usyk II will not change the course of human history. It will entertain and it will titillate. But this is where we are now in human affairs. To be entertained in a time of genocide is an exercise in exculpation. To not be entertained is to be complicit in the judgement of your own conscience.

We need Fury-Usyk II as the cart needs the horse. So much money in the cause of such little worth.

Are we as a species, as 2024 gives way to 2025, worth anything more?