The future of heavyweight boxing

By mattybuckland - 04/23/2013 - Comments

wilder23By Matty Buckland: Recently we have seen a couple of the top young heavyweight contenders to the Klitschko brothers crowns fight and we have seen David Price found wanting in his bout against Tony Thompson. The other 2 young prospects, Deontay Wilder who will be taking on Audley Harrison soon and Tyson Fury who has just had a TKO victory over Steve Cunningham.

A lot has been said on this site about these 3 young fighters, by fans and writers alike and some of it is very one sided and at times been extremely xenophobic and Id like to give a fair and impartial look at them as opposed to some writers purely negative views just because of the fighters nationality.

Starting with David Price he does possess some great attributes. He has incredible size and reach; he’s very athletic with amazing one punch power. Anybody who doubts this clearly hasn’t seen any of his previous bouts. But does he have a suspect chin?

Time will tell if the knockout by Thompson is a sign of things to come with David Price. Out of the ring Price seems a very affable guy, very likeable, polite and even humble at times so I’d like to see more of him and hopefully he can carry on his career and it may lead to bigger things than just domestic and commonwealth honors.

As for the other two prospects, does either possess true world level credentials? Both have great size like Price, though Tyson Fury doesn’t seem to possess the same power and athleticism as Price. Wilder though would seem to possess both in abundance. He, like Price, is an Olympic medalist, and is dispatching of every opponent with relative ease. But the fact that he has not fought anyone of note does cast a shadow on his performances and how good he actually is. Between Fury and Wilder, I’d have to say Fury’s recent bout with Cunningham is by far a tougher than the upcoming Audley Harrison fight. Cunningham is an ex world champion with decent pedigree. He didn’t make Fury look great to be honest. Fury in my opinion wouldn’t last long against either Klitschko.

As for Wilder’s next opponent Audley Harrison, he doesn’t deliver much in the way of anything really? Maybe Harrison can pull off a shock defeat. It would be nice to see for entertainment value but I believe it’s more of a case of how well Wilder dispatches of Harrison. But either way after this fight we will have a clearer indication on how good Wilder, is to some extent anyway.

As for David Price? He needs to win and win well in his rematch against Thompson otherwise it’ll be a long long road for him to come back from. Fury really needs to impress as I feel his size has gotten him to where he is now but come the business end of the division that won’t cut it. Hopefully all 3 prospects will do well and eventually meet one another and this will be interesting for all boxing fans.

Personally I feel there are better heavyweights out there who will take over from the Klitschko brothers but we will see. There is also David Haye returning to the squared circle very soon and although he gave an extremely lack luster performance against Wladimir Klitschko when they fought, he does offer something the heavyweight division that for me has been missing in the last few years. Whether you are a fan or not of Haye it would be interesting to see how Fury, Price or Wilder would fair against him. Maybe one day we shall see.



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