By Scott Gilfoid: Some would say that Tyson Fury (23-0, 17 KOs) had an free ride in only having to beat Dereck Chisora in order to earn a shot at fighting IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko at some point in 2015.
Fury could have had it much more difficult in having to face dangerous fighters like Deontay Wilder, Bryant Jennings, Alexander Povetkin, Andy Ruiz, Carlos Takam or Kubrat Pulev. Instead, Fury only had to beat a guy that basically faced no one in the last two years since he was annihilated by David Haye in 2012.
Oddly enough, Fury thinks that Wladimir will avoid fighting him next year, because he believes that the 6’6” Ukrainian is afraid to fight him for some reason. Just why Wladimir would be afraid to fight the light hitting Fury is the big question, as there’s nothing in Fury’s game that Wladimir would struggle with.
“I don’t think Wladimir will fight me. If he does it’s a miracle,” Fury said via Skysports.com. “I’m a million per cent convinced this fight ain’t going to happen. I don’t care what the promoters say, I’ve looked in his eyes and I saw fear. I know he’s not going to fight me.”
You can make a strong argument that Fury is a step down from Wladimir’s last knockout victim Kubrat Pulev, so it’s highly doubtful that Wladimir has any fear at all in facing Fury. It’s more of a stay busy fight for Wladimir in my view. Fury doesn’t have a jab to speak of, he’s slow, and he lacks punching power.
If you watch Fury’s fight against Chisora last November, it was a case of Fury tapping the short-armed Chisora until he basically was pulled out of the fight after the 10th. Chisora didn’t have the height, reach, speed, power or skills to be in the ring with Fury. It just looked like a 2nd tier fighter with an inflated ranking who had no business whatsoever sharing the ring with Fury. That’s why it was kind of a surprise how the World Boxing Organization gave Chisora such a high ranking based on wins over fluff opponents rather than waiting until he mixed it up with a quality contender.
The WBO should have held off on ranking Chisora so highly until he actually proved himself. As such, we now have Fury as Wladimir’s WBO mandatory challenger, and this fight has mismatch written all over it. It’s a massacre waiting to happen from the way I see. Fury is going to get blown out of the ring, and it’s not going to be pretty, believe me.
Fury will be taking a stay busy fight on February 28th against an opponent still to be determined at the O2 Arena in London, UK. The opponent is supposed to be a top 15 ranked contender. I’m sure it will be, but there are a lot of flurry contenders ranked in the top 15 and I don’t expect Fury to be fighting anyone remotely good. I suspect it’ll be someone who has little in the way of power that could potentially mess up Fury’s chance at fighting Wladimir.
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