By Scott Gilfoid: In a disappointing fight, unbeaten heavyweight prospect Hughie Fury (17-0, 9 KOs) will be facing 37-year-old war horse Konstantin Airich (22-14-2, 18 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round fight on Saturday night in the chief support of the Wladimir Klitschko vs. Tyson Fury fight at the ESPRIT Arena in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Hughie, 21, says his team has had problems finding an opponent to face him, as there have been fighters that have pulled out of the fight such as Nichola Firtha.
“It’s been an absolute struggle to get me an opponent because every guy has pulled out,” Hughie said to IFL TV. “Nicholai Firtha pulled out. He pulled out a week ago. From there we had a Bosnian withg 17 fights. He just pulled out two days ago. I think we’ve got an opponent. I’m not too sure about what his name is at the moment. I finally got one,” Hughie said,
According to Boxrec, the guy that Hughie will be fighting is journeyman Airich, who has lost 6 out of his last 7 fights in the last year. Airich recently beat novice Robert Filipovic (1-1) by a 6th round knockout last October. What’s particularly bad about Hughie fighting Airich is the fact that he was recently knocked out in the 5th round by Andriy Rudenko, a fighter that Hughie beat earlier this year by a lopsided 10 round unanimous decision in February.
Heck, Fury would be better off facing Rudenko again rather than fighting a guy that Rudenko easily beat. It doesn’t make any sense at all for Hughie to be getting matched up so softly against fodder opposition if the idea is to try and improve him enough to where he’ll be a top 15 contender one of these days. I mean, I know Hughie has flaws that need to be worked through, but putting him in with Airich isn’t the way to do it.
Besides getting knocked out by Rudenko, Airich was also recently stopped by Mariusz Wach, Anthony Joshua, and Adrian Granat. In 2012, Airich was knocked out in the 1st round by Manuel Charr. It seems the best way to score a knockout of Airich is to jump on him immediately and bury him with punches the way that Charr did.
Earlier in Airich’s career he had an exciting life and death struggle with Danny Williams in 2008. Airich was stopped in the 7th round, but he had Williams in trouble frequently in that fight.
Hughie stopped Emilio Ezequiel Zarate in the 2nd round in his last fight on November 14th in one of Hughie’s better performances of his career. Instead of Hughie running around the ring looking to land pot shots like he normally does, he stood in the pocket and fired off power shots until he stopped Zarate.
Now if Hughie could fight like that all the time, he’d pick up a top 15 ranking in no time flat. Unfortunately, I don’t think Hughie has the punching power or the punch resistance to fight like that against heavyweights with talent. We’re obviously not going to find out anything about Hughie on Saturday night, because he’s not been matched against a good enough heavyweight that will test Hughie in any way.
I think Hughie will likely fight aggressive against Airich, because the guy has nothing in terms of punching power or offensive skills to offer. In other words, Airich is no threat to beating Hughie.
At 6’6”, Hughie is a slightly smaller version of Tyson Fury, but he doesn’t have the unpredictable awkward style that Tyson possesses. Until Hughie’s last fight against Zarate, he was pretty predictable in the way he fought with his hit and run style of fighting. You could literally predict how Hughie would fight any given fighter up until the Zarate fight.
The punching power just hasn’t been there for Hughie, and I still think it’s not there. To be sure, Hughie was able to KO Zarate, but that wasn’t even remotely a quality fighter. It just some poor opponent that folded up almost immediately after Hughie nailed him with a couple of sloppy looking windmill punches that any good heavyweight would have easily blocked and countered with a heavy punch.
With 55,000 fans expected for tomorrow night’s Klitschko-Fury fight at the ESPRIT Arena, this is Hughie’s chance to impress the boxing fans and make a name for himself in his showcase fight against Airich. Hopefully, Hughie doesn’t stink up the joint by running and holding all night long like he did against Rudenko.
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