If Hughie Fury had fought Deontay Wilder last night…

By Boxing News - 09/27/2015 - Comments

hughie45By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten Hughie Fury (16-0, 8 KOs) could have been the one that fought WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (35-0, 34 KOs) last night instead of Johann Duhaupas (32-3, 20 KOs) in Birmingham, Alabama.

Hughie was the first choice by Wilder’s management, but Hughie’s trainer/father Peter Fury said that they couldn’t take the fight because they wanted 8 weeks and they would have gotten less than that.

Wilder’s management showed interested in having Hughie agree to the fight in early August, which would have given him basically a good 7 weeks to train for the fight

I’m trying to imagine how the 6’6” Hughie would have done had he been in the ring instead of the sturdy 6’5”, 236lb Duhaupas, and all I can think of is it would have gone bad for Hughie. Unless Hughie showed a lot more talent than what I’ve seen of his fights lately, I have serious doubts whether he’d have been able to make it out of the 1st round against Wilder. I mean, I certainly couldn’t see Hughie backing Wilder up like Duhaupas did. Back him up with what? If Hughie had tried to back Wilder up, I think he would have had nothing to do it with because Hughie is no puncher.

Hughie’s timid fighting style and his slapping punches would have made it easy for Wilder to bomb him out from long range without even suffering so much as scratch. I think it would have been one of those Wilder vs. Audley Harrison type fights with Wilder scoring a 1st round knockout.

Picturing Hughie out there with Wilder, I see it as one of those Custer’s last stand situation for young Hughie. I think it would have been a full scale route with Wilder battering him from all sides with arrow-like punches that would have been stinging him badly.

I know Hughie is a good runner, and hates to stand in the pocket, but I don’t think he’d have been able to get away from Wilder’s fierce attacks.

Wilder would be riding his saddle hard to get to Hughie so that he could lay him out on the battle field. I think it might have been a bloody campaign for Hughie if he’d agreed to it.

In hindsight, I think Peter Fury did the right thing by not tossing Hughie in the ring with Wilder, because I Hughie likely would have been little more than a small snack for Deontay rather than a full course meal like we saw last night.

The good that would have come out of Wilder knocking Hughie out is that it would set up a revenge thing for Tyson Fury to fight Wilder to try and get back at him for his destruction of young Hughie. Can you imagine the interest there would be in the UK for a revenge of the Hughie fight? Tyson Fury would make tons of cash on a fight like that.

Hughie won’t be fighting for a while because of Wladimir Klitschko postponing his fight against Tyson Fury on October 24th. Hughie was supposed to be fighting 36-year-old Nicolai Firtha on the undercard.

It’s unclear whether the Hughie vs. Firtha fight will take place once Wladimir is finished licking his wounds. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hughie winds up facing someone else. I hope for his sake he faces someone better than Firtha, because he’s facing too many soft opponents and it’s not even interesting.



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