By Scott Gilfoid: Heavyweight prospect Hughie Fury (15-0, 8 KOs) says unbeaten with a dull 10 round unanimous decision win over Andriy Rudenko (24-2, 16 KOs) on the Gennady Golovkin vs. Martin Murray fight card at the Salle des Étoiles, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
The final judges’ scores were 98-92, 98-91 and 97-92. This was not an impressive performance from the 20-year-old Hughie, as he was on his bike for the full 10 rounds of the fight.
Instead of standing and trading every once in a while, the 6’6” Hughie stayed on the move for the entire fight, only rarely throwing an ineffective right hand which frequently missed.
What was really disappointing was that Hughie mostly jabbed and grabbed. I lost track of all the times that Hughie clinched Rudenko in each round, as if he were afraid to get hit by him. It was a continuous thing where Hughie would either grab Rudenko each time the 31-year-old Ukrainian fighter would get near enough to throw a punch. I mean, it looked like Hughie was stalling out the fight from the earliest moments.
Hughie was grabbing Rudenko like he wanted to stall time in each round, and it was just awful to watch. Hughie would fall into a clinch right after throwing a right hand or left hook, which missed most of the time due to Hughie’s poor hand speed and accuracy.
Rudenko was by far the stronger puncher of the two in the fight, but he rarely was able to land anything due to Hughie draping himself on him each time Rudenko would get near enough to do anything.
Overall, I thought Hughie looked completely awful, and I’m just wondering why the referee Francisco Alloza Rosa didn’t take points away from Hughie for all the clinching he was doing, because he clearly impacted Rudenko’s ability to fight with all the holding he was doing.
What was really interesting was how the Monte Carlo crowd failed to cheer the judges’ decision at the end of the fight. It was a clear indication that the crowd did not like the way Hughie had run and held all night.
Apart from Hughie’s running and holding he was doing to stink up the joint, his lack of power was worrisome. At 20, the power should already be in place, but I didn’t see any power at all on Hughie’s punches.
Right now, Hughie can get away with not having any punching power because he’s not facing quality fighters. But when Hughie finally starts facing guys that can punch, he’s going to be in real trouble. Also, Fury is going to have problems when he has a referee that takes points off for his constant excessive clinching like the type we saw from Fury last Saturday.
I think Hughie needs to go on a serious weight program to try and develop his nonexistent power, because he’s simply too weak to deal with the better heavyweights in the division. I mean, Hughie can’t beat the quality fighters by running around the ring for three minutes of every round, throwing weak jabs and holding constantly.
I kind of felt sorry for Rudenko, because he looked really unhappy with all the grabbing and running that Hughie did in the fight. Rudenko was looking at the referee constantly, perhaps wondering why he wasn’t doing his job of taking points off from the young Hughie for all the clinching he was doing, but Rudenko got no help. Rudenko thought he was getting a fight, but instead he had a guy who was doing little more than running and grabbing all night long.
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