Hughie Fury vs. Nicolai Firtha on October 24th in Dusseldorf, Germany

By Boxing News - 09/16/2015 - Comments

hughie21By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten heavyweight prospect Hughie Fury (16-0, 8 KOs) will be fighting the ring rusty 36-year-old journeyman Nicolai Firtha (21-11-1, 8 KOs) on October 24th on the undercard of the Wladimir Klitschko vs. Tyson Fury card at the ESPRIT Arena in Dusseldorf, Germany.

By having the 20-year-old fight the 6’6” Firtha, it gives boxing fans a chance to compare his performance against Firtha to that of WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury, both of which previously stopped him.

Wilder knocked Firtha out in 4 rounds in his last fight two years ago in October 2013. Tyson Fury knocked Firtha out four years ago in stopping him in the 5th round in September 2011. Firtha has also been beaten by Alexander Povetkin and Johnathon Banks in the last five years.

Firtha had Fury hurt in their fight after nailing him with a big right hand to the head in the 4th round of the contest. Fury was clearly wobbled by the fight hand from Firtha. However, in the next round, Fury was able to stop Firtha to get a 5th round knockout.

Firtha also slightly staggered Deontay with a hard jab in the 1st round of their fight in 2013. Deontay was able to collect himself and come on to dominate Firtha in getting him out in four rounds.

Even if Hughie does a better job than Tyson Fury and Deontay, which I highly doubt, it’s impossible to compare the performances because Firtha was an active fighter when he fought Tyson and Wilder. He’s not been active in the last two years since losing to Wilder. As such, Hughie will be fighting a guy who hasn’t been in the ring for 24 months, and who will likely not be in the greatest of shape.

There is only five more weeks to go before Hugie fights on October 24th. This means Firtha will only have 5 weeks to get ready for the fight. If you’ve been out of the ring for two years like Firtha has, you’re probably not going to be able to burn off all the blubber and get in the best of shape like we you would if you had an eight week training camp.

In Firtha’s case, he might be really out of shape from two years of inactivity. His training camp could be little more than a fat farm to try and burn off the flab that he likely put on in the last two years. Firtha probably needs a good 12 week training camp instead of just five to get fully ready. Firtha looked pretty flabby against Wilder in 2013. I can’t imagine him looking even that good when he faces Hughie.

Hughie will have a much better shot of winning his fight at least than his cousin Tyson Fury against Klitschko. At least one of the Fury’s has a good chance of having his hand raised as the end of their fights.

The undercard of the Klitschko-Fury card is looking pretty poor as of now. Besides the Hughie vs. Firtha fight, which is a mismatch, there’s IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC/WBO female welterweight champion Cecilia Braekhus defending her titles against German challenger Ramona Kuehne. Other than those two fights, the undercard has nothing else.

You can see that the undercard of the Klitschko-Fury fight card seems to be of less importance for this card. In that respect it’s similar to what we saw on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight card on May 2nd of this year.

Instead of the promoters using the big money that came in for the fight on packaging the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight with some good quality fights for the boxing fans, they seemingly did the undercard on the cheap by having these mismatches on the undercard:

Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Gamalier Rodriguez
Brad Solomon vs. Adrian Granados
Jesse Hart vs. Mike Jimenez
Christopher Pearson vs. Said El Harrak
Leo Santa Cruz vs. Jose Cayetano



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