Inside Oleksandr Usyk’s internal sanctum forward of Tyson Fury showdown

It’s not an everyday occurrence to be welcomed into the inner sanctum of a world heavyweight great, especially when they stand on the brink of becoming the first undisputed champion of the modern era.

But Mail Sport are in the suburbs of Valencia to join Oleksandr Usyk in camp ahead of his monumental fight with Tyson Fury fight on Saturday night, bearing witness to his relentless training regime before sitting down for an interview at his villa in Gandia.

The 37-year-old WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight champion becomes emotional when speaking about his final conversation with his late father and recounting the experience of a bomb exploding near his daughter’s school in Ukraine.

But first, the revelation that boxing was not Usyk’s first calling.

‘My dream when I was younger was to be a singer or dancer,’ he says. ‘I thought I could be in the theatre. I would play music really loud and take my mother’s perfume bottle and sing away.

‘My family didn’t have any money. My father and my mumma would work to get money for food and T-shirts. My father would say to me, “Son, I know you want to do this but we don’t have the opportunity”. I would say, “OK, no problem, it doesn’t matter”.

‘I would go to work, I would try to get more money, I would teach to help pay for things. Dancing, music, boxing. Every part of my life has given me power.’

Usyk turned to boxing because of its affordability, saying he only needed a pair of gloves after being drawn to the gym by friends who boasted about daily sparring.

However, his first session didn’t go according to plan. ‘I took a lot of punishment,’ he says. ‘I took a lot of punches to the face. My nose had blown.

‘I was boxing, then I wanted to start kicking. The coach was like, “No you can’t kick, this is not kickboxing, it’s just boxing”. I stopped training, I said to the coach, “When is the next training session?” He said, ‘The day after tomorrow, but I don’t think you should go’.

‘I asked why and when I got home I think I realised why (pointing to his face). I went home and my nose was a little bit big and my face bruised. My mumma was like, “Oh my God, what is going on, what happened to your nose?”

‘I’m like mumma, don’t touch me please. It’s all good, I AM A MAN! My father was like, “Hey Nadia, don’t touch, it’s all good”. So yeah, that was my start in boxing. But I went the next day and then I went every day after that.’

Now attention turns to Usyk’s family, thousands of miles away and trapped under a bombardment of Russian evil.

‘My family are in Kyiv,’ he says. ‘There are rocket attacks and missiles every day. You can’t see the extent of the damage on European TV. People are dying every day.

‘I personally feel it because my daughter went to school and a rocket exploded next to her classroom. She could feel the walls shaking. She was terrified.

‘I message my friends and family all the time saying, ‘I don’t need a response but just show me you are alive’. I ask them to send me a plus and if they do I feel happy that they are not dead.’

Usyk joined a territorial defence battalion following his rematch with Anthony Joshua in August 2022, and saw civilians being maimed in his homeland. That is what focuses his mind ahead of facing Fury, rather than the Gypsy King’s right hand.

‘We are fighting for our lives,’ he says. ‘Either we are going to be free or we will be destroyed. I believe in Ukraine even more than myself and I do believe in myself that I will beat Tyson Fury and I do believe I will beat Tyson Fury.

‘For me, the fight with Fury is important. Winning four belts is important. Being undisputed champion is important. But more importantly it’s about giving that feeling of joy to my Ukrainian people. My Ukrainian friends, my Ukrainian soldiers. It’s an opportunity to share some positivity and I want to do that.’

Usyk’s desire to bring the belts back to Ukraine fuels his intense training regime. He spars 15 rounds of three-and-a-half minutes with 20 seconds’ rest, accumulating more than 250 rounds during camp.

He faces a fresh sparring partner every round, having sourced 40 different opponents through his Ready to Fight app – the world’s first social platform for professional boxing.

The Ready to Fight app – launched by the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight champion in November 2023 – has played a crucial role in securing top-level opponents for camp.

‘It’s become significantly easier to find sparring partners since we launched Ready to Fight’, says Sergey Lapin – who manages Usyk’s camp and runs RTF.

‘Instead of calling 100 contacts trying to organise everything. Now everything is all in your phone. You have direct access to a manager or a fighter and everything is transparent.

‘The vast majority of Usyk’s sparring partners were actually found through the app. They have come from different countries all over the world. We don’t have a connection to for example, Africa, which we’ve had a few sparring partners from.

‘But without the app it would have been hard to find guys with the same weight, same height etc as Fury. Of course, there are still guys who Usyk sparred before that came into camp this time as well. The vast majority was found through the app.’

Usyk’s team continue to explain how the Ready to Fight app uses AI technology to pick sparring partners based on the parameters selected at the start of the search.

Usyk – who is the co-founder of Ready to Fight – speaks candidly about his humble beginnings while praising the app.

‘As a world champion who started his journey from humble beginnings, I am intimately familiar with the challenges that await young athletes along the way.

‘Such a platform could democratise our sport and open doors for talented boxers from all over the world, wherever they live, whatever their background and financial means.’

But despite his remarkable preparation, when asked whether becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion would be his greatest achievement, Usyk’s response is simply ‘no’.

‘An Olympic gold medal is more important than anything else,’ he says, having claimed heavyweight gold at London 2012.

‘The Olympics is a completely different competition. My first Olympics, I lost in the second fight. When I went back home, I thought about finishing in the amateurs and going professional.

‘I took about two or three months’ rest and then an old friend said to me, ‘Your dream is a gold medal, yeah?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Please, try again’.

‘So I thought about it and eventually I did. 

‘When it comes to a belt, if you don’t win it this year you can maybe have another go in six months, next year. Not four years. That’s what makes the Olympics so special.’

Usyk’s deeply emotional phone call with his ailing father in his hotel room after the final elevated the medal’s significance.

‘When I won the Olympic gold, I called my father. I said, “Yeah, we won! Congratulations father”. My father said, ‘Congratulations too son, I love you’. That meant so much to me. My father had never told me that he loved me.’

Here, Usyk pauses, composing himself as he wipes away the tears. After counting to three, he takes a deep breath and continues.

‘This was so special to me,’ he says. ‘I remember this memory and I hold it close to me because he passed away just a few days later. I didn’t make it back in time to show him the medal.’

Usyk reveals his father was ‘ready to take death’ after watching him win Olympic gold. He returned from London after his father had passed, removed the gold medal from around his neck and tenderly placed it in his father’s hand before the burial.

‘I tell my son and my daughter every day that I love them because of that moment,’ he says. ‘They are my power and they say that I am their power. 

‘I know what happened with my dad. My father grew up in the Soviet Union. A lot of people living in Ukraine are older and they don’t speak about their emotions. They don’t tell their wife, their children, their husbands that they love them.

‘I never heard my father say that to my mother. But I say all the time (to my wife), ‘Katerina, I love you because you are my life’. My father was a very serious man. He was fun when he was with the family but around other people he was very serious.’

Usyk cherishes his relationship with his children Kyrylo, Mykhalio, Yelizaveta and their newborn daughter. Despite missing the birth of all four to focus on training, he regularly invites his sons into camp.

However, his wife and daughters are not permitted to ensure Usyk can maintain focus and eliminate distractions during training.

After showing off with a couple of pool-side keepy-ups, Usyk — who signed a one-year deal with Ukrainian Premier League team FC Polissya last year and plans to play football after he hangs up his gloves — pulls out his phone to share a video of him outskilling his youngest son in camp.

It prompts the 6ft 3in fighter to reminisce about the precious moments he shared with his own father, despite the absence of paternal affection.

‘My father would wake me up at about 7 o’clock on a Sunday to watch the boxing, even though all I wanted to do was sleep,’ says Usyk.

‘We’d always watch the likes of Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, (Wladimir and Vitali) Klitschko, Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins. For me, though, Muhammad Ali and Evander Holyfield were my favourites.

‘Ali because he’s not only a good boxer but a good man, who supported the people in his community and fought for people’s rights.

‘Evander is also a great man and a great boxer. He is now my friend. When I see Evander on TV, I want to call him and say, “Evander, how are you? Have a nice day”. It is important to be a good man.’

Usyk finds training much more enjoyable now and can be heard belting out a powerful rendition of Ukrainian musician Klavdia Petrivna’s song Drum while dancing around the gym.

His fellow camp-mates seem to relish training just as much, engaging in playful banter with Usyk about his footwork during the ladder drill.

They even enlist Mail Sport’s photographer for their basketball game, which, to Usyk’s amusement, he ends up losing and subsequently has to perform a forfeit.

Usyk soon unveils one of his unconventional training techniques. Smirking as he steps into the centre of the ring, he mounts a yoga ball with impeccable balance and juggles while his trainer times him.

Usyk’s team believe juggling can help build hand-eye coordination – improving the Ukrainian’s reaction time, reflexes, spatial awareness, strategic thinking, and concentration.

Speaking about Usyk’s unconventional exercises, Sergey told Mail Sport: ‘It’s actually a very effective task for coordination.

‘Because Usyk is now increasing his muscle weight, he needs to train coordination to feel new muscles and new weight. So, he is doing exercises like the ones you have seen in the gym’.

Usyk was also seen executing one of the oldest tricks in the boxing book – coin catching. It is a simple yet effective drill that is used to improve a fighter’s hand-to-eye coordination, reaction time and reflexes.

But, in terms of camp life, there is one thing Usyk won’t joke about — the cleanliness of their villa, where 20 men live under one roof.

‘The reason it’s not messy is because of me,’ he says. ‘We clean all the time because I love order. If your room is messy, your mind becomes messy.

‘If I see a lot of shoes, they all have to be in a line. If one shoe is slightly crooked I am like, “Who did this?” Everything has to be perfect.

‘It’s thanks to my father. He always said to me, if you want to attract girls you must have clean shoes, a good belt and clean your fingernails. I am doing pretty well — I have good shoes, four belts and clean fingernails.’

Usyk also takes religion very seriously. He reads a prayer attached to the pole holding up his punchbag before and after each training session.

‘It was my Grandmother who first brought me to church,’ he says. ‘I start and end my session with a prayer. I pray in the morning, I pray in the evening. I want to drive my car, I get in and I pray. It’s very important, it’s my life.

‘The prayer in my gym is important to me. I say thank you in that prayer. I ask for power and to defend my team, my family, my acquaintances and all people. But, mostly I say thank you.’ 

Usyk finishes by making it clear he has no intention of hanging up his gloves ‘when’ he beats Fury.

‘Not if I win the belts, but when I win the belts, I am going to continue boxing,’ he says. ‘Because I will hold all of the power. When God gives me a message saying, ‘Hey Alex, please stop’, I’ll take this message and stop. I haven’t had that message from God yet.’