By Nate Anderson: Last Saturday night, we saw perhaps the future of the heavyweight division when the 6’7″ Tyson Fury (4-0, 4 KOs), looking a great deal leaner than he had four months ago when he started his pro career in December, toyed with journeyman Lee Swaby (23-23-2, 11 KOs), stopping him at the end of the 4th round at the Aston Events Centre, in Birmingham, West Midlands. Fury, 20, stayed cool and composed as Swaby blitzed him repeatedly with strafing attacks, picking him off with short hooks to the head and body while Swaby was on the way in.
The fight, never really competitive to began with, became totally one-sided by the 4th round with Fury teeing off on Swaby and tagging him with powerful right hands and left hooks to the body. In between rounds, Swaby let his corner know that he had had enough and didn’t wish to continue.
Swaby took the fight to Fury in the 1st round, perhaps knowing that his only chance was to start quick and hope that he could somehow catch Fury with something big early on. Fury backed up under fire, landing short hooks as he back peddled. Fury leaned back through much of the round, jabbing Swaby and trying to avoid getting hit with his wild shots.
Fury, 20, wound up with some big body shots in the round and you could tell that Swaby didn’t like them one bit as he looked uncomfortable each time Fury would plant and fire. Near the end of the round, Swaby spun Fury around and tagged him with a right hand while Fury’s back was turned to him. It’s wasn’t exactly sporting, but it was something that fury didn’t see bothered by at all.
Swaby came out firing full bore in the 2nd, charging Fury at the start of the round and knocking him off balance after hitting him with a hard left hand to the head. Fury fought back, landing several jabs and two big right hands. Swaby again charged him hard, landing a right hand and then a left.
Swaby was finding success in his charges, but was also getting nailed with some heavy shots while making his attacks against Fury. After attacking Fury again with another aggressive charge, Fury met him with several hard right hands, and forced the smaller 6’2″ Swaby against the ropes where he blasted him with big shots one after another. Swaby fired back with a couple of good shots that landed through Fury’s guard. Fury immediately fired back with number of heavy shots as the round ended.
In the 3rd round, Fury’s hard shots were beginning to hurt Swaby, whose right eye was reddening and looked to be struggling under the heavy shots from Fury. Swaby started holding his lead left hand way out in front of him in an exaggerated pose, trying to find a method to keep the taller Fury from landing his long range bombs.
It didn’t help as Fury continued landing over hand rights and hooks through Swaby’s guard. By the second half of the round, Fury was now battering Swaby with huge shots and hitting him at will. Swaby looked tight, very uncomfortable and seemingly helpless with what to do to make Fury lessen up with his heavy barrage of punches.
Swaby attempted only several punches in the last two minutes of the round and was mainly concerned with trying to cover up and block the many incoming shots that he was getting hit with. In the 4th round, Fury began to really batter him shots.
At this point, Fury was throwing almost exclusively power shots and not even bothering with his jabs any longer. Like in the last round, Swaby was mostly a big punching bag and was absorbing everything that Fury through his way. It looked bad for him, and you could tell that he wouldn’t last much longer with Fury belting him the way he was. At the end of the round, a defeated looking Swaby decided not to come out for the 5th round.
Fury’s win continues his speedy progress up the heavyweight chain and hopefully catapults him against better competition in his next fight on April 25th against a still unnamed opponent.
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