Fury defeats McDermott on Questionable decision

By Nate Anderson: Unbeaten heavyweight Tyson Fury (8-0, 7 KO’s) put in a disappointing performance last night in defeating big John McDermott (25-6, 16 KO’s) by a 10-round decision to capture the English heavyweight title at the Brent Leisure Centre, in Essex. Referee/judge Terry O’Conner scored the bout 98-92, giving Fury the decision by six huge points. I couldn’t understand the score because it looked to me that McDermott had done enough to win the fight by one, maybe two rounds.

If I were to stretch a bit, you could call it a draw, but you’d have to ignore all the right hands that McDermott was landing against Fury all night long. The 6’7” Fury had no defense for McDermott’s right hands and was tagged by them again and again. Granted, Fury landed a lot of punches of his own, particularly nice shots to McDermott’s thick midsection and huge number of nice jabs.

However, McDermott dominated the fight up until the last two rounds of the fight. At that point, McDermott looked kind of tired and started clinching a lot. Fury came back to win the 9th and 10th rounds by landing right hands and hooks, but he had no power by that time of the fight and looked pretty tired himself.

McDermott did a good job exposing Fury’s lack of defense, as he was able to move back Fury’s jabs and set up shot at close range where McDermott was able to land his right hands. Fury looked helpless with McDermott next to him and seemed to get flustered on more than one occasion.

Call it inexperience or whatever. Fury looked like an amateur against a pro. The only reason that the fight didn’t turn out to be even more one-sided than it ended up was because of Fury’s youth, superior conditioning, huge size and body attack. In terms of boxing skills, McDermott looked light years ahead of Fury.

I suppose you got to give Fury some credit, though. He is only 21-years-old and this was only his 8th fight of his pro career. Fury has only been fighting pro for one year and is still learning his trade. For his part, McDermott, 29, has had 31 fights over a nine year span in the pros and is nine years older.

I believe that Fury will improve in the future to the point where a fighter like McDermott would have virtually no chance against him. But Fury is going to have to get better sparring partners, more experience against higher quality opposition and possibly a new trainer for him to get the most out of his career.

Fury can’t continue to fight lesser fighters and think that he’s going to improving. Fury said that he would give McDermott a rematch. That’s a good start. Obviously, there needs to be a different referee for the next fight because it probably won’t fly having O’Conner work the fight again.

The fight wasn’t all bad for Fury. Tyson showed a good chin by taking all those right hands from McDermott. Never once did I see any signs of Fury being hurt. It didn’t look good mind you to see Fury getting hit so much, but at least he took the shots without flopping around on the canvas. Luckily for Fury that McDermott isn’t a huge puncher.

If this was Danny Williams, who Fury had mentioned wanting to fight next, I think Fury would have been sparked out of there in the first few rounds. Fury was like a deer caught in the head lights every time McDermott would throw a right hand, and would seem to freeze until the shot landed. Williams would have gone to down against a fighter like Fury and chopped him down.

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