By Scott Gilfoid: Undefeated heavyweight prospect David Price (12-0, 10 KO’s) plans on having a really busy schedule in the next four months with a possible fight in the United States on March 16th on the undercard of Matthew Macklin – Sergio Martinez at Madison Square Garden in New York, and then a fight against British heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (17-0, 12 KO’s) a month or two later in April or May. It seems pretty obvious that Price’s opponent for March will be someone dragged in from a morgue. If Price is to be facing Fury a month later, he won’t be able to afford facing someone that can actually punch back and have a chance of knocking him out like Roberto Cammarelle and Bermane Stiverne did in the amateur ranks.
That all hinges on whether Fury decides to take the fight rather than vacating the strap all together to get out of a risky possible career damaging loss. You have to imagine that Fury’s promoter is concerned about what could have to Fury’s career if he agrees to take the fight with the big hitting Price and gets destroyed in one round like John McDermott was last Saturday night.
Getting knocked out period would be a disaster to Fury’s fortunes because he’s looking at a big Klitschko payday this year or possibly next year if he can keep winning. It doesn’t matter who Fury faces, he’ll get the title shot against WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko or his brother IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko.
But he won’t get a title shot if he loses to Price. It’s obviously better if Fury faces the best fighters possible and takes on Price and beats him. It will make the Klitschko-Fury fight that much bigger and it would ensure him more money when and/if that time comes. But it’s a big risk to face Price with his power unless Fury is certain he can take Price’s power and come back with some of his own big shots to take him out.
I have no doubt that Fury can knock Price out if he can handle getting hit with big punches for six rounds. That’s all that would be required. No way can Price handle six rounds of getting hit a lot. He’ll fall apart and get stopped, but getting through those rounds will be very difficult for Fury because he’s already been shown to have a shaky chin in his fights with Dereck Chisora, Nicolai Firtha and Neven Pajkic. Fury was hurt in each of those fights and Firtha and Pajkic aren’t considered big punchers.
Fury gets hit too cleanly and doesn’t do a good job of blocking punches or pulling back from them the way good fighters do. He needs a good trainer and a lot of good sparring so he can learn how to fight. But he obviously won’t have enough time to make major changes to his game by the time he has to defend his British title against Price in April or May. He’ll go into that fight basically the same fighter he is now and probably get knocked cold.
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