Boxing’s most iconic cutman ready to join Tyson Fury’s camp for Usyk fight and reveals tiny tactic to protect horror cut
BOXING’S most iconic cutman is ready to join Tyson Fury’s team to protect the horror cut that forced him out of fighting Oleksandr Usyk.
And Jacob “Stitch” Duran – the best in the business – revealed the tiny tactic that will give Fury the edge in training for the rescheduled bout.
The Gypsy King was due to face Usyk in Saudi Arabia on February 17 in the first four-belt heavyweight unification bout.
But a gash sustained in sparring just two weeks out from the historic undisputed decider forced Fury out until the postponed May 18 date.
Duran estimates it will be a little over three months until the cut is fully healed and advised him to invest in a new head guard in sparring.
He told SunSport: “The rule of thumb for cuts is 100 days, that type of thing.
“But yes, he has plenty of time. From now and then he can work on so many techniques, so many different things without getting hit up here.
“There’s a lot of things that he can do in preparation and the final three or four weeks of preparation, if he wants to go hard let him go hard.
“I would recommend the headgear that has a bar, evidently what happened is the shot came upwards.”
Fury was sparring with a Paffen head guard with cheek protectors at the time of the injury.
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But Duran insisted swapping it out for the larger version which has a bar across the face to guard the nose could be key to protecting the cut.
He said: “Yeah. It’s not that bad! It’s more just the timing was bad than anything else.”
Fury famously suffered a catastrophic cut in his 2019 win over Otto Wallin but somehow battled on to win a points decision.
He needed 47 stitches as a result and also called on the experience and expertise of Duran for his following two bouts.
And now Duran is ready to re-join Fury’s camp in a bid to once again save the WBC champion’s skin.
He said: “That would be a great opportunity. But I’ve been in this game long enough that I’m just like a surfer, I just go with the waves.
“If it happens, it would make sense from a business aspect of it because I know Bob Arum requested I work with him the first time I worked with him.
“Does it make sense? Yeah, it makes sense from confidence more than anything else and technique.”