By Scott Gilfoid: Former two-time world title challenger Tony Thompson (39-5, 26 KOs) has volunteered to step in and replace the injured Dereck Chisora to fight Tyson Fury (22-0, 16 KOs) this Saturday night at the Phones 4 U Arena in Manchester, UK.
Chisora suffered a fractured hand on his final day of sparring to get ready for the Fury rematch. Obviously it’s just a bad luck thing for the 30-year-old Chisora, but doesn’t change the fact that Fury has wasted months of training and is without a payday fight on Saturday.
Thompson said on his twitter “@Tyson_Fury I’LL FIGHT YOU THIS SATURDAY, FOOL!”
The question would Fury and his promoter be interested in taking the fight against the 42-year-old, 6’5” Thompson? We saw that Thompson did to another highly hyped heavyweight in David Price last year in knocking him out twice, putting his career on skid row. Could it be Fury’s turn to be exposed by the southpaw Thompson?
It’s very unlikely that Fury would accept a fight against Thompson, because it would be a tremendous step up in class from the guys that Fury has built his unbeaten record on. That’s just the plain truth about it. Thompson may be in his early 40s and nearing the end of his career, but he’s still a big, big step up in class for a fighter like Fury, who built his unbeaten resume on beating guys like Martin Rogan, Vinny Maddalone, Chisora, Neven Pajkic, Kevin Johnson, and John McDermott. Fury’s never beaten an actual solid heavyweight before. Sorry, you can’t count cruiserweight Steve Cunningham for obvious reasons.
Thompson or Shannon Briggs would be good replacements for the card. Of course, you can’t really make it a WBO heavyweight title eliminator, but at least the card would have a worthy main event instead of having Billy Joe Saunders vs. Emanuele Blandamura as the main event. That’s an awful fight for a main event. I wouldn’t waste my time going to see a fight card with that as the main event, which is why it would be a great idea for Fury to agree to face Tony Thompson.
On the plus side, if Fury gets knocked out, he at least would know that he’s not cut out for the world class, and he could focus his energies on fighting at the British or European level. It would also give fans a chance a to see if Fury is any good, because he’s thus far been matched so incredibly careful that no one can tell if he’s good or bad. All we know is that he got dropped by a cruiserweight last year in his fight against Cunningham.
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