Causing Oleksandr Usyk fight to be postponed – he provoked me with ‘dirty moves’

Agron Smakici has given talkSPORT his side of the story regarding what happened with Tyson Fury’s cut, Talk Sport reports.

At the start of February, the Gypsy King was forced to postpone his undisputed heavyweight world title clash with Oleksandr Usyk from February 17 to May 18 after suffering a gash in sparring.

This was caused by Croatian sparring partner Smakici, who joined White and Jordan on talkSPORT on Thursday to reflect on the situation.

“Nothing special happened,” he explained, “We had a good sparring session all day before that.

“It’s just he put some fire with bad talking and dirty moves.

“When my head was down, he did some dirty tricks, which made the fire and the heat going on.

“And then I gave 100 percent of me, and the injury happened, unfortunately…

“He said some things, but it’s not so much what he said. He put my head down.

“Even if I put his head down many times because I have good wrestling skills, he put my head down once, and he was doing bad things with my head, if you know what I mean.”

There has been some controversy about whether the blow that cut Fury was an elbow.

However, Smakici is adamant this is not the case.

“I am 100 percent sure it was my first,” he insisted.

“Also after the cut he didn’t say, ‘Hey that was an elbow,’ or something like that.

“There’s a difference between an elbow and gloves with a fist – you would feel the elbow, it’s like a hammer.

“Maybe it slipped because he was pulling my head forward.

“Maybe it slipped to the elbow, but it wasn’t on purpose.”