Hughie Fury faces David Gegeshidze tonight

By Boxing News - 11/08/2013 - Comments

fury564534By Scott Gilfoid: Heavyweight prospect Hughie Fury (11-0, 6 KO’s) continues with his improbable chase of Mike Tyson’s heavyweight record for the youngest heavyweight champion in facing little known David Gegeshidze (10-4-1, 2 KO’s) at the City Academy Sports Centre, Bristol, Avon, United Kingdom. This isn’t much of a step up for young Hughie from his last two fights against Dorian Darch and Hrvoje Kisicek.

About the only thing that you can see as a positive in this fight is that the 32-year-old Gegeshidze at least has a winning record, which is more than you can say about a lot of Hughie’s past opponents. However, Gegeshidze’s victories have come against opposition with absolutely terrible records, so you pretty much have to throw out all 10 of Gegeshidze’s past wins and see him as an 0-4-1 fighter.

Hughie has wins over Shane McPhilbin and Moses Matovu recently. Those were pretty one-sided fights. It would be good to see Hughie step it up against a good heavyweight to see how he does, but I think that’s going to happen. I suspect Hughie will be matched carefully until he’s had close to 50 wins before he gets a fight against a good opponent.

Hughie’s father and trainer Peter Fury doesn’t want Hughie to score a quick knockout in this fight and his other fights because he thinks that defeats the purpose of him learning from them. While I can agree with what Peter is saying, I don’t think he really needed to bother saying anything because Hughie hasn’t been overpowering thus far in his career against the weak opposition put in with him. Hughie has won many of the fights by decisions, and he doesn’t look like he’s been blessed with excellent power or even good power. Hughie has little choice but to learn how to fight without knocking guys out because he’s likely going to have major problems knocking out the better opposition without power when and if he’s finally moved up several levels to face good opposition.

At 19, the 6’6″ Hughie has time to keep growing and developing as a fighter. As I suggested, Hughie needs to get on a good weight program to develop his upper body because he’s still young enough to develop his strength if he works out well. But I haven’t seen any change in his upper body strength or appearance in his last four fights, which leads me to believe that Hughie might stay the way he is for the remainder of his career. That’s not a good thing because right now he’s probably too weak to compete with the top contenders or even the bottom 15 contenders in the division.



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